Preserving your Work

Preserving your Work.

Preserving your work -- a guide to backing up your photos so you'll still have them when you graduate, and be able to find them for your portfolio

Hello everyone. A very good wednesday morning to you. I have a great topic for you this morning. I am sure many of you have your own way of saving files and may be very organized. That is just fantastic. I am here to show you what has worked for me over the past few years and how I am able to find all my files and images that I need especially when I started with my final year. It your system is great and you can find your files within 30 seconds of opening a location then that is a great method of organization.

You are going to need your information and photographs from previous years so get started now with some really great organization.

Let’s start with the easiest part of organization. Where should you store all your files and images that you use on a daily basis. Well, your Harddrive you would say is your best place to store all of it it correct? I would say yes, but now that I am 3 years into my course I have found that some courses require only a small amount of space, but others required much more space because of all the images that you have to save, edit and export. You never want to delete anything so for me I bought an external Hard Drive, WD 4TB USB drive and that was probably my best investment to-date for all my classes.

It frees up some space on your hard drive and it is just a good place to store files in the event that you have some computer malfunctions. Cloud backup is also recommended so that you always have a duplicate of all your work. I use Crashplan, but you can use anyone of the top rated companies out there. It is just $5 per month for unlimited file storage.

For storing my weekly files I created a filing system that is very easy to follow and I can always add and remove files when I need them. I made a simple weekly structure and a resources folder for all my work. As I create my files I store them under the appropriate week as well as create folders as I require them.

As I export images from Lightroom I also create folders from there and they are stored under the appropriate week as well.

Recently I moved the same structure to Dropbox for each course. I did this because I am always at work or on the road. I can access my work from my laptop or IPad and still be able to do assignments or post work and images to the appropriate folder for later use. You have to do what works for you. The basic structure remains the same but you are able to become mobile and manage your time so much better.

Lastly, I think one of the most important areas that needs to stay organized is your Lightroom catalog. You will be taking hundreds, if not thousands of photographs over the course of your degree. So make sure you have a great structure in place. I used the same naming principle in Lightroom that I use for all my other work. I created collections with course numbers for all my work making it so much easier to find when I did a search. Do not forget your keywords for all your images.

I can always go back and change the wording, just do what works for you best. Again the structure is the same, but the content will always vary.

Well, that is the simple structure that I work with. It has worked well for me in the past and whatever method you use, remember that you will be needing many of these files and photographs again during your final year courses.

Start well now and make your life so much simpler in the future.

As always please let me know if you have any questions and how I may be of assistance. I will answer all your questions and comments. If you have suggestions for post please pass them along.

Have a great wednesday.

Denzil