I was cleaning out my mom’s house, we’re selling it, and I came across a tea kettle I got from China. In 1988 I spent the summer in China, it may be hard to believe but it was the era of glasnost and China was similarly opening up, even talking about past tragedies like the Cultural Revolution. This wouldn’t last. In 1989, well, a bad thing happened and we got the China we have today. I was a freshman in high school and I really didn’t understand what I had witnessed until the next year when I was glued to CNN. In China, I had a Nikon Coolpix point and shoot and I took so many pictures, maybe 15 to 20 rolls of pictures from the Forbidden Palace and Tiananmen square (yeah about that) to the Great Wall to the Terra Cotta soldiers to the Yurts of Inner Mongolia to the hustle and bustle of the emerging super city of Shanghai. I went everywhere. We left for Hong Kong back to the states and I dutifully stuffed my film in my checked bag, so the film would not be subjected to the X Ray machine. I would never see that bag or my film ever again. I’m mostly venting, but I bet there were some amazing photos on that film, those pictures documented a China flirting with openness, that seems so far off now. Anyone else lose photos that meant a lot to them?
So many stories of data loss. And so many people are oblivious with the risks. It’s just a matter of time before they will lose their photos and videos. I warn everyone around me but no one takes me seriously. It kind of feels wrong, but I hope they lose their data sooner rather than later to learn their lesson… Because learning it later is more painful and it’s bound to happen to everyone eventually.
When traveling, I shoot with redundant cards and usually find opportunities throughout the day to download JPGS to my phone to upload lower resolution backups to Google Photos. Then, I make a copy on a flash drive each night and begin uploading to my NAS at home. Internet connection at hotels is sometimes slow, so I have a travel router that stays at the hotel and keeps uploading even when I’m out the next day. My NAS has 2 disk redundancy and runs nightly off-site backup to a local drive and to my other 2-disk redundant NAS at my parents. My always-on desktop also automatically pulls from the NAS and uploads image backups to my unlimited Amazon Photos account and to SmugMug constantly. Ever since Google cracked down on the unlimited Drive storage with the business accounts, I need one more cloud storage solution, but haven’t made that decision yet. When I get home, I triple check everything is saved and backed up before mentally feeling settled. Still, I won’t clear the SD cards for as long as possible.