Most people don’t ask. They just trust that we are handling their wedding photos with care. We are, but there are a lot of “what ifs” floating around out there that can completely destroy your wedding images – forever.
Before arriving at a wedding, the storage and security part has already begun. I bring a lot of digital memory cards with me to record onto. At least four cards and at least 8GB. That will usually be good for around 2,000 images. Larger weddings will obviously need more image space, but that’s another subject.
At the wedding, I carry a device that is basically a portable hard drive that reads and stores memory cards. At critical moments during the day, I put the memory card into this device and copy all the files off the card and onto a hard drive. I can then reuse the card or continue taking photos in addition to what is already on the card – I just put them on the hard drive as a safeguard measure.
Once back at the studio, all cards and the portable hard drive are copied to our main server. After I’ve verified that the images are all on the main server, I make a backup disk of the files on the hard drive – usually onto a DVD. That DVD is filed away and then the images are copied onto my laptop for editing and publishing.
On my laptop is where I edit out blinks, bad pictures and the like. After editing, I renumber the images into their chronological sequence. This puts the pictures into a sequence of the way they occurred, since I use multiple cameras at the wedding. Once the sequencing is done, I do basic color correction for those that need it and publish them to the online site for the wedding couple to review.
After publishing, I move the edited and resequenced images to the main server and off my laptop. The original images are still safely tucked away on a DVD and we print from the edited images.
Any questions? 🙂