Going on holiday is sometimes not only about experiencing new places and having adventures, it's also about being able to capture the special moments in that location, and being able to look back at the memories created through photographs.
However, taking photos on holiday usually requires a lot of space on your device (whether a camera or smartphone) and careful planning to ensure that your photos stay safe. Here are a few tips to make sure that your photos stay safe.
Backup your memory
When you've enabled backup on your phone, each time you take a photo, the camera will write the file to both cards which creates an automatic backup of everything you shoot.
This helps ensure that in the rare case of a card read error or failure, the backup card will still have a perfect copy of your photos.
If you have access to free or cheap Wi-Fi, consider backing up your photos to the cloud.
Make sure you have enough storage
By far the most important rule for keeping your photos safe while travelling is to always bring enough storage capacity.
There’s nothing worse than being out in a remote shooting location and running out of space for your photos.
Having a large assortment of reliable cards for your cameras paired with a few reliable portable hard drives is absolutely key for maintaining a seamless photography workflow while on the road.
Having enough storage also gives you the ability to not hold back on shooting due to fear of running out of space.
Rely on a portable SDDrive or a hard drive
While saving your photos on iCloud or any online hard drive is ideal, it also helps to carry a portable hard drive in case you are unable to access WiFi or have no signal. A rule of thumb to consider is to carry one or two portable memory storage devices on your person.
This can either be two separate external hard drives, or as an alternative, one copy on the internal laptop drive and the other to an external drive.
With either scenario, the data is redundant since it’s now in at least two additional places. New wireless portable drives like the 'My Passport Wireless SSD' make transferring files easier than ever.
The Sandisk Portable hard drive. Picture: Sandisk
Keep your storage solution safe
If you’re going to invest all this time and energy to create a redundant backup system on the road, it’s also really important to protect it. And while using high quality and durable storage media is paramount, so is taking physical care of it.
If you’re in transit and have friends or colleagues travelling with you, ask someone responsible to carry one of the hard drive backups for you as well.
That puts two backups with you and one with a friend. And by all means, if you’re flying to the next destination, never place your hard drives in checked luggage. Always pack them in a carry on bag.
Don't clear your memory until you're back home
After copying all the files from the memory cards onto two portable hard drives, perhaps take your file preservation one step further by keeping your data on the memory card.
That way should any of your other cards are compromised, you're able to access your data on the memory card used.