Wedding Photography Tips #22:  So what do I do with this disk?

Digital changed everything.  Clients almost never took negatives, they got prints or an album.  But with digital clients wanting their photos on a disk took center stage.  They want to print whenever, upload to their own blog, website, facebook, twitter accounts.  Show the world their wedding.  But do you really know what to do with 600 plus digital files?  I believe the majority of photographers, including myself, will give you a disk of jpg images.  This is disk, like all technology, will probably be obsolete in 10 years.  Negatives are always the same, you can still get photos from a negative.   Don’t count on that with a disk.  Not only will the disk break down over time (think of your old CD’s you bought in the 90’s, they don’t work so well anymore) but you may not have a computer in the future with a DVD player to see the images.  Who knows what they’ll come up with next.  So it’s extremely important to back up your disk, just like any other important digital material.  Put it on your computer, put it on an external hard drive, and even web storage if you have it.  My best advise is to get prints of all the photos you absolutely love within the first 6 months after the wedding.  Put them in an album, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy.   Just a hard copy of your wedding at the very least.  I say within the first 6 months, because if you wait longer, it won’t happen. Trust me, you won’t.

Albums from your photographer are another great way to make sure you have a hard copy of your day.  Immensely worth their weight in gold 20, 40, 60 years down the road.   The important part though is to get prints, you never know when the disk just won’t work anymore and your hard drive crashes.