Digital Boudoir Photography : A Step-by-step Guide to ... - Ken Gilbert

Gold CD and gold DVD. These were made by MAM-A, Inc.
Now that the images are all downloaded,
checked to make sure they downloaded okay,
and renumbered, it is time to back up.
Backing up means to make additional copies
so you don’t have to worry about erasing
them. This is a critical step that many, many
people skip. If you learned nothing else from
this book but this step, it will have been a
great investment for you. Everyone will lose
images at some point in time due to hardware
failure, software failure, or operator
error. It is not a question of “if,” just “when”
it will happen. The ideal way to back up is to
drag all of your folders to a second hard
drive, either internal or external. Then burn
another copy onto a CD or DVD. These
can’t be erased accidentally. Don’t use the cheap, no-brand, or store-brand CDs or
DVDs for this purpose. Those are fine for sending images to people and similar tasks,
but for backing up, you want to use gold CDs or DVDs. They are more expensive,
but much longer lasting. Cheap CDs cost about 25 cents each. The good ones cost
about one dollar each, so you are not talking about a huge fortune to invest. You will
be glad you paid more when your hard drive crashes or gets erased accidentally.
Do not erase, reformat, or reuse your memory cards until you have backed up. Always
erase or reformat in your camera. It will do a better job of setting up the file structure
the way that it likes it. If you do it on your computer, it sometimes causes a problem.
Don’t forget: back up, back up, back up!
Now you need to organize your images so you can find them easily. You often see a
simple set of folders under a main folder (such as PHOTOGRAPHS). Inside that
folder is another folder labeled BOUDOIR PHOTOGRAPHS. Inside that one is a
folder called SUSAN. Then inside SUSAN you have “060315-Susan,” “060401-
Susan,” and so on. Your structure will be a little different if you are only photographing
one woman, such as your wife or girlfriend, and have no plans to photograph
other women. In that case you would not need the folder called SUSAN. Besides a
simple folder organization system, there are numerous software programs that allow
you to organize your photographs. iPhoto, a Mac program, will handle that chore for
Macintosh computers. There are similar programs for the PC. Professional photographers
doing boudoir portraits for clients will usually only need the folder organization
system. All of the images and final, retouched files are kept in the master folder with
the client’s name on it. Once that client is finished, make another copy on CD or
DVD of the entire file, and put it into the client’s physical folder before removing it
from your hard drive. If you are doing it for fun, you may not run out of space for a
long time if you have a large enough hard drive.
One last thing: Back up!
The Steps
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