How to Back Up Your Photos from a Professional Photographer

How to back up your photos

Family portraits and baby portraits are deeply meaningful to your family. You’ve invested time, funds, and effort to get amazing professional photos. The entire purpose is to preserve a moment in time and a stage of life that will soon be only a memory, so you don’t want those beloved photos to be lost due to something as common and trivial as a technical glitch.

That’s why backing up your professional photos is so important. As a family photographer who knows the value of photo preservation, I’ve put together this guide to backing up your portraits.

What Does It Mean to Back Up Your Photos?

First things first: let’s get on the same page. When we talk about backing up photos, it’s not a special tech-savvy process, so don’t worry if technology doesn’t come easily to you. “Backing up” just means storing your digital files in multiple places so that if one storage system fails, you still have the files.

More Is Better

As much as we rely on technology, the fact is that any data storage system can fail – nothing is invincible. That goes for “analog” storage too like printed photos. So, when backing up your photos, store the files in several locations – more is better. That way, if one or a few of them fail, you have the files somewhere else.

Top Options to Store and Back Up Your Photos

I’ve used terms like “storage system” and “data storage,” but what exactly are these terms referring to? There are several places you can store your photo files, such as:

• Your computer’s hard drive
• Cloud storage like iCloud or Google Drive
• External hard drive
• Other digital storage products like thumb drives and discs

How to Back Up Your Photos

Once you’ve decided what storage devices to use for your photos, the process is simple. Start with downloading the files from your photographer onto your computer.

Next, if you’re using a storage device like an external hard drive or thumb drive, plug it into your computer. The exact process and interface will vary based on your computer, but the storage drive should show up in your file system. You’ll highlight all the photo files, right-click on the screen, and click “Copy.” Then, open the drive for your storage device, right-click, and click “Paste.” Note that if you drag and drop the files instead, this will move them to the new drive but they’ll disappear from your computer.

Uploading your photos to a cloud storage system is simple too. The process can vary by service, but in most cases, you can open the service in your web browser. There should be an “Upload” option you can click and then select the photo files from your computer.

What to Do if a Storage Source Fails

Once you have multiple backups, what do you do if one of them fails? Don’t panic, but at your earliest convenience replace that backup source with something else like a new device or a different cloud storage service. Follow the same process above to copy your photo files onto that new backup source.
As a photographer, I’m invested in your family’s portraits too, and I’m happy to help you keep them safe with this photo backup guide. If you’re due for new family photos, I can help with that too. Call my Story City, IA photo studio to book your session.