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HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH KIDS TIPS AND TRICKS TO IMPROVE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
P L U 10 PAG S ES DI
HOW TO DO PANNING
1 Your Photography August 2013
LEARN HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH MOVING SUBJECTS
your photography. ISSUE 01. march 2013
GITAL TUTOROF IALS
PHOTO STORAGE ADVICE
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WELCOME
Contents: 03. VACATION CHECKLIST Make sure you have everything you Need in full working order for your vacation.
04-05. PANNING Put some impact into your shots With this great technique.
06-10. PICTURE PERFECT KIDS How to produce great natural portraits of your children with ease and fun.
11. TIPS AND TRICKS Handy little tips from a professional photographer that will help you take better photo's
12-14. LEVELS How to make a quick adjustment to your picture's exposure using levels in photoshop.
12- BURST MODE How to use one of your camera functions that makes catching the perfect moment possible.
13- FRAMING An introduction to an inportant part to photographic composition- how to frame and place objects for the best results.
14- PROTECTING YOUR IMAGES How to back up and protect those precious memories for the future. 2 Your Photography August 2013
WELCOME to DIGITAL COMPACT PHOTOGRAPHY. We have a great issue for you, full of interesting tips, handy techniques and thought-provoking articles, all designed to help you improve Whether you use a compact camera, a DSLR or a phone camera, there is something in this issue for everyone. Every article and technique has been written for you to get the most out of it and include step by step guides, written in an easy to understand, jargon-free way. your photography. What’s more, virtually every photograph taken to illustrate an article, tip or technique has been taken on a compact digital camera. We want to prove what is possible using your compact cameras, and so in every issue you can be assured the results you are seeing ARE possible for YOU too! Try your hand at a new technique, like Panning on page 4. Maybe you’d like better pictures of your children, so why not combine light with fun in our informative article and project, ‘Children In Natural Light’ found on page 6. We’d love to hear your feedback. Whatever comment you’d like to make, whether it’s to tell us what you think of the magazine, a suggestion for what you would like to see in future issues, share your experience of putting the tutorials into practise, visit the team at www eyemediastudios.co.uk We look forward to hearing from you soon. Digital Compact Photography is brought to you by www.eyemediastudios.co.uk Visit us for more digital camera tips and techniques. Contact information Facebook Twitter The Team @
Are you ready for your vacation? Your checklist for fun in the sun with your camera
Have you ever gone on vacation and found......your camera battery was flat and you hadn't packed the charger? YOUR CAMERA
CAMERA BATTERIES
• Have you got the camera and its case together and ready to pack?
• If your camera has a rechargeable battery, is it fully charged?
• Is there a memory card in the camera?
• Is the spare?
• Has it been checked for images and downloaded onto your computer? If not, do that now, then clear the card and put it back into the camera.
• Does your camera use AA/AAA batteries? Have you got at least 2 spare sets?
• Do you have spare memory cards with you?
• Cheap batteries don't last long, so get a good brand. Why not use rechargeable batteries which hold more charge, cost less than 2 sets of normal batteries, are re-useable up to 1000 times and are good for the planet?
• Have you checked the spare memory cards for unsaved images before putting them in the camera case? • Have you put the battery charger next to your camera case to pack into your luggage, along • Do you have a clean, dry lens cloth with you? with a plug adapter for the country you are going to? • Have you checked on your holiday insurance to see if it covers loss or damage to your camera? • If not, can you get it added to the policy cheaply?
If you've answered yes to everything, then what are you waiting for? You've got a plane to catch! August 2013 Your Photography 3
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PANNING
Panning is the art of capturing motion around a moving subject while keeping the subject sharp and clear in the picture
PANNING TECHNIQUE Once mastered, panning can add an amazing sense of motion and movement, trapped inside a static photographic frame. It may sound easy to do, but requires much practise to perfect the co-ordination needed.
TO PAN SUCCESSFULLY, YOU NEED TO CO-ORDINATE 1. Moving your camera to match the speed and motion of your subject. 2. Keeping the camera's focus on the subject with a half depressed shutter, ready to fire. 3. Keeping your anticipation from firing the shutter to soon 4. Keeping the camera moving in a smooth, level, fluid movement 5. Firing the shutter at the right moment without shakeing the camera, while still mantaining a smooth, fluid follow through.
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Begin Pan
Pan
Follow Through Pan
1. Choose the spot in front of you where you want to take your photograph when the subject reaches it. Pre-focus your camera on that spot by half depressing the shutter until the camera locks its focus. Don’t release that pressure or you will lose the focus lock, but don’t press so hard that you take the picture.
2. Move your camera into position ready to start smoothly following the motion of your subject when it appears. If you are matching the subject’s movement, your subject will stay about the same place on the back viewscreen of your camera.
3. When the subject reaches the point you have focused on, GENTLY squeeze the tip of your finger down fully on the shutter button, BUT STILL KEEP THE CAMERA MOVING SMOOTHLY AT THE SAME SPEED AND LEVEL.
4. The subject will disappear off the screen as your camera takes the image then processes it. Your natural inclination will be to stop the camera moving but you MUST keep a smooth follow-through movement going.
Capture the moment Stopping the camera at the moment you take the photograph will result in the subject and probably the background too being blurred and shaky. This is NOT what you want! Just imagine that you have to keep pointing at the subject as it goes all the way past you It does take practise to become successful at panning. You may find it a bit tricky at first to co-ordinate all the elements together.
Perhaps anticipation means you fire the camera too early, or getting a smooth fluid movement may not come easily. Practise opportunities are all around you and cost nothing. Use moving vehicles going past the bus stop. Get your children or your pets to run past you in the garden or on the beach. The more practise you put in, the easier it becomes. Combine your panning expertise with other techniques, such as using Burst Mode (found on PAGE 15) to produce great effective action sequences. August 2013 Your Photography 5
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picture perfect children
our 3 page guide to better photographs of your children without tears, tantrums or treats.
Photographing your kids Virtually every photographer known to man has, at some point,
attempted to photograph children of various ages.Without doubt, the children that present the biggest challenge are your own. Why?
Well, they say familiarity breeds contempt with good reason. While behaving like perfect angels with other people, your own kids will not give a second thought to being uncooperative, moody or just plain rude to you, even if you are only trying to get a quick shot of them before they go out to play.
Whether inside or outside, rain or shine, we’re going to show you some never fail tips and techniques that will dramatically enrich your family photographs. You may even find your children getting the camera out for you in the future!
Do your family portraits leave you cold
when you look at them? Could it be that when you look at them, you get no sense of your child in them? Great portraits capture some essence of the subject’s personality and combines it with a mood or feeling.
It rapidly descends into a battle of wills you are destined to lose. All you end up with are pictures of scowling faces, folded arms and tops of heads, as they bury their faces in their chest. Fear not. Help is at hand. 6 Your Photography August 2013
No doubt, you will have images like these in your collection.
To capture it, you must first understand
how to bring your child’s personality out in a relaxed way. That doesn’t mean thrusting the camera in their face and telling them to ‘smile’. The camera isn’t a weapon to get the pictures we want by force. To get the pictures we will treasure forever, we need to understand our subject.
UNDERSTAND THE WHY The first thing to remember about any child is that they HATE to be told what to do and how to do it. The second thing to remember is that virtually everyone HATES their photo being taken, so why should children be any different?
GET THEM ACTIVE, KEEP CONTROL The first tip to getting really great photos of children is by controlling what they are doing without them knowing you are doing it. We know children love to be active. They run, play, skip, jump, twirl at the drop of a hat, and have fun doing it. So why not get them to do it for you? If you get them to do something they like to do, but get them to do it where you want them to, they won’t realize you are controlling the space. All they will see is
"Get them to do somthing they like to do, but get them to do it where you want them to" someone who lets them be themselves and express it through fun. Planning is essential. You need to have some idea where you want to take them. If you spend hours going from place to place, they will soon get bored, tired and irritable, NOT a good combination for producing good photographs.
Choose somewhere interesting that isn’t too busy with people or cars or boring houses or shops. Think outside the box. Don’t settle for the back garden or the park along the street because it’s convenient. Put a little effort in. Look for some place different, a nice place in the country, an urban graffiti setting, the beach.
Go out of the house to a place they can have a fun time. It will make them much more willing participants in the future. We visited this lovely field of yellow Oil Seed Rape because it was a rather dull day and it made a vibrant background. Look around for the best angles and background, but make sure your subject doesn’t get lost against the scale of the background. They should be nice and big and prominent. On a dull day such as this was, you want as little of the blank sky in as possible. Keep the sky out of the shots by taking your photographs at a slight downward angle.
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ACTION, ACTION, ACTION Staying still is for buildings and cars with a flat battery. It is definitely NOT natural for children, so use movement as a way for them to express themselves in a controlled space while you take some great shots.
Now you’ve found your angle, it’s time to start having fun with your children, and taking relaxed, enjoyable and rewarding photographs. This is supposed to be FUN, so resist the temptation to release your frustrations by being critical or exasperated with them if you can’t quite get them to do what you want at first. Stay calm. Joke or play around yourself. By getting everybody moving about, both you and the children will start to relax. They will soon start to feel less awkward about being in front of the camera. Pretty soon, they’ll have even forgotten you’re there.
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Almost there but that little band of trees at the top of the frame is pulling attention from this cheeky imp.
Much Better This image has so much more punch now. Don't be afraid to frame your subject really tightly in the picture. After all your child should be the center of attention.
Action is not all about running and jumping. It can also be very contained but full of meaning. What child doesn’t like blowing a dandelion clock? By facing each other, not only does it make a nice image, but you can feel an unwritten family bond between the children as they mirror each other.
Or it can be a narrative about the seeds being blown away. Rather than put everything dead centre, the subject is at the left, allowing the seeds to exit the picture at the bottom right corner. You then get a great flow through the picture as your eye is drawn first to the girl, then through the seed head and finally, following the journey of the seeds, your eye is drawn out at the bottom right corner.
Look to capture natural expressions - laughing, surprise, joy, wonder. Expressions possess the very essence of your child, and say more than words ever can. This brief interchange between sisters was a genuinely sweet moment of pure joy and happiness. If you stand off just a little, it allows you to observe and capture rare but precious moments like this as they happen, without the children being embarrassed or feeling self conscious.
Moving on to the park, the children needed no encouragement to play a game of leapfrog. Just move back a little and follow the action using a touch of zoom.
After the park, the children spontaneously asked what fun thing we were going to do next! It shows the power having fun can have. Even though it was a freezing cold day, the children were more than happy to perform for the camera a little longer. Rather than keeping them too active, change the mood. Slow it down and try putting some atmosphere into the pictures a little softer
For softer natural lighting, look for somewhere shady, like under a tree or in a shadow, but not totally indoors. I sat the children beneath a tree among the long grass, making daisy chains. I then distanced myself about 15 feet away, so that I was not in their immediate company.
Crop out this arm and then convert to black & white
It was easy to sit and wait while the children got lost in what they were doing. I had plenty of time and opportunity to experiment with my framing and exposure. Light behind the subject gives the image a light, airy feel to match the surroundings if you overexpose slightly, as the light bends around the subject’s outline.
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"Light behind the subject gives the image a light, airy feel to match the surroundings if you overexpose slightly"
But what if the weather is bad? Or circumstances mean you have to stay indoors? Windows are a superb source of natural light. Control the amount of light coming into the room by means of the curtains, blinds, screens, etc, to get the look and feel that you want. When you restrict the amount of light reaching the subject, you start producing deep shadows because the light dims quickly the further away from the window you go. Used properly, these add great atmosphere into your pictures and you can use them to isolate key features within your pictures, like faces. Deep shadows make for great black and white photographs so try converting a few pictures to black and white, rather than taking them in black and white. That way you keep both the colour and monochrome versions. Sitting your subject by the window can give you a lovely set of soft, contemplative photographs. Expose for the bright area and don’t worry about the shadows too much. Take a few shots with different amounts of exposure so you can judge what effect you prefer. You CAN dramatically improve the memories you collect of you children, if you remember these simple guidelines : 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
KEEP IT FUN! PLAN - know where you are going PATIENCE IS KEY - whatever happens, don’t lose your temper. Laugh and try again CHILDREN ARE PEOPLE TOO - Don’t embarrass children by forcing them to do something in front of others KEEP IT FUN, KEEP IT FRESH! - Don’t do the same thing time and time again. It gets boring quickly. SAY CHEESE, NOT CHEESY - Unnatural poses give awkward photos. You want the personality of your child to shine through, not the redness in their cheeks.
Stuck for something to do? Try..... Peek-a-Boo - Leapfrog - Star Jumps - Jumping (off something) - Hide and Seek- Twirling Around Bikes - Skateboard Park - Swings - Slides - Playground - Park - Beach - Rock Pooling - Making Daisy Chains - Walking through a Meadows or Tall Grass - Walk by a River or in a Woods - Playing in the Surf - Sand Castle Building - Kite Flying - and so much more. 10 Your Photography August 2013
"ADDING A SUBJECT TO THE DATE ON A FOLDER IDENTIFIES WHAT'S INSIDE WITHOUT HAVING TO OPEN EACH ONE"
tips & s k c i tr
DID YOU KNOW In 2013, there is expected be over 120 MILLION digital cameras sold worldwide - over 100 million of all digital cameras sold will be compact digital cameras.
Essential equipment for your camera bag
1. It folds down to an incredibly small size, so it will fit in the bottom or side of even the smallest compact camera case easily without adding to the weight.
QUICK TIP Organizing Folders
Get into the habit of organizing your photographs inside folders and sub folders, grouping similar types ofphotos together, such as holidays, children, birthdays, animals, etc.
DID YOU KNOW
QUICK TIP
2. It will protect both you and your camera from any sudden onset of rain, sea spray, sand storm, snow flurry, or any other surprises the weather can throw at you. (It won’t, however, protect your camera if it is fully submerged in water, like dropping it in the sea or river!) 3. It is incredibly CHEAP! So you won’t worry about only using the poncho once then throwing it away. It’s certainly cheaper than replacing your camera!
Landscape award winning photographer Joe Cornish uses a compact camera for researching locations and shooting angles, as well as for capturing shots too fleeting for him to set up his large format camera in time?
QUICK TIP
When getting ready to take a photo, hold your breath while you press the shutter. It helps you keep the camera still and avoid camera shake.
organizing folders The quickest way to find an event or particular set of pictures on your computer is to organise them into named and dated folders. Everytime you download your pictures onto your computer, create a new folder in ‘My Pictures’ and name it with the date and subject like this : 2012.05.24 Paris.Typing the date YEAR.MONTH.DAY will organise your files in order chronologically. Adding a subject to the date helps you identify what is inside each folder without having to go into each one. It also acts as an aide memoir for birthdays, anniversaries etc. It only uses a few bytes of computer memory but everything becomes so easy to find. Simple!
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HOW LEVEL HEADED ARE YOU?
Sometimes, when you take a photograph and view it later on the computer screen, you may find that the exposure isn’t quite right. Your picture may be a little too dark, or need a little bit of contrast. Photoshop’s Levels is a quick way of tweaking your image slightly to get your photograph picture perfect. You find Levels on the Menu bar at the top of the screen. Click on Image, and then choose ‘Adjustments’ from the drop down menu. Levels will appear in the second drop down menu. (The shortcut is Ctrl + L / Mac users Cmd + L)
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In the Levels box you will see the image’s Histogram. This is the range of tones in your image from pure black through mid-tones to pure white. A well exposed image has an even spread of tone with a fairly level, even histogram. Here, the histogram shows the tones lie mainly at the left side, so the image is underexposed.
There are 3 slider controls under the Histogram that you use to change your image; a black triangle (the pure black point), a grey triangle (mid-tones) and a white triangle (the pure white point). By right clicking and holding on each slider, you can move it to make a part of your image darker or lighter. (The Levels sliders affect the entire image as a whole, so it cannot target smaller areas of tone that need changed. For this, you will need to use a Curves adjustment.) You can see below how moving each slider affects the appearance of the image.
This is our starting image which is slightly under exposed.
1.Moving the black slider to the right also moves the mid-tone (grey) slider right. This darkens the image. The white point does not move so the light parts of the image stay visible.
2.Get into the habit of organizing your photographs inside folders and sub folders, grouping similar types of photos together, such as holidays, children, birthdays, animals, etc.
3.Moving the grey mid-tone slider right darkens the image overall. The black and white points in the image are unaffected.
4.Moving the grey midtone slider left lightens the image overall. The black and white points in the image are unaffected.
Using Levels, this image will be adjusted to give the resulting photograph a well exposed look.
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Before beginning any adjustments to any image file, it is always best to safeguard the original image. You
can do this by copying the picture file then working on the copy, or you can duplicate the image layer in Photoshop (Ctrl + J / Mac users Cmd + J). If you work on a duplicate layer, don’t forget to flatten your image before saving.
In Photoshop, open the file to work on. You will see the histogram appear in the Navigation panel at the top right of your screen.
Open the Levels dialogue (screen). You will get a Levels box appear as pop-up on your screen. If it is in the wrong place, you can move it to see your image more clearly by clicking on the Header bar at the top of the pop up and dragging the entire pop up to a new place.
From the histogram we can see that the image is a little dark overall - the histogram shows the mid-tones, grouped towards the dark end of the scale, and looking at the image itself it lacks a little contrast.
To lighten some of the mid-tones, the grey slider is moved slightly to the left, and to add some deeper contrast, the black slider is moved slightly to the right. Adjust your image until you have achieved the look you want.
If you feel the image needs a little more colour, you can use the Sponge tool, found on your tool bar with the Dodge and Burn tool. Just click and hold on the small black triangle and you will get the choice of the Dodge, Burn or Sponge tool. In the top menu bar, set to Saturate and 10%. Brush over the colour areas you want to improve.
The Sponge tool will brighten and saturate the areas you apply it to. Here you can see the before and after effect. Don’t over saturate the colours or they will begin to take on a unnatural cartoon-like effect. When you are completely satisfied with the look of your image, save your file. You are now ready to print it out.
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Burst mode UNDERSTANDING CAMERA CONTROLS Burst Mode, (sometimes referred to on your camera as Continuous mode or burst), normally appears as a little icon on your camera that looks like 3 sheets of paper stacked one on top of another, and it does exactly what it sounds like – when you press the shutter for a picture, the camera will take a short series (burst) of photographs one after another, anywhere from 3 to 10 images in one go. This function is this useful to a compact camera user in a few ways. You may have noticed that when you press the shutter to take a photo, there is a small delay before the camera takes the shot. This is called ‘Camera Lag’ (because there is a ‘lag’ or delay in the process being carried out). This lag can make it very difficult to capture the precise moment you want and you end up missing the critical moment or expression or action Using Burst Mode, you can capture a sequence of pictures. Start to press the shutter just before the moment you want. If you have anticipated the coming moment right then Burst Mode should almost guarantee you the picture you are after, and the beauty of digital photography is it won’t cost you a cent to do it. You can simply delete out the pictures you don’t want. Burst Mode is also great for capturing moving objects, like children and sports, when you are unsure of just when the critical moment will happen. Because Burst mode captures events over a number of seconds, rather than having to judge a split second in time you have a greater opportunity to be successful in catching the action happening.
Pre-focus on the point in front of you where you want to take the picture by gently half pressing the shutter until the autofocus locks onto the spot, then keep the shutter half pressed.
Anticipating the action starting, gently press the shutter down fully with the tip of your finger to start your burst of images.
You should have framed enough space for the full movement of your subject. If not, slowly and smoothly follow the subject slightly with your camera. Try not to jerk the camera’s motion.
You can review your sequences later on your computer and choose which the best shot to keep is, or you could be a little more creative and produce a great multi-frame image of the action, like this…
What if your subject moves very quickly, like a moving vehicle in motor sports, a running child or dashing pet? You may need to combine Burst mode with a technique called ‘Panning’, which allows you to follow and capture fast moving action. 16 Your Photography August 2013
FRAMING Bring focus to your subject Framing is the placement of subject within the context of your photograph, and is one of the ways to highlight an aspect of what you are photographing, part of the way you tell the story. How you line up your subject within the frame affects the look and feel of your final picture. It also affects what and how much of the subject you can see. The frame is the area you see in the back viewscreen of your camera thatcontains the scene you’re looking at. Everything you see in that frame will appear in the final picture, provided you don’t move the camera at the time you press the shutter. So before you press the shutter, check a few basic framing tips.
PHOTOGRAPH ALL YOUR SUBJECT It is important that your photograph contains everything you want a picture of (but that doesn’t always mean the entire subject). Make sure what is left out of the picture has been left out on purpose. So if it’s a group of people, make sure that you can see head, feet and both arms when you look at the viewscreen to take a full length shot, or head and arms if you move in a little closer. Try not to zoom in on buildings or landscapes so much that you lose the roof or cut the tops off trees.
SPACE
Use of space in pictures adds to the narrative. Use of space within the frame can : * Lead the viewer’s eye through your picture * Highlight an aspect of your subject * Demonstrate scale * Infer a connection between people or objects * Act as a frame for the subject to sit in. Use of space is the difference between a good picture and a great one, especially when used together with the ‘Rule of Thirds’ placement guide.
FILL THE FRAME It’s a cry you will hear the most often because it’s the one that is most over- looked. If you look at the 2 pictures above, which one has the subject dominating the frame? Clearly it’s number 2, but why do so many people get this wrong? It has to do with the way we view things. Our eye can make out minute detail even at a distance, so we automatically assume the camera can see and record the same level of detail, which of course it can’t. There is also the problem of scale to content with. If you photograph someone against a 6m wall and then scale that down to fit inside an 18cm x 13cm print, their head (which is 20cm wide in real life) will be scaled down to 0.6cm wide on the photo – LESS THAN ¼ INCH! To make an impact, your subject needs to be dominant in the picture and really fill the frame as much as possible. If it doesn’t, you have 2 options – either walk and get closer or use your camera’s optical zoom. It may not always be possible to get as close as you like. The subject may be too far away. But if you are, say, at a wedding and you want a nice picture of the Bride and Groom, fill your frame with them and not a background of guests and cars.
FRAME IT WITH A FRAME Look for something to add another layer of appeal into your picture. Do this by framing the subject INSIDE your frame with something else. A nice border of overhanging trees frame a building nicely. Use architecture. Photograph an outdoor scene through a window and using the window as an internal frame, or as in this photograph, where a staircase holds the subject at its centre. August 2013 Your Photography 17
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HOW SAFE ARE YOUR IMAGES ?
In this day and age, virtually everyone has access to a digital camera, whether it’s a digital compact camera or a digital camera on their phone. We use them everyday to record milestones in our children’s lives, memorable occasions, funny events, amazing or sudden happenings. We do it without even thinking about it. But what do we do with the pictures once we’ve taken them, emailed them to family or uploaded them to Facebook? We take steps to protect our family, our homes and our possessions, but what about the years of memories we’ve built up? How do we safeguard them against loss – be it theft, circumstances or technical failures? Remember when we had actual physical film negatives? We were so careful not to lose them because it would mean that we had no way of getting the pictures back. But today, with the advent of digital 18 Your Photography August 2013
photography, we’ve become rather blasé about our pictures. We take for granted our photos will always be safe on a memory card or our computer hard drive. But are they? How would we deal with the sudden loss of all those memories and occasions? All the photos of your child as a baby and toddler, or loved ones no longer with you, or your wedding day, or that holiday of a life time, or the last picture you took that really was the last ever picture you took of someone special? It can and does happen to people on a regular basis. Why? Because they thought it could
never happen to THEM! Cameras, laptops and phones get stolen. Computers and laptops crash and corrupt files. House fires destroy everything in their path. Children (and adults) delete the wrong folders. It happens. It’s probably happened to some of you reading this right now. Before you start to panic, plan ahead and avoid it happening to you. So what steps can we take to safeguard our precious photographic memories?
SAVE Think about all the pictures you’ve taken in the last 6 months. How many photographs have you printed out in that time? 20? 9? 1? For many people, the actual answer is NONE! That’s right. The probability is that all your pictures are still sitting on the memory card of your camera, or in the memory of your phone. A lucky few may have made it to the hard drive of a computer, but most people don’t do anything with the pictures they’ve taken until they realize they can’t fit any more on the card. Then what? Download to the computer? Not if you’re on holiday. Erase something? You then spend ten minutes agonising over which photos you will sacrifice so that you can take some new ones, during which time the photo opportunity may well have passed. It only takes a few minutes to download your pictures to your computer, but because it seems such a little thing we often put off doing it till later. Here is mistake number 1.You can’t do anything until you’ve done this first little step. So while you wait for the kettle to boil or the ad break to finish or the second half of the game to start, plug your camera/ phone into your computer, make, name and date a new folder, click copy and paste, then leave your picture files to download. See how easy that was? You don’t even have to wait till it finishes, just walk away and go do something else. That’s step 1 done.
BACKUP Getting the pictures onto your computer has given you a measure of protection but if the computer is the only place you’ve stored your pictures, then you’re still playing Russian roulette with your images. It is so easy to protect them way into the future by backing up a high image quality copy of your precious image files on to
an external storage system. Here are a few ways to do this. 1. BURN ON TO CD/DVD Decent quality discs have become very affordable and don’t take up much house room, but you can get an incredible number of jpeg images on just one disc, up to 300 decent quality images. A storage case no bigger than anA4 file can store up to 500 discs. You will get 20-30 cased discs in a shoe box, or about 100 discs in little disc sleeves. Don’t be tempted to use the cheap discs you get from discount stores. It’s a false economy. Lower quality discs may be fine for disposable music playlists for your car or party, but may degrade or corrupt and ruin your files in the process. If you’re going to protect your images, spend that extra little bit of money getting a good brand of disc that is going to last and then look after it and store discs in cool dark conditions. 2. EXTERNAL /PORTABLE HARD DRIVE Compact and very light. External hard drives are an excellent resource for backing up your pictures safely and securely in one place. You can get reasonable priced 250-500GB drives. Most drives are plug and play – meaning there is no setting up and no software to install. As soon as you can see the hard drive on your computer, you can start dragging and dropping your picture folder across onto the hard drive. What’s more, a 500GB hard drive stores the same number of photographs as over 700 CDs or over 125 DVDs, but only takes up as much room as a small paperback book. 3. USB FLASH DRIVE Light, portable and now available with 64GB (or more) storage per drive, Flash Drives and Stick Drives are a great way to transfer images from one place to another, or store images for a limited time. Handy enough to stick in your bag, if you want to take a slideshow of pictures to show a friend or load onto another backup device. You could have a whole drawer full of them, but don’t forget to label them!
4. ONLINE STORAGE There are free online storage sites but most have a limit of only 1 or 2GB of data. Those that don’t may charge you a fee per picture to download them back onto your computer. Other sites charge you a set monthly fee to securely store your images and will offer you unlimited amount of storage and access. If you go down this route, please remember that if you stop paying your monthly fee, your access and pictures will disappear. A NOTE OF CAUTION… Please don’t use Social Media sites, such as Facebook, as a back-up. Facebook reduces all the images you upload down to a smaller size. Others do the same. You effectively lose the print version of your picture. So now you’re backed up you’re OK. Yes? Partly. You may have saved yourself from losing your pictures if your computer crashes, but what if you had a fire or flood or burglary?
PROTECT Most professional photographers back their images up to at least 2 separate locations for total protection, e.g. at different premises and online. This means that even if something should happen to the original pictures, their entire catalogue is protected and safe. It’s easy enough for you to take a copy of the most important pictures round to another family or friend on some CDs or another hard drive. Imagine the peace of mind knowing all your baby photos, your Wedding images, pictures of your parents and grandparents, and other treasured memories are safe and secure. No matter what happens!
August 2013 Your Photography 19