This week, we present a special focus on photography in urban areas. Most of us live in towns and cities, or are at least within easy reach of them. So while for many of us, getting out to the coast or into the countryside is something we have to save for the weekends, or even the holidays, urban photography is something we can do every day regardless of the weather.

With pocket-sized cameras now offering levels of quality we could only have dreamt about a couple of years ago, there’s no reason to not have a camera by your side at all times, while you just have to look around to see the huge photographic potential in a host of subjects – from the strong shapes and form of our buildings to the way in which people interact with their surroundings, as well as the range of wildlife that is increasingly sharing our urban areas with us.

So next time you moan to yourself that you don’t get out enough and take pictures, why not look a little closer to home – you’ll be surprised by the amount of photographic possibilities that are out there on your doorstep.

Head for the home page to vote http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/ on this week's poll - How regularly do you back-up images?

Phil Hall, Features Editor

 

Could we have a button for regularly, please?

 

I have it set to incrementally back up every day.
However If I have made no changes I do not turn on that hard drive when I start the computer.
I also do a new complete copy of the file every six months on to a separate hard disk.

My internal hard disk failed about 5 months ago and I lost very little of anything.
Like all hard disks it will fail again some day... it could be tomorrow.....................

It is a pain in the butt to recover everything exactly as you like it, even from an image file of the entire system, as you always want to bring it up to date and do housework at the same time. On the other hand it is the best time to update the operating system, and dump stuff you are no longer using.

 

I can't answer that, because the answer "as necessary" isn't there. I create back-up when there is something to back up and I don't download from my memory card unless I have added something to it so I may download once a month, once a week or daily depending on what images I take. Backing up follows the same pattern.

 

After Saturday at Key, I'll probably copy the card to my MacBook on Saturday night or Sunday morning, then back up the Mac to an external disk and back up the photos over the "net" to an external disk on my everything server.

However, as I haven't taken any photos for a few days, I have none to back up on a daily, weekly basis at the moment.

 

Dear Geoff,

Same here. When I put anything on the computer, I back it up at the end of the session, whether it's writing or downloads.

Cheers,

R.

 

My photos get uploaded automatically to cloud storage when I copy them to my HDD.

 

I have never intentionally backed up any of my pictures, but I always have three separate locations where I can find copies of each of my images.

The edited images online, the pictures on the computer taken from the card, and the card with the pictures stored as they were originally written.

If the image host I leave my pictures online with folds and they deactivate he servers where my images are stored, I still have the originals on card and computer. If the computer goes kaput, I still have online and the card, and if the card corrupts, goes missing or is damaged, I still have the computer and online.

(I even had a picture printed, essentially backed up in hard copy, as from what I can tell paper was not affected by power-cuts which by the sounds of it may become a bit of a worry in the coming years.)

It sort of works - the editing process will always leave some pictures in the card and others that don't make it past the computer to have a brief life online, but in today's age who backs up every single image they have ever taken?

All it costs is a new SD card whenever I fill one of the old ones up. (minus the print costs for that one hard copy back up)

 

I ticked 'monthly' as it is probably closest , but really the answer is periodically , or whenever I feel it is required - this might not be every week , but is certainly no longer than monthly , just depending on how much material I happen to shoot .

The above is just for my home situation , where I have a number of USB drives connected to my computer , and a backup drive for the current one which is plugged in as required ; older backup drives which don't change are stored at my mother's home with the originals still on my system . At work , our photo archives are on banks of Buffalo Terastations , which back up incrementally to another bank at another site every night .

 

Backed up mine on 3 ex drives.. guess what after coming back from our Christmas hols all 3 of them failed..Yes all 3 ... The guy who build my last PC managed to save over 10 years of files..""phew" I had to get a docking station, lucky enough the files on all the drives were almost the same..
Now how and why did they all fail.. I put them away each time we go on hols.. but this time they were put on top of each other in a tin filing cabinet for the first time ... I will never put them in a tin cabinet or next to one another again...

 

I'd also like to make a small point about the precursor to the question, which focused on Urban image taking - what a wonderful taking point, I nearly missed it distracted by the question

I'm in an industrialised agriculture rural area myself so it seems to be the worst of both worlds, no urban interest and no pretty countryside, just unending flat field upon field upon field. Photographically sunrise and sunset are the most dramatic - there is a lot of sky here.

When I do get to the nearest metropolis, I agree with he article there is such a wealth of choice it's difficult to know where to start, however the same could be said to me about my rural location... Perhaps it's time i put on a fresh pair of eyes and tried to approach my setting from the viewpoint of someone stuck in a city?

 

Isn't it strange how everyone who has a "Mac" delights in mentioning it whenever "computer" is mentioned? Are they just hoping to get noticed (like I just noticed) or do they just enjoy looking down on us PC owners?

C'mon Guys, GET OVER IT!

 

I have a "Mac" and do none of those things you mention. I wonder who needs to "get over it". Really!

 

I didn't see a button for "when I can be bothered" either

Urban photography? Only if it involves beer! (and with AP forum members it usually does )

 

What a strange post. I had no feeling of delight. It must be your own emotions regarding other peoples' computer hardware that caused you to make your post to this forum. Maybe you need to look inward rather than outwards for the "Get over it" solution?

If it helps, my other computer is a Raspberry Pi.

 

I chose "monthly", as it's the closest approximation to "whenever I've made any significant changes to the image files stored on my computer", i.e. after any major uploading / image editing session, which tends to happen in bursts of a few days roughly every month or so. The memory cards don't get reformatted until after the computer is backed up, so after the initial upload, there are always at least two copies.

 

Weekly. Fully automated to external drives and the house server. The server also backs up to an external site every night.

 

No comment.

Apart from asking if you can drink more now before falling over?

 

Was wondering how often the forums were backed up - just had a database error.

 

I had that occur as well. Was wondering if Mr Jacobs was melting his crayons on the server's motherboards