If you have spent any time, as we have, talking to photographers and videographers about how they back up and archive their digital photos and videos, then you know that there’s no one answer or solution that users have discovered to meet their needs.
Based on what we’ve heard, visual media artists are still searching for the best combination of software, hardware, and cloud storage to preserve their media, and to be able to search, retrieve, and reuse that media as easily as possible.
Yes, there are a number of solutions out there, and some users have created combinations of hardware, software, and services to meet their needs, but we have met few who claim to be satisfied with their solution for digital asset management (DAM), or expect that they will be using the same solution in just a year or two.
We’d like to open a dialog with professionals and serious amateurs to learn more about what you’re doing, what you’d like to do, and how Backblaze might fit into that solution.
We have a bit of cred in this field, as we currently have hundreds of petabytes of digital media files in our data centers from users of Backblaze Backup and Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. We want to make our cloud services as useful as possible for photographers and videographers.
Tell Us Both Your Current Solution and Your Dream Solution
To get started, we’d love to hear from you about how you’re managing your photos and videos. Whether you’re an amateur or a professional, your experiences are valuable and will help us understand how to provide the best cloud component of a digital asset management solution.
Here are some questions to consider:
- Are you using direct-attached drives, NAS (Network-Attached Storage), or offline storage for your media?
- Do you use the cloud for media you’re actively working on?
- Do you back up or archive to the cloud?
- Did you have a catalog or record of the media that you’ve archived that you use to search and retrieve media?
- What’s different about how you work in the field (or traveling) versus how you work in a studio (or at home)?
- What software and/or hardware currently works for you?
- What’s the biggest impediment to working in the way you’d really like to?
- How could the cloud work better for you?
Please Contribute Your Ideas
To contribute, please answer the following two questions in the comments below or send an email to digitalmediabackup@backblaze.com. Please comment or email your response by December 22, 2017.
- How are you currently backing up your digital photos, video files, and/or file libraries/catalogs? Do you have a backup system that uses attached drives, a local network, the cloud, or offline storage media? Does it work well for you?
- Imagine your ideal digital asset backup setup. What would it look like? Don’t be constrained by current products, technologies, brands, or solutions. Invent a technology or product if you wish. Describe an ideal system that would work the way you want it to.
We know you have opinions about managing photos and videos. Bring them on!
We’re soliciting answers far and wide from amateurs and experts, weekend video makers and well-known professional photographers. We have a few amateur and professional photographers and videographers here at Backblaze, and they are contributing their comments, as well.
Once we have gathered all the responses, we’ll write a post on what we learned about how people are currently working and what they would do if anything were possible. Look for that post after the beginning of the year.
Come Back on Thursday for our Photography Post (and a Special Giveaway, too)
This coming Thursday we’ll have a blog post entitled An Introduction to Managing Digital Photos and Videos about the different ways that photographers and videographers are currently managing their digital media assets.
Plus, you’ll have the chance to win a valuable hardware/software combination for digital media management that I am sure you will appreciate. (You’ll have to wait until Thursday to find out what the prize is, but it has a total value of over $700.)
Past Posts on Photography, Videography, and Digital Asset Management
We’ve written a number of blog posts about photos, videos, and managing digital assets. We’ve posted links to some of them below.
Four Tips To Help Photographers and Videographers Get The Most From B2
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/four-b2-tips-photographers-videographers/
How to Back Up Your Mac’s Photos Library
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/back-photos-library/
How To Back Up Your Flickr Library
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-backup-your-flickr-library/
Getting Video Archives Out of Your Closet
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/media-archive-solutions/
B2 Cloud Storage Roundup
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/b2-cloud-storage-roundup/
Backing Up Photos While Traveling
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backing-up-photos-while-traveling-feedback/
Should I Use an External Drive for Backup?
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/external-drive-backup/
How to Connect your Synology NAS to B2
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/synology-cloud-backup-guide/
