Archive for February 2011
Academy Award Nominee….
I get the pleasure of of meeting and working with a lot of talented people. Since I started giving photography a shot (professionally) in 2004 I’ve worked with hundreds makeup artists, stylists, models, musicians, chefs, designers, architects; business owners, and of course actors. Witnessing the growth and success of these people is an incredible experience.
Last night, while watching Jeff Bridges introduce the nominees for the actress in a leading roll, I was blown away when he introduced Jennifer Lawrence for her performance in Winter’s Bone. I met and worked with Jennifer in 2006. At the time, she was all of 15 years old. With the help of Valerie Noble on hair and makeup, and wardrobe help from Elmer Ave we made some amazing images that still stand today. Congratulations Jennifer.
Jennifer Lawrnece wear's Elmer Ave. Hair & MU: Valerie Noble
2142 reasons
I had a conversation the other day with a client about backing up her photos. Like most of us, all of our photo (and now video) memories end up on a hard drive. According to Drive Savers, the company that just recovered one of my drives: “all hard drives fail”. I’ve been lucky enough that it’s only happened a few times and I’m geek enough to usually be able to recover the data myself. A few months ago one of my drives mechanically gave out and I wasn’t able to access the drive. It was the drive for 2009. Yes, all my shoots over the course of 2009 were inaccessible. I am fairly diligent about backing up my work. I typically keep a working copy and a backup copy of all my photos but as I started rebuilding the drive from my set of backups I realized that in early 2009 I wasn’t as diligent as I needed to be.
So after shelling out $2142 for data recovery here’s my advice to you and how I backup my photos:
- Create folders. If all your photos and videos end up in the same folder it begins to get unruly and hard to track down images. I save all my shoots in folders with the date and a description i.e. 2011_02_24 Jim and Tammy Wedding Manhattan Beach. This helps organize the folders as well as makes it easy to search for files. When you upgrade your computer this makes it easy to take the organization with you.
- Delete the junk. I used to save every frame I shot, but the reality is that a lot of the images I shoot aren’t worth saving. And junk takes up valuable space.
- Buy the biggest external hard drive you can. If you plan on backing up to an external drive keep in mind that with every new camera the files will get bigger. After my fifth external hard drive taking up space on my desk I gave up on externals.
- Make two copies. For most people burning to DVD is an effective backup – it’s cheap and easy. In many cases online printing and photo services like kodak, Picasa and flickr are inexpensive ways to host and save the favorites images adding a third backup.
- Backup on a regular pre-planned basis. Time Machine and Norton Ghost are easy solutions that will automate the process.
They grow up so fast
I first met Grace when she was 12 days old. It’s amazing how much changes in the first few months of a baby’s life.This past week I dropped by for her two month shoot. In the couple weeks since I’d seen her she’s changed so much.
Grace and Mom - twelve days old
Grace at 23 days old
Grace at two months old