Enter the Delkin Devices ImageRouter Card Reader 4-in-1. Truly a card reader created specifically for professional photographers. It doesn’t read SD cards, or XD, or mini-SD cards, or any other types of cards. This baby is pure Compact Flash card-reading ecstasy. The ImageRouter 4-in-1 was created to do one thing and to do it extremely well… read 4 Compact Flash cards at once and to do it fast.

Some of the specs I enjoy is that it’s obviously USB 2.0. We all know and appreciate USB 2.0. This means all PC and Mac users can live in harmony as we download our CF cards in record volume. Yes, as a Mac user, it would be great to have a Firewire 800 model, but the USB 2.0 version works just fine. You’re downloading four cards at once, can it get any better?

So, take a look at your current situation. Are you cheaping out? Go to BHPhoto.com to check it for yourself. Stop wasting time downloading one card at a time. Besides, I was able to write this article while I was downloading images from a wedding I shot this past weekend. How productive can you be?

(Images courtesy of BHPhoto.com)

PLEASE ADD YOUR COMMENTS BELOW :)

Stay true to yourself. Remember, your style and your personality are the reason why your clients hired you. Yes, price has something to do with that as well. However, it’s important to maintain a level of stability in who you are as an artist. Or course you can be flexible with your style, who shouldn’t be? We grow and change over time as individuals. With so much time between the creation of the photos that sold your clients on hiring you and the day you capture your client’s wedding images, several years can go by. With all of the other studios that come and go, you’re bound to see thousands of new images between now and then that could have some artistic impact on your style. There’s nothing wrong with inspiration. Just remember that your original style is what attracts your business to you in the first place. Don’t go and do a 180 on your wedding clients at the last minute because you doubt yourself.

Work as a team. Through your years of shooting weddings, you will create lasting relationships with vendors that compliment your style and enhance your images. Everything from floral design to lighting, from makeup to hair styling. All of it directly affects the overall look of your photography. As you build a strong referral base, you create a team of vendors that you work well with and create a strong unit to provide your bride and groom a unique wedding experience. The key that holds this team together is your images. You alone are the vendor that provides the photos that allow your teammates to showcase their work and refer business to you. Many photographers feel like if they focus on detail shots, they’re losing focus on the event itself. True, everything requires a fine balance. However, the bride hired these other vendors for their work and services, so it’s important to remind her of their beautiful work through your photos.

Have a game plan. Take all of your misconceptions of being a “fly on the wall” and throw them out the window. Your clients didn’t hire you because of your cat-like reflexes. You can’t build a business based on your ability to react quickly to situations. You need a system, a pre-planned approach to each wedding. Yes, it does create consistency among the types of images you capture. This isn’t a bad thing. It shows experience and reliability, allowing the bride and groom to feel confident in your level of expertise and years of experience. Once you’ve established your game plan, you’ll have more freedom to capture those unscripted moments. The more you plan for your “required” detail shots, the more time you have to show off your feline impromptu photo moments.

All in all, your image of professionalism and experience will become more evident to your clients through your practice of consistency and teamwork when it comes to shooting weddings. Yes, you were hired by the bride and groom. However, your skills at being a good team player will help you provide better images for your clients as well as your teammates. And through your relationships with your vendors and your clients, you’ll be doubling up your referral base through your brides and your fellow wedding professionals. And isn’t two better than one?

PLEASE POST YOUR COMMENTS AND RESPONSES BELOW…

My friend Eric Doggett uses a Drobo, which is great because it has multiple bays and has automatic backup programs onto several hard drives at once. And with a network enabled Drobo, you can backup a network of computers onto a central device.

This is a great solution if you have multiple computers that need access to a backup system. For those of you with studios that have several Photoshop or design specialists working from a central file system, this would be a great backup for your server.

However, a system like this can get costly. Not only do you have to replace the hard drives once they’re full, but you have to incorporate it into your system which requires some thought. Are you just going to plug it into your computer, or do you need it to support your network system server? Some of you may live for this kind of challenge, but some of you may just want a simpler solution.

Enter: Online Backup Solutions. We all know that data will eventually leave behind it’s physical form of DVDs, flash drives, floppy drives (j/k!) and return to its original form of digital material. In the beginning, we humans tried to capture data in a physical form in order for us to understand it, control it, manipulate it, until we learned from it to create better methods of spreading knowledge through fiber optics, lasers, hi-frequency waves, and light. Its as if you just point to your target receiving the information and it’s here in a hyper-second. Also, with the increasing bandwidth both upstream and downstream available by broadband providers, we can transmit more data to more places exponentially faster than we could a few weeks ago! So why not make it work for your backup solution?

One such online service called Mozy provides ease of use for a simple online backup solution. So simple in fact that you only pay a small license fee plus a usage of space fee per GB of storage used.

Another online back up solution that I’ve been using happily for 2 years is Jungle Drive. Jungle Drive is basically a portal software between your computer and Amazon S3 servers. By utilizing their automatic backup feature, all my files are backed up on to secure Amazon servers that I can access at any time. Plus, they have data access features from the web when you’re on the go. You can even tell Jungle Disk what types of files to backup (JPG, CR2, RAW, TiFF, etc). That way you can choose to back up your original images, or just your final jpegs. Plus, you can configure Jungle Drive to work like a network drive, where you can just copy/paste items into your virtual drive.

So, it seems there are several ways to seamlessly create an online backup system for just you or for multiple users. This nice thing is that these providers give you enough flexibility to custom fit a solution to your particular situation. Plus, without having to worry about having your backup data stored on a physical drive, there’s less worry about catastrophic data loss. Recovering a damaged hard drive can cost up to $5,000. And of course, we all know the worst happens when we’re least prepared for it.

Do some research and find out what solution works best for you. Data is data, but when it’s stored in a physical state, it becomes vulnerable to breakage, theft, corruption and loss. So keep it in its natural form and get it in a safe place and out of your studio/office ;)

PLEASE COMMENT ON ANY EXPERIENCE YOU HAVE WITH ANY OF THE ABOVE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. ALSO, POST QUESTIONS AND I’LL BE HAPPY TO FIND ANSWER FOR YOU :)

Cheers,

Dustin Meyer