I’ve decided to share a blog entry about one important aspect of professional photography namely “Redundancy”. Redundancy is a very broad area in general, even when narrowed down to a discipline such as photography or even a subset of photography such as “People” Photography or “Portraiture”.

As a professional photographer, Catering for REDUNDANCY can mean:

• Having a backup plan if the weather turns sour before or during an on-location photo shoot.

• Having a reasonable level of duplicate equipment to cater for unfortunate equipment failure during / before or after a project commission or assignment.

• Foreseeing risks that may unfold into game changers on the day of the assignment. These situations are difficult to forecast but having the experience and remaining calm in these situations helps greatly.

• The manner in which digital content / media is transferred from the camera / stored and how digital files are backed up. A big ONE !

• Post Production workflows to ensure artwork or post production activities don’t result in data loss. Its all too easy to accidentally move files from one directory to another or transfer images from a media storage device to an editing PC or station only to realise you deleted the images in the process.

• Considering all fall back options required when a valuable member of the team falls of the band wagon for example the makeup artist gets ill or the stylist gets mixed up with directions to the photo shoot location or the commissioned model forgetting the date of the product shoot. IT DOES HAPPEN!

All of these factors require attention and consideration. As a professional photographer, we are about providing an experience for our clients just as much as we are about creating art through our individual expressive creativity and tools. Any one of the above factors has the potential of ruining the experience for the client and / or affecting our ability to create art and or meet the required project brief, from a time, cost or quality perspective.

Developing strategies and workflows to mitigate these risks defines one part of being a Professional Photographer. Its not enough to think “Im careful with my equipment, this will never happen to me.” Its not enough to place all your data on one harddrive hoping you’ll backup data at the first sign of hard drive failure… and its certainly not enough to assume your client will be okay with reshooting if data loss occurs after the photo session due to negligence around redundancy / media handling.

REDUNDANCY IS AN IMPORTANT aspect of Professional Photography and needs attention.

Its Called…. Being Professional.. afterall.

One small example is with memory cards and data writing from the camera to memory cards. Case in point below:

For example, the occurence likelyhood of a memory card failing is very very low (with proper care), but memory cards do indeed fail. Note… all digital cameras from consumer / prosumer to professional camera options like the Canon 5d, 1d and other large media format cameras ranges use memory cards….which are inturn prone to intermittent and or catastrophic data loss. This can happen in a number of different ways: Imagine any one of the following likely scenarios

1. You return to your studio / home to find during transferring of files to your computer / editing station that some or all files have become corrupted. Despite the images displaying correctly on your camera.

2. Your return to your studio or computer to find the card empty despite the camera taking the photo and displaying the image on your camera after ever shot.

These are very real situations and my heart sinks every time i hear of these or similiar scenarios happening with other photographers. However there are ways to minimise this risk.

One very real way to mitigate this risk is by using Semi Pro or Pro Range cameras such as the CANON 5dMk4 (our choice). These cameras offer the ability to utilise 2 memory cards simultaneously (1x SD card and 1x compact flash card). The camera has the ability to write data to both cards at the same time. If a card was to fail, you have a backup of all of the photos taken during your photography assignment.

COMPLETE REDUNDANCY (assuming your camera is functioning correctly)

This is exactly what we do… All of our projects whether they be weddings, portraiture, event coverage….. all receive the same level of REDUNDANCY TREATMENT.

We ensure your photos make it to post production every time this way.

So if you are a professional photographer, or an enthusiast who places a high value on images taken and possible data loss, using a camera with dual memory slots and dual data writing AND considering all of your REDUNDANCY options is something you should consider sooner rather than later. Take some time to consider where you could improve your levels of redundancy in your current business model.

Its a lot like insurance, you may never need it, but it provides you peace of mind to focus on the more important aspects of your services and the part we photographers love most. “Creating Art”

OR

If you are a looking for a professional photographer for your wedding, portrait, commercial or event photography, have a think about it…. would you trust / commission a photographer who doesnt consider redundancy, let alone utilise tools or workflows that don’t mitigate some of the risks outlined in this post?

More on Redundancy and what it means to a Professional Photographer in Part 2.