Keep photos on memory cards till.. ... after they have been backed up in at least two different locations. News item this morning: The laptop of a professional photographer was stolen...

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

... after they have been backed up in at least two different locations. News item this morning: The laptop of a professional photographer was stolen from her car. The laptop contained "thousands of photos of two separate weddings."
A reward of $500 (more than the laptop is worth) is offered for its return.

Why, oh why, did she not have the cards from the camera as well, and kept in a separate location from the laptop, like a skirt pocket, or even one of those little pockets that snaps onto the camera strap.
Needless to say, the two couples are heartbroken.

NeilL Loc: British-born Canadian

Morning Star wrote:

... after they have been backed up in at least two... (show quote)

We all have 20/20 hindsight.

amehta Loc: Boston

NeilL wrote:

We all have 20/20 hindsight.

We are capable of learning from 20/20 "other person's sight", though often we choose not to. :-(

Note to self: I should get better at the "multiple locations" part of backing up, especially for assignments.

NeilL Loc: British-born Canadian

amehta wrote:

We are capable of learning from 20/20 "other person's sight", though often we choose not to. :-(

Note to self: I should get better at the "multiple locations" part of backing up, especially for assignments.

I always try. :D

bull drink water Loc: pontiac mi.

I store my photos on a hard drive separate from my desk top, so you know I never strore them on a lap top that leaves my home.

Capture48 Loc: Arizona

There is one point in my workflow where my images are in 5 places at the same time. Although it is a brief moment in time, in the end I get down to three locations.
http://www.capture48.com/backup-truths/

tradergeorge Loc: Newport, Kentucky

Another situation where the "Cloud", which so many disdain, would be very helpful. There are backup programs that do incremental backups, so that the process is almost painless. I would never trust that many irreplaceable products to something that I carry around and especially LEAVE in an accessible place. Professional photographers do not also have to be computer experts. Hire someone to set up software to match your situation. It is money well spent.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

Morning Star wrote:

... after they have been backed up in at least two... (show quote)

The value of her laptop should be the least of her concern; the loss of pay for the two weddings will add up to perhaps thousands of dollars, as she won't be able to deliver the goods to the clients, essentially failing to fulfill her agreement with them. She'll be lucky if she avoids getting sued by the clients. You can't simply re-stage a wedding and do it over.

That she was so quick to delete the files from the cards (without having completed a secondary copy backup, such as an external hard drive) seems to indicate that she hasn't been all that long in the business. Memory cards are cheap enough today that one shouldn't need to recycle them immediately after an important shoot. A real pro owns dozens of cards, not just a few.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

tradergeorge wrote:

Another situation where the "Cloud", which so many disdain, would be very helpful. There are backup programs that do incremental backups, so that the process is almost painless. I would never trust that many irreplaceable products to something that I carry around and especially LEAVE in an accessible place. Professional photographers do not also have to be computer experts. Hire someone to set up software to match your situation. It is money well spent.

The "disdain" really has to do with the fact that, unless you have an uncommonly high connection speed, it can take a very long time to upload (and later download) many GB of image files.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Exactly the reason why I have so many back ups of back ups. I've been made fun of a few times for using my cards as yet another back up.

As part of the price, I build in for memory cards that will be kept in their original form in an envelope in the file with the couple's contracts.

I download to 2 computers, 3 external drives, at least one of those is kept off sight, generally 2, and also have a disk of each wedding kept as well.

I had a major loss early in my switch to digital, and now would much rather have back up upon back up upon back up and get teased for being OCD, than to be sued for losing all the files.

My contract does state that in case of theft, or other thing out of my control, I'm only responsible for up to the cost of what they paid me for the shoot. I feel that not having a back up, IS VERY MUCH in my control.

tradergeorge Loc: Newport, Kentucky

f8lee wrote:

The "disdain" really has to do with the fact that, unless you have an uncommonly high connection speed, it can take a very long time to upload (and later download) many GB of image files.

How "many gigs" of files are you shooting in a single session? And are they all something you would want to keep? It seems to me that if you are shooting that many pics, it would be a full time job just going through them and deciding what to keep....I shoot maybe a couple hundred on an average outing. I guess I have a "uncommonly high connection speed" because once I transfer them to the PC, my automatic backup program syncs them to my cloud drive in the background, without intervention. Once you have your system and software setup properly, this upload does not even slow down your main screen noticeably.

In any case, backup is always a tradeoff between what you are comfortable losing and how much inconvenience you are willing to endure.....That is, unless you are smart and have a plan and stick to it....

:D

Festus Loc: North Dakota

Morning Star wrote:

... after they have been backed up in at least two... (show quote)

I feel for the newly weds, but not the photographer. For me it is hard to refer to her as a "professional" with all the mistakes she made. (although we all make mistakes, she makes too many) 1. No backup! Very unprofessional. 2. Pictures deleted from memory cards before multiple backup. 3. Leaving the computer in the car.

I think she needs a job where she doesn't have to multitask :~)

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

tradergeorge wrote:

How "many gigs" of files are you shootin... (show quote)

A backup scheme is not about "a single session" worth of images - it's about all your files. So if i shoot 3-17GB at a given event (as i did last weekend - 475 RAW images at a party with a D600 of which I "kept" all but 8) the numbers start to add up. In the event of a catastrophic failure (a flood or earthquake at home, etc.), where I would need to retrieve hundreds of GB of data, unless I have an OC48 connection it's gonna take a looong time.

I guess I am smart - to use your term - I have 3 sets of backup disks; two that I cycle at home and a third that I store offsite; should my house burn to the ground my images are still safely available to me once I acquire a new computer and connect the external drive stored elsewhere. As to your comment of how long it takes to "go through them", I use Aperture (same as Lightroom for you Adobe fans) so that session's images took me about 4-5 hours in total to review.

tradergeorge Loc: Newport, Kentucky

f8lee wrote:

A backup scheme is not about "a single sessio... (show quote)

It sounds like you are well backed up, unlike the OP....I did not suggest the cloud as the only backup, but rather an easy off-site place to store them....Even if you had a catastrophic loss, you would not need all your files back locally at once. It would take a long time to download everything you theoretically have stored there. BUT, they would be there, and would guard against a loss like the OP had.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

tradergeorge wrote:

It sounds like you are well backed up, unlike the OP....I did not suggest the cloud as the only backup, but rather an easy off-site place to store them....Even if you had a catastrophic loss, you would not need all your files back locally at once. It would take a long time to download everything you theoretically have stored there. BUT, they would be there, and would guard against a loss like the OP had.

Actually, the OP has her photos backed up on two separate external hard drives, one kept in her own house but as far away from the computer as possible in that house; the other one kept at her son's house, about an hour's drive away.
Plus there is a set of the photo's on the computer's HD as well.
As to the wedding photographer, this is the video I first saw on TV:
http://globalnews.ca/video/1481495/hard-lesson-learned-for-wedding-photographer
And a newspaper article as well:
http://www.theprovince.com/news/have+been+pretty+much+crying+ever+since+Wedding+photographer+loses+laptop+with+thousands/10070316/story.html