It’s a nightmare scenario. We don’t even want to speak it into existence, but the possibility is always there when you’re a wedding photographer shooting the most important day of someone’s life. 

What if I lose the photos?

This is an occasion where the old adage “better safe than sorry” proves indispensable. Our clients are trusting us to deliver, and we try to do everything in our power to ensure their memories of their special day last forever.

Everyone’s process looks a little different, but below you’ll find our “insurance policies,” if you will, for securing the clients photos from wedding day until the gallery is delivered. 

We shoot with two memory cards in our cameras. If you’ve only got one card slot, consider upgrading camera bodies. Cards are known to corrupt, so it’s safer to shoot with a backup, just in case.

Uploading the images the night of the wedding is key. Even if it’s late, we prefer to upload the photos that evening so we can have copies of the images by morning.

Our storage solutions are state-of-the-art. We archive weddings using this Synology system. It notifies us if the drives are in a healthy state, and the large storage capacity means each drive lasts us years. Plus, data is automatically duplicated and backed up in one of the Synology bays, so that multiple copies are created. It gives us a sense of security we haven’t found with other storage options.

We always keep a hard copy of projects that haven’t been delivered yet. Phone, wallet, keys, mask, hard drive. We trust the Seagate IronWolf Pro hard drives for our Synology system and the Samsung Portable SSD T5 for portable use. The portable hard drive is considered a work in progress for galleries that haven’t been delivered to the client.

Another best practice of ours is to keep a copy in some form of online storage. Any cloud storage works, but we use BackBlaze. Because cloud storage can get pricey, we recommend keeping RAWs up for an allotted amount of time before rotating in newer shoots. The Synology backs up the past 60 days of RAW files to our online cloud storage. Once the photos are edited, we upload client galleries to Pic-Time where the edited photos live online for years. 

A word of advice: Don’t format over the card until photos are delivered to the client!

As wedding photographers, we know that very little is within our control on wedding days. But taking the above steps helps us sleep a little better at night knowing our clients photos are as safe as they possibly can be. 

If you have any more questions about our processes or photo storage safety, hit us up here.