How to Store Digital Wedding Photos
As a professional photographer, I have the privilege of capturing people's most precious memories on their big day. My job doesn't just entail delivering wedding photos to my clients; My other responsibility is to save them securely on multiple hard drives and through online galleries. In fact, I have kept every image I have ever taken since I started my photography business and have not deleted a single one! The reason is that each photograph takes a lot of effort and time to capture, and many of them are worth revisiting, especially when current AI-powered photo editing tools can make them even more exceptional!
Thanks to the decreasing cost of memory storage, there is no longer a reason to delete old images just to save hard drive space. I recently purchased a 4 Terabyte pocket-size hard drive from Amazon for just $300, which allows me to edit photos off-site on my laptop while providing additional backup storage, which ensures that the wedding photos I am working on are protected and can be retrieved even if one of my computer devices breaks down.
Chances are, if I was your wedding photographer more than ten years ago, I would have kept your photo images safe and secure since then. Moreover, my online wedding galleries have yet to have an expiration date. However, if I do retire (which is not anytime soon), I will inform everyone by posting it on my social media business accounts like Facebook and Instagram. Until then, you and your loved ones can view and download the photos as often as you'd like.
If you're a professional photographer or a hobbyist, here are some tips to manage your photo images:
Important Tips!
1) Creating multiple backup copies and storing them on two or more external hard drives is recommended to ensure the safety of your files. If one drive fails, you can still access your essential data.
2) Using an online photo-sharing platform is essential to keep your images safe and accessible. I use Pixieset to store and share pictures with my clients and family. The best part is that the Pixieset online platform is free if the stored images are within 3 gigabytes or about 1000 images.
3) In case you accidentally delete or encounter corrupted data while trying to retrieve images from a memory card or smartphone, I suggest using "Stellar Photo Recovery," an online software that has been proven to be very effective. Trust me; I can attest to its success, having used it to recover images from a corrupted memory card a few times in the past.
4) Of course, the more traditional way to preserve your wedding photos is to print them on a physical photo album or even a large canvas. One printing company I often use for my family and travel photos is Posterjack. From my personal experience, the prints they provide are exceptional, and even with shipping from Ontario, they are less expensive than local labs in Metro Vancouver!
I hope these tips help you manage your photos better!
Legal Disclaimer: We would like to inform our clients that our services provide edited and retouched photos exclusively, and not RAW images. The online wedding image gallery, which we offer, does not come with an expiration date, unless stated otherwise via social media platform. However, we feel obliged to highlight that the online platform provider "Pixieset" or any other online server is not 100% foolproof, and rare instances of outages may occur. Therefore, any loss of data due to such circumstances cannot be attributed to us. We also store client image backups in our computer and hard drive, but there remains a remote possibility that images may not be retrieved due to circumstances beyond our control, such as catastrophic earthquakes. As such, it is our strong recommendation that our clients download and save their wedding images on their computers within a reasonable time to avoid any future loss.
