How are you backing up your client images?
It might not be a question you think you should ask a wedding photographer, or any kind of photographer really, during your consult but one you probably should: how are you backing up my photos?
For wedding photography especially you are spending a lot of money to get the end images and while yes it is somewhat your responsibility to backup the photos yourself, any photographer worth their salt should be backing up clients photos for years to come. Things happen, and when a client comes back to you and you still have their images, it will make their day. If you don’t, it will ruin yours.
I see posts almost every day in photography groups on Facebook of photographers freaking out because an SD card corrupted or their hard drive is on the fritz. If someone is paying you to take photos of them, part of the cost of doing business is ensuring you have those photos AT LEAST until delivery.
I got serious about my backup system a few years ago and it has somewhat spiraled out of control (I have backups of backups) but I am so glad I have never had to explain to a client that I lost their images. Here’s my backup system from in-camera to delivery to years down the line.
To start, my two cameras (Sony A7III’s) have dual SD card slots and I have it set to record to both cards simultaneously so straight away out of the gate I have a backup on an SD card. If one of those cards starts acting funky during a wedding, I pull it and replace it with another. The chances of both cards simultaneously corrupting is astronomically small.
At the end of a wedding day I take one of those cards and put it in my pocket and leave the other in my camera in my camera bag. I don’t usually stop anywhere on the way home from a wedding when I have thousands of dollars of equipment in my car but if I did and someone robbed my car, I’d still have the images on the cards in my pocket. I have business insurance that would replace my gear but nothing could replace those images. I’ve seen posts where people stopped to use the bathroom and came back to everything gone so at the very least you should be keeping your SD cards on you at all times until you get home.
Once I get home I plug my SD card into my computer and copy the files to my internal hard drive, as well as my 8TB external drive. I then run my daily backup which copies everything on my internal drive onto a different external drive. I now have I’ve been home for an hour at this point and I already have FIVE copies of your images. 1) The SD card on my camera, 2) the SD card attached to my computer, 3) my internal SSD, 4) my external HDD, 5) my daily backup SSD.
How many backups is too many backups?
Asking for a friend…
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.
Once I’ve done my daily backup, I run my weekly backup. My daily backup is to an SSD which is super fast and bootable so if my computer goes on the fritz and I have time sensitive things to do, I can go to the Apple Store and buy a new Mac and plug that drive in and boot from it. My weekly backup is just a regular hard drive and copies all my data once a week. I now have SIX copies of your photos. There’s still one step left in my initial “import” phase and that is my Backblaze backup that continuously backs up my computer to an offsite server. If I needed to I can contact them and they would send me a USB of my most recent backup (it backs up continuously 24/7) so I would only do this if for some reason I lost my daily SSD. For instance if my house was on fire, please know I’m saving my dog over my daily backup. It would take a couple days to get to me but I would still be able to boot from the USB that Backblaze would send me and my dog would be safe.
Remember how I mentioned having backups of backups? That’s where this comes into play. Backblaze backs up my internal SSD but it also backs up any drives attached to my Mac. So my Daily SSD? Backed up to Backblaze. My weekly HDD? Backed up to Backblaze. My 8TB drive that contains every photos I’ve ever taken? Backed up to Backblaze. Backups of backups. Or as it’s called in the computer world, redundancy.
Okay now we have your RAW files backed up in 11 places, what about the final JPEGs? Once I have culled, edited and exported your images I upload them to my client gallery service Pic-Time which is where my clients download them from. That service has a data cap on it so when it gets full I have to start deleting older galleries but usually I have weddings up there for at least a year. You can download them as many times as you’d like. In my “your gallery is ready!” email I recommend to clients that they download them all straight away and copy them to a folder somewhere on their hard drive, as well as upload them to a private Facebook gallery. You can upload them again if you want to share them but this private gallery means you have a private copy of them online forever.
I then take your exported JPEGs and copy them to my 8TB external drive along with the RAWs of all the delivered files. I also upload the entire gallery to Zenfolio. I used to use Zenfolio for client delivery but I switched to Pic-Time but kept Zenfolio. Why? For $60/yr Zenfolio allows UNLIMITED jpeg uploads. I have every single photo I’ve ever taken for a client stored in Zenfolio and only a few clicks access away from any computer (with internet access) in the world. That’s $5/month. That’s less than a drink at Starbucks and you can have your client images stored in a safe place accessible by you worldwide.
Now, the downside is they only do JPEGs, but if a client from years ago whose gallery is now offline on Pic-Time needs them again, I can go to Zenfolio and download them and reupload them to Pic-Time in under an hour. If they wanted some kind of edits, I would need to open Lightroom and load their catalog and export them, which is possible because they’re on my 8TB drive but it would take longer.
Unless Zenfolio drastically changes their pricing I don’t see myself unsubscribing from that $60/yr plan ever. That price point is REALLY hard to beat for a backup of all your clients photos ever.
It sounds expensive, but it can be expanded as you go.
Now if you’re starting out in photography and not charging a lot it might seem like the costs of the equipment and services mentioned here is a lot but when you break it down it isn’t actually a ton!
Costs
SD cards: I use four SD cards per wedding and format two after the wedding and keep the other two until the files are delivered. I know I have backups of backups but it seems almost superstitious to delete the images off the SD until they’re delivered. I used Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB cards which currently run about $20/each from Amazon.
Carbon Copy Cloner: Carbon Copy Cloner is a program that allows you to set customizable backup rules. If you use Time Machine on your Mac, think of Carbon Copy Cloner as Time Machine on steroids. It allows you to set times and days for backups, exclude files and folders from backups (if you want to copy only certain things) and even alerts you to backups not being run due to issues such as a drive not attached. It can do a regular on screen notification or it can send you an email so if you’re away from your computer you can still be aware a backup hasn’t occurred. The reason I chose to purchase Carbon Copy Cloner over just using Time Machine was that it allows backups to multiple drives whereas Time Machine only allows automatic backup to one drive. As you’ve probably been able to tell by now, that isn’t enough for me.
Backblaze: Backblaze is $60/yr and backs up your entire computer plus any drives attached, continuously 24/7. When you first install it it will take a few hours to a day to upload the initital backup depending on your internet speed but after that it trickle uploads as it senses changes.
Zenfolio: Zenfolio is also $60/yr and allows unlimited JPEG uploads so you can backup all of your client galleries for $5/month. You can also use this as a client delivery service but it is pretty basic on the $60/yr price plan.
Backup Drives: I use two types of hard drives for my backups, SSD and HDD. SSDs are more expensive but more reliable. They don’t have any moving parts so they are less likely to break if bumped. I use a Sandisk 1TB Extreme Pro SSD. It’s a tiny device that I can throw in my bag easily when I travel and still always do my daily backup. I got the 1TB model because my computers internal drive is 1TB but they also have a 500GB model if yours is smaller. For my less frequent backups I use HDDs that are 1TB and 8TB Seagate models.
While all of these costs can seem daunting when starting out, they aren’t all needed to be purchased at once. Start with multiple SD cards and keep the files on your SD card until delivery. Then get Zenfolio to always have a JPEG backup, then get an external drive for a daily backup, and so on.
It’s taken me many years to come up with a system that works for me and I know is 99% foolproof bar a cataclysmic event. Work out what works for you and start backing up your data today!
You can do it!
Now go out there and
make some magic
(then back it up)