5 Easy Steps To Avoid Losing Your Pictures, PART II July 1, 2013

THIS IS AN UPDATED VERSION OF A BLOG WE PUT OUT AT EVERY HOLIDAY…WITH SOME NEW INFORMATION!

I have the tendency to reblog this before every major holiday. The reason I do it is because it’s always right before or right after, I get a rush of phone calls that sound like this…”I lost all my pictures Brian…I don’t know what to do!” “I thought format meant the style in which I wanted them to look” or my personal favorite “I washed the SD card doing laundry…”


As a photographer (and ultimately a historian) it stabs me in the heart to hear. Pictures of birthdays, holidays, vacations and all the stuff that happens in between (everyday life) are gone in an instant. Your family history captured in those images are now nothing more than stories…watered down with each telling because your memory isn’t quite what it used to be.


While digital cameras and smart phones have definitely made photography easier for everyone, they have also managed to put those images in peril more than in the past. Life has become digital. There was a time when you took a roll of film, shot it, took it to the local Fotomat, and got it back a few days later. You’d look at them once or twice…make some notations on the back and they’d end up in a box for posterity.


Nowadays, with phone apps like Camera+, Instagram, etc. etc. etc…pictures are taken on the fly (and normally with some type of a filter that oddly enough, makes them look like pictures from your youth), and forgotten about until you need to clear off your card, or you must make room on your phone for the latest version of “Candy Crush“. Never before has an accidental swipe of a button, or a pair of clumsy hands (or “fat fingers”) had such a devastating effect on family photos. How many times have you heard of your friends throwing their phone into a bag of rice, because it made an unfortunate journey into the toilet? (I for one don’t care HOW dried out it gets, there is no way in hell a “toilet phone” is ever going anywhere near my ears or mouth!)


But I’m here to tell you there are a few easy steps to prevent this from happening to you! I want to help ensure those pictures are there for your future generations.


#1 – DUMP DOESN’T MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS!

When was the last time you actually transferred the pictures from your camera to your computer? Dump your cards regularly! “Dumping cards” is an industry term for transferring them to your computer. You should be doing this every time you shoot new pictures with your camera. I’m SHOCKED to hear from friends and clients that they’ve never done this! It only takes a few minutes at most, and ensures the safety of your images. IMPORTANT NOTE: When you do this, make sure you reformat your card. This too only takes a minute out of your time, and lessens the chance of card failure. It is also a good idea to have more than one card. There is nothing worse than having a card fail…especially when you’re on vacation!


#2 – CHARGE!

Recharge or change your batteries regularly. I personally use the Ray-O-Vac Hybird rechargeable batteries, and they’re fantastic. I’ve also been using the Sanyo Eneloops lately as well. Charge them up before your big event, and throw them in your camera bag. There is NOTHING worse than being in the middle of a big day, and having your batteries crap out on you. If you’re using a higher end DSLR, PLEASE make sure to buy and charge an extra battery that you keep in your camera bag. It’s not uncommon for you to go and charge your battery before a day trip, and forget said battery in the charger in your hotel room. DOH!


#3 – BACK UP! BACK UP! BACK UP!

Redundancy is your friend. Once you transfer your images to your computer, back them up to an external hard drive or to a CD. And once those are backed up…do it again and put them in safe place. Either a safety deposit box, or a fireproof safe. You can even upload them to the cloud if you insist. This is a good method if you’re an iPhone user…make sure you have your images being uploaded to your Photo Stream…which brings me to the BEST form of backing up:


#4 – PRINT!!!!!

Remember 3.5 inch floppy discs? Got a drive on your current computer to put one in? Exactly! Digital Media is always changing, and who knows what the future holds. That’s why it’s important to print out all the GOOD pictures you want. Remember I said GOOD, not ALL. While the fine people at Kodak or Shutterfly may not agree with me…it’s true. You don’t have to print out every picture you take. But you DO want to print out the important ones and put them in a box, or some other safe place. You future self and your children will thank you in 20 years. I PROMISE!


#5 – TOO LATE! I was doing what you just told me and formatted by accident!!!

Don’t worry. Even formatting a card doesn’t always clear every image from there. Here are a couple of great software solutions you can use:


If you’re a PC User (such as myself) you can try Card Recovery. If you’re a MAC user, then I suggest Card Rescue. I’m not promising it works every time…but it’s ALWAYS worth a shot.


Accidents happen, digital media will fail from time to time. It happens to us pros all the time, and it will happen to you. But there are small things you can do to help prevent it.


Besides…if you do this for no other reason…it’s always important to have that one embarrassing picture of a friend you can share with the Facebook populace. If I hadn’t printed this picture out from when I was a teenager, would I be able to share it with you now?

The two on the left are now prominent doctors, and your humble author is on the far right.

I encourage you to share this post with your ALL of your friends and family…after all…knowledge is power!


Do you have a horror story you’d like to share? Make sure you email us or comment on this!


 

About the author: Brian Miller an accredited photojournalist and the owner of Chorus Photography in suburban Philadelphia. He has won awards in the past, but doesn’t dwell on them much. He also has forgotten to do almost EVERYTHING you just read, which is why it’s important to learn from his mistakes.

I Don’t Want To Be A Rockstar, I Just Want To Be Me… July 31, 2012

About a month or so ago, I attended an advanced education workshop for photographers.  It’s an annual 2-day event that I try to go when my schedule allows.  I find some new techniques that maybe I hadn’t paid enough attention to before, hang out with some fellow photographer friends (and hopefully meet some new ones), and to get my portfolio reviewed by a well-respected industry pro.  I look forward to the review, because it’s nice to have feedback from someone that does it for a living, and is also a practitioner vs. just a critic.  A fresh set of eyes never hurts.


In this particular case, the gentleman (who shall remain nameless because he really is a nice guy, and this isn’t really about him at all) who reviewed my portfolio had ALSO reviewed my work a couple of years ago at a yearly conference in Las Vegas.  I had taken much of what he had said back then to heart, and have worked hard to incorporate a lot of, not only what he told me…but what I had learned in that week during masters classes with the likes of Jerry Avenaim, and others.  I was excited at the fact that it would be the same set of eyes.


During the review, he oohed and aahed over some pictures, shrugged at others, and then gave me his critique –


“You have some REALLY great stuff here.  This is your bread and butter.  You could sell images like this all day long.  But then you have some of these other images here that are just regular old portraits.  I think you have a schizophrenic shooting style.  You need to choose what you want it to be”.


I thought on this for a second, and then said to him, “Ok…I totally see what you’re saying.  But not every shoot is the same.”


He said (and it’s a month later, so I’m paraphrasing) “Right, but if you’re going to be known for a certain style, then you can’t have this other stuff out there as well.” We then went over a couple of other things, and shook hands and smiled.


I went off to have a beer with friends, and he went on to review other work from other shooters.


I’ve chewed on those words for the last month or so.  I wasn’t totally behind what he had said, but I had to think about why.  WHY is it so bad to have various styles based on different shoots?  The style that works for one, doesn’t necessarily work for another.


It wasn’t until today that it really came together for me.  I drove down to (what we Philadelphians call) “The Shore” to do a portrait session for a family who wanted to have it done while they were on vacation.  The kids weren’t super jazzed about the shoot at all, and the parents weren’t overly keen about being anywhere down on the sand.  “We’re just looking for basic portraits, but we’ve seen your work and we want you to do your thing with them.”  (It took me all of 5 minutes to get the kids loosened up…no one can resist being an “assistant photographer” who gets to do some shooting!)


BOOM!  It smacked me over the head and it all made sense to me.  The answer to the question that had been nagging me for the better part of a month.  Why is it so bad to have a “schizophrenic” shooting style.  I’ve come up with the answer.  It’s not.


In our industry, especially when it comes to weddings, everyone is clamoring to be the next big “Rock Star” photographer.  To get the edgiest shots, the artsiest shots, the ones that really grab the attention of people willing to spend a redonkulous amount of money on their images.   And that’s fine…it really is.  I’m not knocking ANY of my fellow photographers.  We all work hard demanding hours, long before and long after the wedding day.


But here’s the thing about that….that’s not what we’re about.  We’re just out to get great images that our clients will love.  That they’ll be proud to put on their desk at work, to hang on their wall at home.  To put in an album for future generations to see.


Not all of our clients are willing to get down in the sand and get gritty.  They’ve spent time on getting their kids cleaned up so they can have a “nice family portrait”.  They didn’t want artsy, or taken so far away that it pulls the entire background into the image with them.  They wanted the picture to be just about them and their family.


Sure, I had some fun with the kids and let them be themselves.  I got some stuff that will probably make it into the next round of marketing materials, and some of those “wow” shots that I still surprise myself with from time to time.   But out of all the sneak peek images I posted up a few hours after the shoot, the one that has gotten the most comments and “likes” isn’t the artsy one of the kids.  It isn’t the pretty one of the Mom & Dad.  It’s the straight ol’ family portrait.  It is…in its simplicity…the picture they had hired me to capture.  It may not be what any other photographer would shoot, but it’s what the client asked for, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters.  My job is to use my talent to capture their vision.

The “M” Family on the beach in Ocean City, NJ.

Now, with that being said…there is a time and a place for those “bread and butter” images all photographers hope for.  But they can’t ALL be like that.  When a client tells me what they want, I’ll do my best to give them their wish.  I’ll ALWAYS put my two cents in on what will make the image better, and nine times out of ten…they’ll go along with it.  Hell, after a while they get so into it…that’s all we’re doing the rest of the shoot.  But I have to let THEM lead me there.


I love what I do for a living.  I eat, live, breath photography.  I can’t look at the world without thinking of what the proper exposure settings would be, what lens I would have used and how I would have composed it.  Some days it drives me insane!  I would love to be able to enjoy a sunset as just that… A SUNSET!  But I can’t.


In my opinion, not every photograph needs to be filled with dramatic lighting and artistic posing.  Sometimes what’s missing in the artistry is more than made up for by the simple contentment of people looking at the camera and smiling.


If that makes me schizophrenic than so be it.  All of the voices in my head are in agreement with that…AND one other thing…


Duck lips.  That trend needs to end like…yesterday.  Why would anyone want to willingly look like Snooki?


About the author: Brian Miller is the owner of Chorus Photography in suburban Philadelphia.