djw60 Loc: Vermont

Good morning everyone. I am wondering if any of you out there that do Portraits for customers, can tell me how long you keep the original photos for each shoot that you did? I back mine up on a external hard drive but do not know how long I should keep them. 2 months? My customers gets the photos on a cd after I have edited them, so do I really have to keep the originals? Thanks. Have a great day!! -8 degrees F here in Vermont this morning!

Zerbphlatz Loc: Southern New Hampshire

The only professional photographer I've dealt with guaranteed she'd have them for 1 year. In reality, she keeps them much longer. Her logic was that people sometimes, a few years later, decide they want a print.

I would think it's up to you to say how long you'll keep them and that amount gets put in the contract between you and your customer.

Procedurally, if I were to do a business, I'd start with 1 year, allocate an external drive to the business and keep adding client sessions until the drive was full. Then I'd start deleting the oldest session as new sessions got added. This, of course, as long as I've satisfied my contractual obligation to existing customers. If I got really good and filled up the drive before the pictures expired, well, then I could afford a larger disk or raid array. Of course, you'd want to have an offsite backup of your sessions disk!

This advice, of course, is from someone who doesn't have his own business, so it's worth every cent you paid for it :)

-=Z=- ( at a balmy 6.5 degrees F in Southern NH)

ebaribeault Loc: Baltimore

I make a spare cd for myself and keep the photos on my hard drive for a year. The spare cd is in case of hard drive crashes

seaside7

I save all portraits on a Gold DVD.

djw60 Loc: Vermont

That was my next question, the best cd/dvd to save photos on?? What brand and style? Thank you all so much.

SLM Loc: Richland Center WI

I back up all my files on an external HD. I keep them indefinitely. Easier and more efficient than negs used to be. You never know when some one is going to need an image. Even if they purchase a cd. If they loose or corrupt it in some manner $$$$$

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

CD / DVD backup makes the most sense to me. I do that but also on my external. I've kept stuff for several years and so far no one has returned for more copies of an image.
You may have someone come back so a CD / DVD backup may serve you well.

Good Luck

randymoe

I save everything on several backups. I give the user the files on a USB flash drive. I also tell them to back up their files. I do warn them that everything digital can easily be lost. I tell them I delete in a month, but I don't do that. I have all my old film negatives and slides. I have lost many digital files.

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

Sounds like a good plan.

mooseeyes Loc: Sonora, California

You keep them forever! Why wouldn't you? You say you are talking about portriat images that you have taken for your customers. In my book, that makes you a professional; and, you therefore need to act like a professional.

I have never, REPEAT NEVER, thrown away or eliminated a single piece of film or digital capture in all my 68 years. But, I have had clients come back years later for a number of reasons. House burned down; house got flooded; person died; divorce; etc. Do you really want to tell your past client, who comes back to you to get the lost photos of Aunt Millie who just died, "Oh, I tossed those out years ago. . .I only keep them a short while, before putting them in the trash, why do you ask?"

I have around one million images that I have taken during my life, and they just don't take up all that much room. Particulary now that I can scan and burn lots of stuff onto CDs.

kamoopsipooh Loc: Big Island

Great advice!

seaside7

I would be interested to know how one stores over a million pieces of film. Please enlighten me. Thank you.

After 10 years I would give the clients the film and tell them to store them in a bank deposit box.

melphoto60

you have lost future sales on anything that you give on CD's so I would trash them after giving the cd's ...just my 2c

Merlin1300 Loc: New England, But Now & Forever SoTX

HDD space is incredibly cheap compared to the time and effort it takes to create your images. CD-ROMS and DVD Back-ups are EXPENSIVE, Slow, and an incredible PIA !!! They also DETERIORATE after about 10 years UNLESS you use the more expensive GOLD versions.
.
Save everything - original RAWs, and final compositions.
.
Create a RAID-5 array (use an external RAID enclosure such as the QNAP TS-410 4-Bay Desktop Network Attached Storage fully populated with four 2 to 3 TB HDDs (this will give you 6 - 9 TB (2TB vs 3TB drives) of redundant storage - any one drive may fail and you will NOT lose ANY data !! - simply replace the failed drive, and over the next day or two, the array will 'magically' rebuild itself - all data intact !!)
.
Be Patient !! The initial formatting of such a drive array may well take 3 - 5 DAYS !!! Also - - as described and currently (2012) priced - the fully populated 9TB RAID-5 Array will set you back a kilobuck !! How much is that ?? On an annual basis - just a minute fraction of your operational costs - - AND it should be deductible !
.
When your drive array is 90% full - - BUILD ANOTHER and archive the first (or just keep it hanging on your network - - although archiving it to your closet will decrease the wear and tear on the rotating disks).
.
Never throw ANYTHING away - - advice from a hard-core geek pack rat.
.
When I get REALLY old - - I'm gonna look at my photos every other day and be amazed at all the stuff I did - -

Bruce M Loc: Northern Utah

I have no advice as to how long to save an image but I saw on the news today that a company from the Salt Lake City area has developed a process to etch the info on to a CD basically saving it forever. The company demonstrated the thing at the Las Vegas show last week. I wish I had an Internet site but if your interested I'm sure We will see more about it in the near future.