The Hard Way

Today I learned the hard way about backing up.
I've used several backup systems over the years: mirrored RAID, Drobo units etc, all with varying rates of success. I currently use two separate 2TB hard-drives, which are then duplicated on removable HDD's so I can keep back-ups of the back-ups and off-site copies.
So far, so good - conventional wisdom says you should have three copies of your data to be safe.
I generally copy image files to these drives once I've finished processing them, and try to run regular back-ups of the home folder on my laptop.
The major flaw here is that I have to remember to run the back-up.
This morning, just as I was preparing to leave to catch a flight, I accidentally trashed a folder containing four days worth of images from London Fashion Week. They'd been kept on my laptop for me to complete editing and processing later. No backup of the laptop. Camera cards all re-formatted ready for the next job. Client waiting for pictures that have disappeared.
Fuck.
Fast forward to this evening, and I'm sitting here in a hotel room in Paris, while everyone else is out enjoying themselves, running data recovery software to find the deleted files, crossing my fingers and sweating nervously. It's not a nice experience.
I always say that making mistakes is the quickest way to learn what not to do. But usually I'm referring to mistakes that can be put right. This is potentially a disastrous and costly mistake. And it's certainly taught me a lesson - I just wasn't prepared enough.
As a result I've already bought a shiny new 1TB portable drive, and have resolved to simultaneously download all images from the camera to both my laptop and the drive from now on when working on location.
I've also vowed to install a network attached hard-drive as soon as I get home and use Apple's TimeMachine (or something similar) to make automated back-ground copies of my laptop via wi-fi whenever I'm home, so I can never again forget to.
And that's probably still not enough, but I'm on the case.
When I first started riding a motor-bike I was warned 'It's not IF you have an accident, it's WHEN' and the same applies to losing data. It will happen at some point, usually when you need your data most. So please learn from my mistake. Be prepared for the worst. Check your back-up system. Have you got copies of everything? Have you got copies of the copies? Ask yourself how much important data, family photos etc you would lose forever if your laptop died or was stolen, right now, this minute?
And do something about it, before you too learn the hard way.

Anything but weddings. Or is it?

When I'm asked what kind of photography I do, my stock answer is usually 'anything but weddings' (hence the title of this blog). I say this not out of any flippant snobbery, quite the opposite in fact. Good wedding photography is extremely difficult, requiring huge amounts of patience, planning, diplomacy, nerves of steel and above all a very high level of technical ability. Anyone who thinks a mate who's 'got a good eye' will be as good as employing an experienced and professional wedding photographer will get exactly what they pay for. There are no second chances. It's emotionally charged and it's personal.
And it terrifies me.

Part of the reason for this fear was a wedding I covered early on in my career, for a colleague who'd double booked himself. To compound my newbie nerves I suffered camera glitches, a bitch of a Mother-in-Law who kept barking at me and, to cap it all, the Grandmother had a heart attack in the middle of the speeches!
I swore never again, unless I was absolutely on my uppers.

Maybe my memory is fading with time, but over the last two years I've allowed myself to be bullied, cajoled and even tricked (yes, really!) into shooting the occasional wedding. The latest of which was in Spain last week for a good friend Tara and her beau Jonny (I should clarify that she neither bullied nor tricked me into it, but there was some gentle cajoling - and the location probably helped swing it). I can honestly say I've never sweated so much on a job, and I'm still not sure which factored most, the heat or my nerves. Going through the pictures the next day, I nearly cried with a mixture of exhaustion, relief and maybe a bit of romance at being able to view the day properly, rather than fretting about exposures.
But it was mostly relief.

With a beautiful couple so obviously in love, gorgeous weather and idylic surroundings - the pictures almost took themselves. I hope I've managed to capture more than just a record of who was there and what happened when. I hope I've caught some of the emotion involved, the love, joy and fun of the day.
And hearing the Bride say how happy she was with the results is priceless.

Relieved and as happy with the pictures as I am (and I'm my own harshest critic), my respect for professional wedding photographers has increased tenfold - I still don't think I've completely conquered my fear of weddings and certainly wouldn't want the pressure of doing this every week.
So don't ask me.
Yet.

GQ Awards

Not too shabby a turn-out for this years GQ Man Of The Year Awards: Kylie, U2, Keith Richards, Charlize Theron, Johnny Depp, Bradley Cooper, Tommy Hilfiger & Mario Testino to name-drop a few.

Receiving the Politician of the Year award, George Osborne joked "I suspect the GQ politics pages are the only ones teenage boys haven’t stuck together. Some might say that’s because the wankers are on the page rather than reading them.”
Stephen Fry then pointed out that the rest of the mag is filled with ads featuring semi-naked male models, and asked what George knew of gay teenage boys wanking habits?
Ahem.

KISS

I keep reading that the key to using social media, blogs etc is to keep it fresh and provide regular content, and I'm woefully bad at updating this. Maybe I should stop trying to be clever and just post 'Here's some pretty pictures wot I took' and the odd anecdote. As the old adage goes: KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid.
I'll try, honest.