April - Page 3 by Jerry Peltier

“Food for Thought” by Jerry Peltier

When I started out in photography a few years ago, I met this guy David Stimac, who has become a good friend. While out shooting ducks at the local marina during the winter months, David would ask me, if I was backing up my photos? Of course I wasn't at the time. Didn't think anything I was capturing at the time was even worth keeping, but this had to be very important for him to keep asking me every time I seen him.

After awhile I started backing - up my jpgs up onto cd's, it was a start. Then as my skill level started getting to the point where I started getting some decent photos and gained more knowledge about photography & Photoshop, then I started shooting RAW format. I made a small investment of $100 for a 500GB external hard drive to store my RAW files.

This has to be the most IMPORTANT part of writing this article. One cloudy day recently I was sitting at my computer, editing some RAW files from 2009, which are stored on a full 500 GB hard drive. A message showed up on the computer that my external hard drive was not responding.
The external just stopped working, it was finished. The light went out, and my computer does not recognize the external device. I was in a slight panic for a minute, thinking I lost all my files. But thanks to my friend David Stimac, I had all my RAW files BACKED - UP on DVD's.

From what I have learned from Ray Barlow, these files can be recovered from the devise, for a fee, of course. For anyone starting out in photography, this is good practice. Before I format my memory card, I make sure my photos are BACKED - UP.

So: MOST IMPORTANT please back-up the external to DVD's. Anything you plug -in can break. We invest too much valuable time and money into something we have a deep passion for; to have it all disappear in a flash.

Jerry Peltier