Wedding Photographers - Older Wedding Storage

mr tommo · 26 May 2015 at 16:42

I'd like to think that my wedding storage is pretty decent. We currently have every wedding: All RAW, JPEG Exports for albums designs, JPEG for CD/USB for clients since 2013.

Currently the 3 locations have the following:

Location 1:
NAS drive, auto backing up to a Desktop Harddrive, which in turn backs up to online cloud storage.

Location 2:
PC hard drive & desktop hard drive

Location 3:
desktop hard drive

Plus: 2x Portable hard drives with original Raw files only.

Sounds excessive but at least I'm confident we will have the images safe.

Anyway, it's now coming to the point where our storage is 2/3's full and will be full by the end of this year.
What do you guys do about your older weddings, surely there is no need for me to have all the Raws for weddings in 2013, where the bride & groom have their own CD of the final shots.
I'm unsure of the best way to trim it down though and for how long we need to keep things.

Would be good to hear how others do it.

a1ex2001 · 26 May 2015 at 16:49

Delete the RAWs for anything older than 2 years (not that you'll even need those, how often has a client come back and offered to pay you for a re-edit of a shot?), keep the final jpegs for the delivered set forever(ish) just in case a couple ever comes back having lost their copies so you can appear like an amazing genie and have them forever in your debt.

Loads of togs will now fly in and say they never delete RAWS etc etc but your just making a storage mountain for yourself, you've never committed to keeping all this stuff so liberate yourself and get shot of it!

D.P. · 26 May 2015 at 16:56

Do you advertise backups? It doesn't sound like it but I know a lot of wedding togs advertise lifetime backups.

mr tommo · 26 May 2015 at 17:01

a1ex2001 said:
Delete the RAWs for anything older than 2 years (not that you'll even need those, how often has a client come back and offered to pay you for a re-edit of a shot?), keep the final jpegs for the delivered set forever(ish) just in case a couple ever comes back having lost their copies so you can appear like an amazing genie and have them forever in your debt.

Loads of togs will now fly in and say they never delete RAWS etc etc but your just making a storage mountain for yourself, you've never committed to keeping all this stuff so liberate yourself and get shot of it!

That's exactly what I want to do, just seems daft to have 2,500 raws, plus the 500 Hi-res JPEGS when we've never heard from the couples since.
Eventually our NAS drives will be full and it just seems stupid to keep full a full NAS that will probably never be used again. Don't mind storing old hard drives as they are relatively cheap.

D.P. said:
Do you advertise backups? It doesn't sound like it but I know a lot of wedding togs advertise lifetime backups.

Nope, we've only ever been asked once. We told them usually 6 months from the delivery of album/USB. They were more than happy with that as they only enquired in case distant relatives wanted to order a couple of months down the line. We tell them to back up the USB drive as soon as they get it.

Raymond Lin · 26 May 2015 at 17:13

You only need to keep the RAW for the files that are delivered, for the rejected filesc RAWs can be deleted. If they never made the cut back then, then they will and should not ever see the light of day.

mr tommo · 26 May 2015 at 17:46

Makes total sense, although our initial Lightroom organisation left a lot to be desired!

With current weddings we reject images straight away, the rest will make the cut after a couple of filter sessions. Is it best to delete RAWs from LR or export the chosen ones as RAWs?

D.P. · 26 May 2015 at 18:22

I delete the RAWs as I go along. I'm very religious about ruthlessly discarding photos that don't make the cut.

I would also look to see what bit depth your camera is set to, by default it is likely 14 bits but for wedding work it is highly unlikely you will see much benefit from that as it only helps in the most extreme processing scenarios at base ISO. That alone will save about 20% storage.

An Exception · 26 May 2015 at 20:44

You could also just convert the raws to lossy DNG. They are often smaller than the Jpgs.

Raymond Lin · 26 May 2015 at 20:52

An Exception said:
You could also just convert the raws to lossy DNG. They are often smaller than the Jpgs.

I do that too but I keep putting it back. Should make it a routine thus keeping the LR Library smaller.

a1ex2001 · 27 May 2015 at 09:15

Raymond Lin said:
You only need to keep the RAW for the files that are delivered, for the rejected filesc RAWs can be deleted. If they never made the cut back then, then they will and should not ever see the light of day.

Why keep the RAW's Raymond and not the set of JPEGs as delivered to the client? I would expect that to yield a significant space saving and still give you the ability to deliver to the client exactly what you gave them originally?

Raymond Lin · 27 May 2015 at 12:41

a1ex2001 said:
Why keep the RAW's Raymond and not the set of JPEGs as delivered to the client? I would expect that to yield a significant space saving and still give you the ability to deliver to the client exactly what you gave them originally?

I keep both, in fact I keep in separate folders.

Raw, delivered JPEG, proof size online files in JPEG.

That way I don't need to export them again. I need to start convert them to DNG first though, so I don't need the LR files.

a1ex2001 · 27 May 2015 at 13:39

Raymond Lin said:
I keep both, in fact I keep in separate folders.

Raw, delivered JPEG, proof size online files in JPEG.

That way I don't need to export them again. I need to start convert them to DNG first though, so I don't need the LR files.

What's your reasoning behind keeping the RAW's? Do you intend to keep them forever or do you have a cut off point in mind? I only ask as keeping them beyond a year or two seems somewhat pointless to me as I can't imagine a customer ever coming back for re-edits years down the line worst case scenario is they've lost there JPEGS and all they will want is another copy as delivered.

Russinating · 27 May 2015 at 13:41

My opinion on the matter is that storage space is so cheap you needn't go through the risk, worry, effort or potential horrors that could come from deleting anything.

Our average wedding (video this is, mind) is about 40GB. £60 for a 2TB drive and you're talking 50 weddings on a drive, or £1.20 per wedding. £2.40 if you're RAIDing. Once it's full it gets archived and labelled with what weddings are on it.

Like I said, for the cost of keeping everything, any other option just isn't necessary.

Having said that, our contract states we only keep the raw footage for a year as well, just in case we change our minds or archived drives go kaput.

Raymond Lin · 27 May 2015 at 15:47

a1ex2001 said:
What's your reasoning behind keeping the RAW's? Do you intend to keep them forever or do you have a cut off point in mind? I only ask as keeping them beyond a year or two seems somewhat pointless to me as I can't imagine a customer ever coming back for re-edits years down the line worst case scenario is they've lost there JPEGS and all they will want is another copy as delivered.

Because I like to keep them, I like having the digital negative. And that I have plenty of storage anyway.

D.P. · 27 May 2015 at 16:43

a1ex2001 said:
What's your reasoning behind keeping the RAW's? Do you intend to keep them forever or do you have a cut off point in mind? I only ask as keeping them beyond a year or two seems somewhat pointless to me as I can't imagine a customer ever coming back for re-edits years down the line worst case scenario is they've lost there JPEGS and all they will want is another copy as delivered.

I keep the RAWs for my paid events for a few reasons.
They are my photos and I may be able to sell some of them as stock, albeit not many due to no model releases for people but almost anything else is fair game. I may also just want the photo, e.g. perhaps it is a good photo I want to put on my website in the future but with a very different edit.

Also the customer may come back and request a larger sized photo for print. I don;t hand out the 36MP images because the cllients mostly shove them on a website so I give them 8-10MP images and tell them that anything they want printed they should let me know and I can provide original sized jpegs, or TIFFS even. Earlier this year I shot an event and a little while later they requested a full sized JPEG of one of the photos to use in a poster. Moreover, this allows me to have a flexible pay structure if desired where web sized images can be provided cheaper and if they want print or poster sized photos then i can charge more per photo. I now have an agreement with one client where they get 8MP images and can get the 36MP Tiff for $100 a pop if they want to print a big poster etc.

Plus storage is dead cheap and it only get cheaper and cheaper. Despite having 36MP images the storage cots now a relatively so much cheaper than when I started out with 6MP images.

a1ex2001 · 28 May 2015 at 08:55

Russinating said:
My opinion on the matter is that storage space is so cheap you needn't go through the risk, worry, effort or potential horrors that could come from deleting anything.

Our average wedding (video this is, mind) is about 40GB. £60 for a 2TB drive and you're talking 50 weddings on a drive, or £1.20 per wedding. £2.40 if you're RAIDing. Once it's full it gets archived and labelled with what weddings are on it.

Like I said, for the cost of keeping everything, any other option just isn't necessary.

Having said that, our contract states we only keep the raw footage for a year as well, just in case we change our minds or archived drives go kaput.

But do you keep multiple copies and offsite at least one? The OP has a three layer backup system and while the cost wouldn't be prohibitive it is a lot of effort for something you will almost certainly never touch. Single drives aren't really very useful as they fail even just sat on a shelf. Really to be fully comprehensive you should be checking the drives that have been archived regularly for any failures and making new copies of them if required.

I contacted an events photographer ten years after an event wanting a copy of a photo of me and some friends and it turned out that in there archive of thousands of CD/DVD's the one with my picture on was the one that had died with no other copy in existence.

Russinating · 28 May 2015 at 12:28

a1ex2001 said:
But do you keep multiple copies and offsite at least one? The OP has a three layer backup system and while the cost wouldn't be prohibitive it is a lot of effort for something you will almost certainly never touch. Single drives aren't really very useful as they fail even just sat on a shelf. Really to be fully comprehensive you should be checking the drives that have been archived regularly for any failures and making new copies of them if required.

I contacted an events photographer ten years after an event wanting a copy of a photo of me and some friends and it turned out that in there archive of thousands of CD/DVD's the one with my picture on was the one that had died with no other copy in existence.

Yeah that's what I said, £2.40 if you're RAIDing, so you'll be archiving two drives every time.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but why would a drive fail just sat on a shelf? It's physical storage so unless it's dropped or stored incorrectly then it must be extremely rare.

a1ex2001 · 28 May 2015 at 13:29

Russinating said:
Yeah that's what I said, £2.40 if you're RAIDing, so you'll be archiving two drives every time.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but why would a drive fail just sat on a shelf? It's physical storage so unless it's dropped or stored incorrectly then it must be extremely rare.

I work in Service/Business continuity so I find these sorts of conversations interesting. I'm always intrigued as to what drives businesses to keep data and it's interesting to see that small businesses like yours have exactly the same driver as big business basically 'fear of the unknown' and 'because we can' it is surprising how liberating it can be for a big business to actually set an expiry on stuff and bin it!

Hardware failure is always interesting and most often unexpected, having never had a tape snap in my life I was involved in a DR test where we had ten in a row go ping.

OspreyO · 28 May 2015 at 14:02

Russinating said:
...why would a drive fail just sat on a shelf? It's physical storage so unless it's dropped or stored incorrectly then it must be extremely rare.

Its a mechanical device I assume with bearings and lubricants. Even old motherboards, and components dry out with age. Its not unusual to put something away or on the shelf fail to come back to life when tried a long time after.

mr tommo · 28 May 2015 at 15:22

Russinating said:
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but why would a drive fail just sat on a shelf?

Happened to us. Had a bank of 3 hard drives all sitting next to each other on the shelf, two died when powered up and were unrecoverable according to our IT guy. It wasn't weddings but work from 2008 that we didn't really need.