Boston · Planning Guide
Do You Backup the Wedding Photos?
Documentary Wedding Photography · Boston & New England
TL;DR, Backing Up Your Photos
- Backed up instantly: Every camera writes to two cards at once, so each photo is mirrored the moment it's taken.
- Copied the same night: I download to my computer and two external drives, then upload to the cloud at 3 a.m.
- Five layers of safety: Second card, computer, two hard drives, and the cloud all hold your wedding photos.
Yes, I do back up all wedding photos! As soon as I take a photograph at the wedding, it is automatically backed up. All of my cameras that we use have two card slots. So if I take a photo, it records the image on to Card #1 and automatically backs it up on Card #2. The cards mirror each other which automatically creates a backup of your wedding photos.
After the wedding, I’ll get home, and that night, I will download the cards to my computer which would be the second back up and then download them to two external hard drives. Then, at 3 a.m. the night of your wedding, I use a software called Back Blaze and it takes all of the photos and uploads them to a cloud before I edit any of them.
I label my hard drives “Wedding Photos A” and “Wedding Photos B,” and the pictures go on each of those. After those photographs are downloaded to Hard Drive A and Hard Drive B, I then select the 700 photographs that I want to edit.
After I edit them, I will upload them to the cloud, which would be the fifth backup of your wedding photos. So we use Card #2, my computer, two hard drives, and the cloud to back up these photos, meaning there are extensive backups to your wedding photos.
So, yes! I absolutely do backup your photos. I take it very seriously and have lots of different ways of backing them up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you back up our wedding photos?
Yes, absolutely, and I take it very seriously. Every camera I shoot with writes to two memory cards at once, so the moment I press the shutter your photo exists in two places. From there it lives on my computer, two external hard drives, and the cloud before I even start editing, so there are extensive backups at every step.
What happens to our photos right after the wedding?
That same night I get home and download both cards to my computer, then copy everything to two external hard drives I label Wedding Photos A and Wedding Photos B. At 3 a.m. the night of your wedding, software called Backblaze quietly uploads all the images to the cloud before I touch a single edit. I would rather lose sleep than lose your photos.
How many backups of our photos do you keep?
By the time I sit down to edit, your photos live in five separate places: the second card in my camera, my computer, two external hard drives, and the cloud. After I finish editing, the gallery goes up to the cloud as well, which is effectively a sixth copy. The whole point is that no single failure can ever lose your day.
What if one of your memory cards or hard drives fails on the wedding day?
That is exactly what the system is built for. Both card slots in my camera mirror each other in real time, so if one card ever fails the other has a complete copy. The same redundancy carries through to two hard drives and the cloud, so one piece of gear failing never means a lost photo.
Do you use the cloud to protect our images?
Yes. I run Backblaze, which automatically uploads every image to the cloud the night of your wedding, before I begin editing. After I finish the edits, the final gallery goes to the cloud too, so your photos are protected online from start to finish.
How soon after our wedding are the photos off the cards and onto something safe?
That same night. I get home and download everything to my computer, which is the second backup, and then onto two external hard drives. Then at 3 a.m., the night of your wedding, the whole set uploads to the cloud. Your photos are in several places before I've slept. I don't like leaving them sitting in one spot overnight.
Are our photos backed up before you start editing them?
Yes, and that order matters to me. The overnight cloud upload happens before I edit a single image. So the untouched originals are safe in the cloud, on my computer, and on two hard drives before I ever start working on them. If anything went wrong during editing, the originals are still sitting there, exactly as they came out of the wedding.
Why do you keep two hard drives instead of one?
Because one hard drive is a single point of failure, and hard drives fail. I label mine "Wedding Photos A" and "Wedding Photos B," and your pictures go onto both. Same files, two separate physical drives. If one of them quits on me, nothing is lost and nothing needs to be recovered. It's a cheap insurance policy against a very expensive problem.
Do the edited photos get backed up too, or just the originals?
Both. The originals go to my computer, to Hard Drive A and Hard Drive B, and to the cloud before I touch them. Then once I've selected and edited your photos, I upload the edited versions to the cloud as well, which is the fifth backup. The work I put into the edit gets protected the same way the originals do.
Why do you go to this much trouble over backups?
Because your wedding photos can't be reshot. Everything else on a wedding day has a workaround. This doesn't. So there's the duplicate copy made as I shoot, my computer, two hard drives, and the cloud. That's extensive, and it's deliberate. I take it very seriously and I'd rather have too many copies than explain to you why there aren't any.
