Lee Orchard Photography

I will soon start to create wallpapers and screensavers for the craft fairs.  These will be available as collections of images. I.E, Wildlife, Flowers, Landscapes etc…

I will also try and post some free wallpapers on my website for download.

Below is a sample wallpaper.  I am putting a faded bar down the left side for the icon, so they stand out abit from the background.  Any suggestions for different formats are most welcome.

Well today I have 2 things to write about, so one will have to wait.

I have just been and got my entry forms for the Farnborough Festival of Arts.  I forgot to enter last year, but entered 3 entries in 2005.

For the last photo, title “Star Gazing” the Kestrel in the tree, I won a highly commended.

So, which ones to enter this year. I have one in mind, and have had another suggested to me, so just thinking of a third.

There has been a lack of things to write about recently.

I could have written about the frustrations I have had trying to get a replacement handle for my front door.  Or, the issues I have with my Sky box and the phone line.  Even after replacing all the cables!  Or I could mention the decorating, but its all boring stuff!

So, whats going on, what can I write about?  Has anything happened recently that worth a mention?  Can’t think of anything.
Maybe I’ll have something to write about in a few days?

In this digital age, everything is DVD’s Flash Drives or Hard Disks.  Even my Sky box has a hard disk in it!

This of course applys to photography as well.  We used to take photos on film and throw the prints in an album and the negatives in a box, possibly never to be seen again!

But today, our files are our negatives, and if like me you print alot, sell images, or use them for many things, then you are in constant need of having access to these digital negs!

Of course not only do we have to keep them safe, but also be able to find them when you need them.  So how to you do it!

I have currently, to date, 55gb of photos.  Thats 6 years of digital images which at last count is about 30,000 images.

This can be a concern.  Last year my PC died, but luckily the 2 250gb disks in it were ok. So I turned them into external drives and plugged them into my new PC.  Now my external photo library drive is failing, so i’ve backed it up on to the other external drive.

When I had the USB problem last year I bought a neat little external USB power drive and backed up all my images.  This was 80gb, but now only has 7gb free.

Also every month I backup one months of photos, plus the previous month on a DVD. This backs up the data to a third location and makes a forth copy of the previous month.

In effect now, as I backed up the failing drive, I have 5 copies of all images. However I now have to buy a replacement disk. Luckily this are cheap these days, about 20p per gigabyte, and I have to buy another external mobile disk, as the other is nearly full.  Again, quite cheap, but I will only buy 160gb internal disk, and 80gb mobile, as I dont like the idea for putting all the image on 1 500gb disk, incase it fails.

So, what is the best solution.  HDD fail, DVD’s can degrade, flash doesnt have the capacity. I know I have written about this before but it is an issue. 

I think create as many backups as you can, and rebackup any old CDs or DVDs, as these are cheap also.  If the old backup media still works, keep that as well as the new copy. It can’t hurt and at least then you should be able to get to that image from somewhere!