Bryan Farley Photography Educator

Backing up the Back up Plan

Several years ago a student told me about photos she took during a trip to Africa (or maybe it was post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.) I do not remember the photos, because I never saw them. Her hard drive failed.

She had not backed up her images. Her photos were lost forever and I was not sympathetic.

Self-portrait Cell phone photo at Vans Warped San Francisco.

Almost every time I back up my images, I remember the student. Computers are built to fail (or be stolen) and I do not want to lose my photos.  Well, my hard drive failed while I was in the middle of processing 2,000 concert images.  I have not lost anything yet, except an old computer. I have a new computer sitting in a box and cell phone pictures of diagnostic tests from my old computer.

I have several external hard drives and Adobe Lightroom catalogs, but I do not have a plan. Not really.

My children playing with iPads at the Verizon store

Something similar happened a week earlier when my phone died. Fortunately, Verizon had a back up plan for my two hour visit. Both of my children played with iPads. When my kids overheard about an introductory smart phone class, my kids wanted me to attend so that they could play with the iPads again. Who knew Verizon would be so much fun?

Adobe San Francisco Lobby

I am also working on a back up plan for my car and my back.

Several weeks ago, I was in a car accident. My car was totaled, but nobody died. I did not realize that I was injured until a couple weeks after the accident when I began sleeping. Fortunately, I have insurance and the other driver was at fault, but this is not a back up plan.

Two days after the accident, I missed the first San Francisco Adobe Lightroom User Group Meetup. Adobe organizers Sharad Mangalick and Benjamin Warde posted a Video from the Adobe Meetup. On Friday, June 22 Adobe and Blurb hosted another Lightroom User Group meeting for making photo books from Lightroom.

Now that I have my new computer, I can start with my book and back up plan. When I am in doubt, I search Julieanne Kost’s Lightroom blog. Any suggestions? Wh

At least my camera still works.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2012 at 10:36 pm. It is filed under Education and Technology and tagged with Lightroom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.