After saving and spending thousands of dollars on a road trip to Uganda, purchasing the best photography equipment to capture images of things that you hold dear to your heart and to create the most memorable experiences from the trip, losing your travel photos on the road is the most devastating thing that can happen to you. Has it ever crossed your mind that you need to take some specific precautions to ensure that your travel photos are kept safe on the road, especially after the shutter is pressed?
It is a major drawback for every traveller to lose photos on the road /or while travelling and hardly does the possibility of it happening ever cross their minds. The truth is millions of travellers lose their most-treasured images even after spending lots of money on the trip and buying photography equipment. It is a big disappointment for your memory card to indicate the “error” notice out of the blue, or the newly-acquired backup drive suddenly failing or worse still forgetting your camera bag somewhere you don’t even remember. All these unpleasant situations can happen and if you have never experienced any of these, count yourself lucky and it shouldn’t be just about luck but rather taking precaution. Therefore, these are the 5 sure-fire tips for keeping your travel photos safe on the road;
Pack a device with enough storage capacity
Packing a device with enough storage capacity is by far the priceless sure-fire tip for keeping your precious travel photos safe while on the road. As a matter of fact, don’t limit yourself and instead carry even extra because you never know how many beautiful moments you will encounter during the trip. There is nothing more disappointing than venturing into a remote shooting destination and eventually running out of space for all your treasured photos. Questions like “which one can I delete?” will linger in your mind.
Additionally, packing a wide range of functional and reliable memory cards for your camera equipment as well as dependable portable hard drives is recommended for ensuring a smooth and continuous workflow of photography while on the road. Let it be known that having enough storage space provides every traveller with the ability to not hold back on capturing every precious moment without fear of running out of storage space.
Create an automated backup for your travel photos
Travellers with cameras possessing dual memory card slots are lucky here because by default the write settings can be set to sequential mode. This, therefore, implies that the moment the first memory gets filled up, the state-of-art camera automatically switches to the second lot, then photos are written sequentially. If you wish to have peace of mind, make sure that the shooting is done with configured write settings for backup.
When you enable the backup setting, every image you take will automatically be written by the camera to both cards hence creating a secure and automatic backup for every image you take. In the event of the card developing an “error” (which is very rare), a backup for the photos will automatically be created. The majority of Safari Lodges or Camps in safari destinations offer free or cheap Wi-Fi and if this is the case, make sure that your photos are backed up to the cloud.
Normalize making Portable hard drives and SSDs your best friends
While travelling or after every single day of photography, it is recommended to copy the whole contents of the memory cards to a portable hard drive or SSD and to be safer, copy your data to at least two reliable locations.
For instance, store the images on two separate external hard drives or one on the external and another on your internal laptop drives. Whichever option you choose, you will be sure of at least saving one in case of failure. However, more travellers shun laptop drives for several reasons and instead opt for two separate hard drives.
Never risk clearing memory cards until you are back home
Some travellers even after copying all the images from the camera memory cards into the two portable SSDs or hard drives still keep/leave them on the memory cards and believe me or not, this is a very wise decision.
By doing that, the travel photos will still be safe in the event of both backup hard drives becoming compromised and much as it means having to buy a few cards during the trip, at least you’re guaranteed some level of protection against losing data. However, this obviously doesn’t mean permanently keeping the photos on the memory cards and instead delete on visiting the studio in preparation for the next photography trip.
Your storage devices have to be kept physically safe
Even if you plan to invest your energy, money and time to create an unnecessary backup system while on the road, it is recommended to also protect it physically. Cases of device failures and theft are common hence protect your devices by for instance keeping them in the Hotel/Lodge room’s safe box, front desk and when you decide to have some fun outside photography, keep it with someone you trust. Instead of placing in checked luggage, use a small bag during flights because these photos are even more important than the camera itself.