On The Road

On one of the discussion boards that I participate on, there was a question as to how to make sure that a service will back up photos taken with a high resolution in high resolution. If you don’t want to lug a photo studio around with you but want photos from your trip that are worthy of printing here are a few tips:

Take several CF cards so that you don’t have to use non-professional services to transfer your photos. I take about 6 cards with me - but I usually create my backups each night before going to sleep so I can start with fresh cards in the morning. Having more than one card will buy you some time in finding a professional photo service.

Tell the photo person that you want full-res images on your CD, and to use as many CDs as needed to do so. The person at the desk probably assumed you wanted all the photos on one CD.

Take a wallet of blank CDs with you and backup the photos from a computer at an Internet Cafe.

If you decide to use a service for creating your CD, check the CD before reformatting your CF card.

How I do it, but it entails lugging crap around:

I travel with my cameras, CF cards, a large wallet of blank CDs, and my laptop.

Each night after shooting I download all of the photos onto my laptop (1st copy). Then, if there were a large number of photos from that day, or I wait a day until there are enough to fill a disc, I create a backup CD and store it in the wallet (copy 2).

When I travel I have one copy of the photographs on the laptop in my daypack, and the CD wallet goes in the suitcase (or duffel or whatever I’m using on that particular trip). This keeps the 2 copies of photos separate in case something happens to one of the bags.

Sometimes if the trip is short and I have a free internet connection, I’ll also load the most important photos into the home directory of my website. I rarely do this though because it’s time consuming and redundant. (backup 3)

I am currently researching the idea of using those little portable USB drives to backup photos rather than CDs. They make wallets for multiple USB drives that take up less space in the suitcase than a CD wallet.