How to Keep Your Photos Safe While You’re Out Shooting

As a photographer, there’s nothing worse than losing your hard shot photos, whether it’s from hard drive failure, theft, or anything else. With a good backup strategy, it’s easy to keep your photos safe at home, but what about when you’re still out shooting? What if you’re going off the grid and away from your laptop for a couple of days, or even a few weeks? Let’s take a look.

While you’re out on location, the most significant risks to your photos are theft, loss, and data loss. The solution to all three risks is mostly the same: make sure you never have just a single copy of your images on a single SD card or hard drive, or all your copies in a single location. There’s a bit more to it than that, so read on.

Use the Right Cards

To minimize the chance of data loss from a failing SD card—which can happen, although it’s super rare—before even heading out to shoot, make sure you’re using high-quality cards that are in good condition. We recommend SanDisk and Lexar cards and really, there’s no excuses for not using the best: a 32GB SanDisk Ultra SD card costs less than $10. Just be careful about buying fakes.

RELATED: What SD Card Do I Need for My Camera?

If your SD cards have been sitting in a drawer gathering dust for a while, it’s worth looking them over. Check that they’re not dented, scratched, or otherwise damaged. You should also format them before every shoot.

RELATED: How to Safely Format SD Cards For Your Camera

If You Have Dual Card Slots, Use Them

Dual card slots are a professional feature and, if your camera supports them, absolutely use them. Unless you’re shooting a lot of bursts, shoot RAW to both cards. This way, you automatically have a backup of every image you shoot. The odds of one card failing are tiny; the odds of two cards failing at the same time before you have a chance to back up your images somewhere else are essentially zero.