So here is the first ever quick tip.

Magik X Imaging Quick Tip #001: Backup Software & Services

On the “level of importance” chart, backing up & archiving (yes, they’re two different things) your digital image collection is second only to actually taking the pictures in the first place. As I’m sure you’ve heard countless times & as anyone in any related industry will tell you, “it’s not a matter IF your hard drive is going to fail, it’s just WHEN” so not having multiple, frequent backups is really just asking for trouble. Since I got into all things digital back in late 2003 – early 2004 I have personally had 2 different hard drive failures (which is actually great considering the number of external & even internal drives I have spread among all my computers). One of which caused me to lose 4 months worth of pictures, including the first time I ever got to photograph my little baby nephew on Christmas morning, so it definitely happens.

So if you have a large image collection or have been around other photographer’s that do you may have noticed that mac user’s have a long list of awesome backup programs that are not available for windows. Everytime I hear someone talk about one of these programs I get jealous & do an hour long search online for something similar. Well, I finally found it! The PERFECT windows backup software (at least for me).

SyncBack Pro ($49.95USD) by a company called 2Bright Sparks.

There is also a $30 version called SyncBackSE with all but the more expert features (like the ability for disc spanning, backing up to/from an email server, SFTP & number of files not dictated by amount of free RAM) that may work just as well for you.

Finally there is a freeware version with a more limited feature set available here & a comparison chart showing all the differences here.

Over the years I have used more backup strategies & programs than I care to remember but after actually losing some files that meant a lot to me I decided to take things seriously. I’m telling you this so that hopefully it won’t take the same kind of loss for you to do the same. My current situation is two things to be sure:

1) complicated

AND

2) overly redundant (which is a good thing for folks like us)

I have an intricate spiderweb of external hard drives strung all over my little office room, I back up to the cloud in two different ways using Apple’s MobileMe & an awesome little program/service that I found via TWiP (This Week in Photography) called Backblaze that backs up anything, from your entire computer system including external drives to just a single folder or group of files & does so with great security, in the background, at fairly decent speeds for ONLY $5.00/month. I mirror my entire image collection over 3 drives that are always present & two that get rotated back & forth to a bank in Virginia. I could make things much simpler with a server or a Drobo but I haven’t quite gotten around to that yet.

I’m also in the middle of writing an entire post on just my backup process so I won’t get too far into that right now. I just wanted to post those links & give my reccomendation and “Magik X Imaging Stamp of Approval” to the software that I’ve been using.

Please do let me know if there is a piece of software or online backup service that you have used & had good experiences with or if there’s something you think I’m missing or just anything at all related to this post.

Alrighty. My name is Brad Walter Gremba (you’ll see that I use my middle name/initial a lot simply because I’m proud of it, being my father’s name & all) but you can just call me Brad. Online in community’s & forums you’ll usually see me as MagikTrik (don’t ask because I don’t remember) and occasionally now, BGremba. I am a 25 year old (08/07/1983) semi-pro photographer born & raised in the Pittsburgh, PA area. My main area of “interest” would definitely be photojournalism & documentary type photography. I just feel like it’s in my blood, like it’s what I am supposed to be doing. That said though, I am truly & honestly interested in ALL areas of photography from product/advertisement to wedding photography to fashion & editorial work because everything has its own set of interesting challenges & rewards. This makes things kind of difficult though because I haven’t spent enough time “specializing” to really build up a worthy portfolio (worthy to me, anyway) in any one area. That said though, as of right now I’m available to shoot anything from events & parties to commercial work (in case you’re interested).

I have real-world experience in most of the area’s I’m offering my services in. I have shot for an interior design store called “The Cob Collection” photographing interiors & their advertisement’s, I’ve done senior portraits, birthday’s & other parties, junior sports and of course many different types of artistic portrait work. Plus if I’m asked to do a job I’ve never done before a price can be worked out that reflects my inexperience.

I don’t consider myself someone who takes pictures or a hobbyist or a “weekend warrior” type (not that there is anything wrong with that, obviously). Photography isn’t something I like or something I just do, it’s much more who I am. I never stop taking pictures all day long, whether I have a camera or not (and it’s extremely rare that I don’t have at least one), it’s just something I have to do in order to keep my sanity. It’s like how some folks just “have to” get that first cup of coffee in the morning to feel normal, I “have to” make pictures to feel normal. Many people “have to” get at least 6 hours of sleep a night or they can’t function properly during the day, if I don’t get some shots in at some point it kind of screws up my internal system for the rest of the day. As I’ve said, it’s just in my blood. The best way I’ve ever found to describe it is this. “When I hold that camera up to my eye everything else goes away, like the whole entire world only consists of what I can see through my viewfinder & nothing else exists.” There is no girlfriend problems, no money problems, I don’t worry about my education (or lack thereof), I can’t remember the one that broke my heart, there is nothing bad in my life, nothing bad in my whole world. It’s just me & that image I’m trying to capture and as anyone who has seen me work can tell you, I quite frequently trip over things & bump into people because I’m so wrapped up in what I am doing.

One of the things that usually works against me when applying for jobs but usually works for me when photographing is, I am entirely “self-taught”. Let me first state that of course I have absolutely nothing against a formal education & I would even go as far as to give one of my limbs to get into school in Kentucky or Florida or another top photojournalism school so I am definitely not against it. I did attend the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for about 5 weeks but it just wasn’t for me. I can’t settle myself down enough to sit beside the rich kids who don’t give a damn about photography is or what it means, they just looked through a book when Mommy & Daddy said “it’s time to go to school” & picked something that they thought looked “cool”. I can’t give up 2 WHOLE MONTHS of my education just so everyone can learn to turn their camera’s on & change the settings. As I’ve probably “overstated” already, photography isn’t a game to me, it is something I am extremely, painfully, passionate about. It is the only thing I truly love, one of the few things that brings me real joy, it makes me who I am. Now I could care less if you don’t like photography, that’s cool. I don’t think golf is a sport. It’s what makes the world “go ‘round”. Where the problem lies is when people don’t take it seriously yet think they can do what Cappa or Nachtwey or Liebovitz or Adams (both Eddie & Ansel) can do just because Mommy & Daddy went out & bought them the latest, greatest digital ubermegapixel, 1 billion frames-per-second camera. These people bother me. The way I am, the way I’ve lived my life I just don’t blend in real well with the snobby, spoiled, the-world-should-thank-me types & unfortunately that is what my class was filled with. I actually even got a half dozen phone numbers from the girls there but not because I’m just that good looking, it was because they were all the same & apparently all rich girls like the grungy “bad boy” types (which unbeknownst to me, I resemble) but even this bothered me. Now please don’t take this the wrong way, I have a feeling I’m not explaining myself properly. I have no problem with people of a higher social class than myself, I have nothing against people that have been handed everything, honestly I don’t. I mean, that’s great if you were lucky enough to never have to work, I envy the feeling of always being comfortable, knowing everything is still going to be ok tomorrow because most of us will never have that feeling. The thing I hate though is when those people act like their better than me (granted most of them probably are but that’s beside the point). Wait… what was my point? I know I had one originally but I seem to have forgotten it now. How did I get started on this? I wonder how many jobs I just lost by writing that kind of stuff?

So anyway, this is me. I carry my camera with me everywhere I go. I can make a day out of shooting one city street. I have an unstoppable desire to share & teach & help. I take pictures because I want to show the world how beautiful things can be, I taker pictures because I want to remember the way I saw something, I take pictures because things never stop changing and I want to be able to show younger generations how the world “was”. I take pictures because it relaxes me & forces me to slow down internally. I take pictures because it makes me feel whole. If you enjoy photography, if you would like to get better & learn things about your craft then the one thing that you absolutely MUST do, the one thing that will improve your skill more than anything else is pressing that shutter. Go take some pictures (or make photographs if your fancy )

There are so many people in our industry to look up to, so many to emulate & aspire to reach. Some of my personal “photographic heroes” are the obvious ones, yet some are not. There are 2 or 3 photographers for my hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that inspire me on a daily basis. There are folks like Moose Peterson & David Hobby that share so much & reach so deep in the process that one can’t help but be moved. Guys like Joe McNally & Scott Kelby among many, many others do so much for the photography community. Just reading the blogs of some of these guys can show you in a few hours what used to take a year or two in an art school! Then there are those who are just on a level of their own when it comes to photographic excellence. The names I already mentioned are obviously included but when it comes to influence, guys like Robert Cappa & James Nachtwey have had a direct impact on the way I see & shoot. I mean, who hasn’t seen “War Photographer” & then immediately went out shooting before the ending credits finished? My original VHS copy was literally “worn out”! When it comes to lighting, the fact that I still do not own a single studio strobe should tell you where my influences come from (although there are a few Alien Bee’s or ZEUS strobes on the wishlist but my technique & style would remain basically the same regardless). Now that I’m sitting here thinking about it as I write this first blog post, I really can’t even believe how lucky we are today. Photography used to be such a small, almost guarded industry when it came to technique & tradecraft, you really had to be on the inside to learn the “good stuff” but now with the internet there is a whole new school of thought. If there is someone that wants to know then there is someone that’s willing to teach. As I’ve said before & will say again, I truly think this will be considered the golden age of photography when all is said & done. People will look back on this time & wonder what it was like for us to be on the cutting edge, to have experienced all of this new technology & information. It’s a good time to be a photographer (well, except for the whole recession thing, but who really cares about that, right?).

Maybe I’ll add a “part 2” somewhere down the line but thinking about all of these folks that I look up to & everything that is happening in our industry has made me anxious to go make some pictures, so this is it for now. Thank you for reading this & you can expect a lot more from me in the very near future. Everything from equipment reviews to my take on industry news to assignment and personal pictures. Just all kinds of photo-related goodies. I’m already writing a fairly detailed 2-part post on my own personal workflow, part one being the ingestion, sorting, keywording, ranking/filing process in Adobe Lightroom & then my editing/processing workflow starting in Lightroom & ending in Photoshop. Along with posts about my personal equipment including my everyday “ready gear” that goes with me on every single trip (from getting milk to going on a photoshoot).

Keep a look out for those & more…