A cautionary tale--and potential lawsuits

Here's more evidence that professional wedding photography is not an endeavor

to be entered into without thorough preparation and planning.

 

A local photographer naively wound up with three weddings on her hard drive

with no file backups. Of course, the inevitable happened: the drive crashed,

and is now in the hands of a technician who is trying to recover the images.

 

One couple is already threatening to sue, and the photographer has no liability

insurance, although I wonder if an insurer would cover the damages a court

awarded for so negligent an error.

 

Moral of the story--never leave the site of the wedding and reception without

making one or more backups. Use an Epson P-2000 or 4000, a laptop, a portable

hard drive, or a portable CD/DVD writer like an Apacer CP-300--whatever suits

your style and budget--but get a second or third error-free copy of all image

files at the event.

 

Back at the studio or at home, burn CD or DVD copies of all images before even

looking at them. Verify that one copy is error-free, and put it in a fireproof

box at home, or a safety deposit box at your bank. Then work from another copy

to post-process the images.

 

The poor woman isn't able to sleep, she's so upset at letting the couples down,

and so worried about legal consquences. She's quite a good photographer, but

has created a personal and professional disaster by not having a strategy to

protect her images from loss, and herself from legal liability.

 

Her files may be recovered, and she might get out of this with nothing more

than a big scare, but what a nightmare in the meantime.

I've always been paranoid with backing up. I lost a hard drive a few months back. Although it was more personal stuff and no weddings in it i still am missing the MP3's of hard to find songs i had on it. And some pictures of my own wedding that my cousin took.

 

Anyway, my backup workflow:

 

1) Upload on computer from CF card.

2) Copy to a second drive.

3) Burn to DVD and store elsewhere.

 

I won't format the CF card till my next job or when i need to use it next...just in case. After i'm done working on all the pictures and edited all of 'em I upload a full resolution uncropped JPEG to a gallery in my smugmug website. That acts as a backup for me and also an online gallery for the client.

I can't argue with verification and redundancy. However, this has introduced another workflow problem. Several times I've found myself on the job and swapped CF cards only to find that the new CF card is full (or nearly full -- worse) from a previous shoot. This can, and has, lead to lost images.*

 

The moral to the story is to make backups, but clean your cards before you head out on assignment!

 

* The ways I've lost images:

 

1. Missed action shots while I formatted a previously used card.

 

2. Lost shots when I've had to reformat after filling a partially used card with the last few images.

 

3. Both of the above.

 

I'm not a *compleat* idi0t, but I let the above happen a couple of times before I prepared better. Fortunately, nothing priceless was lost.

 

[bTW, this forum censors the word that I used idi0t for as inflamatory and I had to re-edit. In my case, I would call it self-depracating. As for the software, it may be a defensive move.]

That's why before every job i always format each and every card. On the job if a card is used, i put it backwards in my CF card wallet. So i am completely sure which one has been used. Very simple but time saving techniques.

 

Actually before every single job, i take out everything from the bag and lay it on a clean area. Then check every piece of equipment. Look at all the lenses, clean it if required. Recharge every single battery, even if it wasn't used the previous assignment. That way i've got nothing to worry about.

Here is my work flow for back up.

 

1. I shoot the wedding, and place all used CF cards in a pouch around my waist in a Zippered pocket, a different pocket than the unused CF cards.

 

2. I get home and download to the computer. I do not erase my cards yet.

 

3. I do my rough edit on my wedding, so it is ready to proof. I renumber the keepers. (I still have not erased my cards.)

 

4. Now I burn 2 coppies of the wedding to DVD's, Every file, keepers and not keepers. Since I shoot RAW, all my original files are untouched, with the changes in the xmp data.

 

5. I then back up to an external hard drive. I store one copy of the DVD files at another location.

 

6. I keep the files on my CF cards until I need to use the cards again, but I do reformat them before the job starts.

 

7. I now delete all the non keepers off my computer.

 

8. After they have placed their order, I burn another set of DVD's with all the final editing that I did for the final printing. I burn this on the Delkin gold archival DVD's. Then I get the job off my computer and external drive.

Who's making 2 or 3 backups of their images BEFORE they leave the venue? It usually takes me hours to copy my images to my hard drive that night, but at least I'm in the comfort of my own home. I wouldn't want to spend an extra 2 hours sitting at a table at the reception or in my car in the parking lot. It really doesn't even protect you from anything to know you lost images before you leave, because it's not like you waltz back into the reception and tell the bride and groom you need another shot of them coming down the aisle. By then it's too late anyway, you should just go home and get the files started as soon as possible.

 

My specific workflow is I copy the files to a raw folder under the customer's folder. All the images go into the same folder I don't segregate by portion of the ceremony or by portrait and landscape. Once that's done I run a backup job to DVD and go to bed. The backup job runs for about 3 hours. At 1am a backup job starts and backs my entire hard drive up to a second PC with a 300gb hard drive. Then at 5am a second backup job runs and backs my entire hard drive up to a 300gb USB drive. These two jobs run every day at the same times. Then yearly I back up my entire hard drive to DVD's.

The couple with the missing wedding pictures can sue but all they can be awarded is any money spent on the pictures. There is award for non-performance, pain and suffering, etc. in this type of case. More damage will be done to the photographers reputation than anything else.

 

Stuff happens. If there was no property damage or personal injury there can be no award other than money paid. Even liability insurance would not cover such an incident as that is only for property damage and personal injury.

Your suggestions may be a bit overboard to the point of paranoia. The photographer let

her clients down and is completely irresponsible. One lost event could be understandable

- but three?

 

</p>It is silly to make one or more backups at the event. Suppose you formatted the

cards before you burned them to CD - are you then going to go back and stage the

ceremony, the preparations, & the father crying as he walks his only daughter down the

aisle? Of course not. What are you missing photographically when you are burning these

copies? Should we chimp every image before moving on?</p>You must possess certain

skills to be effective in this field. Talent notwithstanding, you have to have the minimum

amount of digital skills, equipment, and <em>personal responsibility</em> when dealing

with clients irreplaceable work.</p>I'll say it so Al does not have to, this would not have

happened with film.

I don't think he meant to backup every image as it was made. They make these portable image tanks; essentially a portable small hard drive with enough computer smarts to read a memory card and make a copy of the images on it. If you are changing cards anyway, no harm in popping the thing in the image tank, letting it do what it does, and then stashing it safely - you should still be able to work quite effectively with your other cards; most use more than one memory card. If one has an assistant, that would be a great job for them to handle.

 

I don't suppose it to be overkill any more than having a backup camera, flash, extra batteries, and extra memory cards. If the workflow interfered with your taking photos, then yes of course that would be bad.

As to it 'not happening with film' - true. Obviously when one scans a frame of film, the image is 'backed up' with the still-existant frame of film.

 

The sole saving grace of digital - whether it was originally a digital photo, or a scanned film frame - is that identical copies can be made in more than one place. Film copies, even digital scans of film frames, are always inferior to the original film itself. This is what we call a single point of failure.

 

The person whose work was lost due to catastrophic hard drive failure also had that problem - by not having backups, duplicate copies, offsite copies, etc - she had a single source of failure and thus all work was (potentially) lost.

 

I need only remind that when 9/11 happened, some 40,000 priceless photographic negatives of the Kennedy Administration were lost forever. There were no scans, no backups, no copies. Most had never even been printed, so no prints to copy for most of them. They are as if they had never existed at all. Although 9/11 was hopefully an isolated event, homes burn down all the time, houses are flooded and there are mudslides, burglaries, and so on. A frame of film can be lost as completely and irrevocably as anything else.

 

Film suffers from the same problems as digital in terms of potential for catastrophe. Digital offers an opportunity to spread the risk through identical backups, but only if taken advantage of.

I'm always paranoid about losing a roll of film while on a shoot. I know how many rolls I started with and I count 'em again after. I always double check that there IS film in the camera and that it's advancing. I always check the shutter/flash synch before a shoot.

 

It's never happened to me, but that's dumb luck. I've heard of labs screwing up, and I don't know how many are set up so an emergency generator is there to kick in if your C-41 is half way through the Fuji machine and the power goes out. Probably not many.

 

There are no absolute guarantees in this world. We just do the best we can.

 

Still, shooting with three film bodies with different lenses, usually 21, 35 and 85, odds are that I'll have some photos of everything that happened. But the same would be true with three digital bodies.

I use one of those portable hard drives in the field, but only to write a second copy of the files as I fill each memory card, which I don't erase and reuse. I have the drive on my belt and after I fill a card, I put it in the drive and it writes a copy while still on my belt as I go about my business so it isn't a bother at all. I have a 60 gig Wolverine and still have copies of files of weddings I shot 2 months ago. Eventually I'll clear it out, but it really does make me feel better.

Also, I've had some rolls of film damaged by loss of power during processing. Luckily, my lab had back up generators, but each roll had a frame that had a thin line going through it, when the film momentarily stopped in the processing machines due to power loss. In those days, it was a big deal to digitally repair, too.

Just to clarify, backing up memory cards on site takes a few minutes, not hours as one poster thought.

 

At a recent wedding, I copied the pre-wedding, ceremony, and formal shots to my Epson P-2000 in a few free moments while waiting for the B&G to appear at the reception. I was able to view several of the shots on the P-2000, and on a big screen TV that was in a side room of the facility.

 

I then did the same with the reception shots just before I left.

 

Back at our lodge, I burnt a DVD of the whole issue, and viewed and verified a few of the images on the little viewer on my Apacer CP-300 portable CD/DVD burner.

 

I didn't reformat my cards until I was back home and had downloaded the working copies of the images to my main computer, and made the "digital negative" DVD copy for storage.

Never lost any film in 6 years but having liability insurance is

mandatory in my estimation.

WPPI has a good plan as does PPA.

"Her files may be recovered,..."

 

 

 

So far, the digital stuff from football games is nice to tinker with.

 

 

 

 

 

But a wedding, go film, go; I will stick with old-fuddy film, thank you. The film can be scanned to a CD and remains one heck of a back-up if the hard drive gives up the ghost.

All good ideas for solving this problem. I have 2 computers networked and 2, 400 gb hard drives mirrored in each computer, so I feel safe. I also make 2 copies of DVD's so what else can you do? If the CF cards die usually the manufacturing company can save most of the images, so compared to the film days I think this is slightly safer.

Aside from all the excellent technical advice given here, another area where you can institute some "back-up" would be in the legal area, in the way of how your contract is worded.

 

I make absolutely certain that the client knows that, should there be technical problems that cause any or all images to be unrecoverable, that I bear no responsibility for anything other than the return of the funds that I have been given to date for the project. I also have a clause stating that there has to be unrecoverable damage to more than half the images before any refunds can be issued, though I would probably offer discounts if any substantial block of images were lost (hasn't happened yet except on one PJ shoot).

 

Those items are stated in both common and legal language on my contract.

 

I, too, bring a laptop and an assistant to weddings, and the assistant burns all the images from a memory card onto a DVD before the card is formatted and re-used. If I'm shooting in a studio, I don't let the models get out of clothing or makeup until the images are confirmed as being both on the hard drive and burned to a disc. I have learned to give memory card management the very highest priority on a money shoot.

 

Happy shooting. -BC-

Not to knock film, it served us well for a century, and many still find a richness in film images that digital can't capture, but on the data security issue, digital has the edge.

 

I feel far more secure driving away from any shoot, particularly a non-repeatable event, with three copies of my images secured on three different digital media than with a single copy on vulnerable acetate strips of coated with chemicals that will still be light and chemical-sensitive until whenever the fixer hits them, perhaps not until hours or days later.

 

Film can be damaged so easily by heat, light, or by one speck of grit in the light trap of a cassette. It can also be poorly processed, damaged, or lost by processing labs, or stolen along with your gear--as happened to a local pro shortly after a wedding.

 

He now shoots exclusively digital, does double backups on site, and gives his assistant one copy while he carries the other back to the studio.

We recently purchased an old Brinks armored truck from the 60's and paid for a special permit to keep the asbestos intact. It's inspected monthly by an environmental impact consultant for our monthly permit renewal.

 

We take the truck with us on location. Inside the truck is a mobile studio where images are wirelessly transfered and a small staff of technicians (two) inspect and verify each image with a recryptomogrifier.

 

The data is then converted to anolog punch tape and stored in a fireproof container. Plus the raw data is transfered via wireless secure internet link to the home studio where they are remontely stored on two separate hard disk drives. Simulaneously, the data is backed up on two sets of DVDs, once in the venue, and once in the mobile studio.

 

The next morning, the files are transfered to a data bank in Zurich. We really need to work on this, because if a nuclear weapon was detonated here in that ten hour period, we'd really be screwed!

 

Brides will at first bulk at our $50,000 price point, but after the tour of our facility, they write the check in full on the spot!

 

(okay, I'm just kidding about that monthly inspection thing) :)

The curse of digital is that it is just as easy to make big mistakes as little ones. That works for photography and space shuttles at any rate.

 

The big mistake - one that wakes you up in the middle of the night - is to accidently erase an entire job (or jobs) at a key stroke without a backup.

 

I use the following procedure...

 

1) Carry twice as much memory (CF cards) as I need to complete the job. All unused cards are (should be) blank at this point. If I forget to erase the cards before use, I don't do it on the job, period!

 

2) Like Kari, I put the used CF cards in a separate location (or with the back showing in a Gepco case - fresh cards are face up).

 

3) After the job, I transfer all the images to an hard drive, to a directory named with a date code and job title.

 

4) I immediately back up all these images (usually RAW) to a CD or DVD, before any editing other than viewing thumbnails in Adobe Bridge. The copy always includes a file comparison check at the end, and about 1 in 10 is subjected to a disc integrity (C1/C2) check. I make two copies of the disc - one for archives and one in a project folder.

 

5) At this point I have two confirmed copies - hard drive and CD/DVE. I reformat the CF cards in the camera before replacing them in the Gepco (or other) holder. I hold the cards separately until it is convenient to do so.

 

6) I undergo the usual triage and editing, and save the results as TIFF files for significant editing (16 bit, adjustment layers, etc). Files edited in ACR only I just convert to JPEGs.

 

7) I then backup all the files, RAW and edited to two sets of DVDs - one for archives and one for the project folder and clear.

 

8) When the goods are delivered and signed off, I clear the hard drive. I do keep thumbnails (Extensis Portfolio) on line, and a small number of "keepers" with ongoing commercial value.

 

I completely disagree with making backups on site. It takes time - time that you should be doing what photographers are paid to do. It takes concentration - something in short supply when you are thinking of what comes next. It is more "stuff" to carry, and it is still not really safe until transferred to durable media.

I always have 3 times more memorey than I need, and when shooting with my Mark II I am shooting to 2 cards. I've only had one scare out of 100's of events but one was enough. I now transfer the raw images immediatley to an external hard drive. I then process the raw images into tiff files and make adjustments on another external hard drive and depending on the event I usually burn DVDs as well. Once this process is complete I reformat my cards. When I am a 2nd shooter my partner transfers raw copies of his images & mine to his computer as soon as we complete the event and I still follow my backup plan. As far as hard drives: The question is not, "I wonder if my hard drive could go bad"? The question is, "when will it go bad?".