The recent catastrophe that happened to a fellow Bali wedding photographer underlines one of the things I always say to my photographer colleagues: Back up your files.

Loosing the wedding pictures you took before delivering them to your clients is not really something that you want. It puzzles me every time that most photographers I meet don’t back up their photo files. Too much effort, too much time required, too expensive or better yet: Not necessary.

Of course if you do a back up, there is still a chance that something happens to your back up the same time as your originals, but at least you minimize the risk by a lot.

There are several backup methods that you can research on the Internet, choose the one that suits your needs best. Of course every method requires time, effort and money. It’s just the way it is. And if you think a hard disk failure happens rarely: Yes, maybe it happens one out of 1000,000 (put as many zeroes as you want) cases, but when it happens to you, it happens 100%. The lawsuit and reputation damage that that wedding photographer suffered is just too immense.

So, you know, back up.