RGB

Morning Showers

Maple Gold

Canon 7D
ISO 640
Edit Photoshop CC + Exposure7

Forest Procession

Canon 50D@ ISO160
24-105L@ 45mm & Aperture 4.0

Backup

One of the challenges to modern photogs, is where to put all the media. Image quality increases every year and there is a reciprocating increase in the size of your data. For the casual shooter the computer's on board drive is sufficient. Even SSD are becoming prevalent in sizes greater than 500GB. However if you are a serious photog you know that extra space is a valuable resource.

If you shoot RAW or video it is even tougher to have enough. And then backup? What? Waste a drive on copies? Yes. But it gets worse. I am here to say that backup AND redundancy are a requirement to any photographer who is ever going to be paid. There are backup solutions online. And those are great for home use. But you need on site redundancy and onsite backup. Like so:

Photog takes picture ----> Picture goes to production PC ----> Picture is reviewed/ edited(depending on your workflow) ----> Picture is placed on external NAS box with at least RAID1 but better RAID5 for redundancy(You can skip this step if you store your pics on a workstation w/RAID) ---->The NAS is then backed up to an external drive(My external drive is another RAID1 NAS, but that is probably overkill). ---->The picture is then deleted off the camera.

This seems a bit complicated to the uninitiated, but it is important to protect your media, your customers, and your job. Learn how to do this or pay someone to do this. Don't try to cheap out with an "Online solution" you'll just gum up your internet bandwidth constantly and for the larger media collections it could take weeks to get it all online. And if you shoot aggressively(You should) you will always be waiting for the upload. There are other reasons why I'd recommend shying away from online or cloud back-ups(privacy etc) but that is not the point. Get backup ASAP. Like now.

The importance of being caffeinated.

It is a continual wonder to me how poor photographers succeed. They take bad shots. They lack creativity. They Photoshop the life out of their pics. And yet, somehow, they succeed. Clients return. Their business grows.

It is not the photography succeeding here. It is the business. The Photog sells not their photos but themselves.

Because photography (as I have explained to many clients) is not art or media. It is a service. As a service based industry, the capture, while integral, is not the end. It is cog, a piece in the larger workflow and mechanism of finalizing that said media and delivering it to the customers satisfaction.

That workflow has always been my greatest challenge. The creativity and skills that I have are the "easy" part. Pushing that gift past the "I got a good one" into "I got paid" is a tough road. But

it is(Or can be) also a skill, and creative in its own right. Once nourished and honed, will be the greatest asset in your photographic toolkit.