I’ve spent the last couple of days at a conference at the Sturbridge Host Hotel in Sturbridge, MA. It was crazy for me, because I shot one of my very first weddings there in the summer of 2005! It was film, and I was scared. to. death.

The bride and groom were super relaxed (a trend that would follow us our whole career, I guess!). I actually helped write the vows before the ceremony, and Jesse tied the ties for all the groomsmen. Thus began our careers as so much more than just “the photographers.”

But because the conference was all about building my business and getting refreshed creatively, it was this funny little juxtaposition for me – to be shooting literally at the spot where it all started. I feel so lucky, and I feel so experienced and confident after those 7 years.

But even though it feels like a lifetime between then and now, I still like some of the photos. And I’m really proud of them because “photojournalism” wasn’t popular yet, and we were getting little moments like this between father and daughter, just like we do now. We may be older, more polished and way better business people, but it all started because we love people.

What an adorable and chill little man… another photo can be found on our facebook page.

Love this and want us to photograph your child? Email us at cirasphotography@yahoo.com!

Julia & Andy’s wedding is featured today on The Broke Ass Bride website.

http://www.thebrokeassbride.com/2012/03/real-wedding-julia-and-andrews-home-brewed-spendin-wisely-new-england-wedding/

(And if you’re in love with this wedding, see more posts of it on our blog:

Julia’s commentary on her fav wedding photo

My fav photo from Julia & Andy’s wedding

The entire blog post of the wedding

A couple little extras

And Julia & Andy’s Engagement Session)

You may be thinking, “But, Heather, there’s no way to fit your awesome-town photography into a broke ass budget.” But au contraire. Julia explains how she did it, and more! (PS Andy has an awesome beer blog too, www.beantownbrews.com. Brewing your own wedding beer is not for amateurs.)

Love this and want to know more about us shooting your wedding?! Contact us at cirasphotography@yahoo.com

I love this photo because as Paul and Resina are running back up to the house from the ceremony, their kids, Tyler and Sophia, were running up with them. Tyler was exclaiming “we got married!” The photos from a bride and groom walking back up the aisle married are always wonderful – so full of excitement and sheer happiness – but this was an extra cute little moment!

I couldn’t help myself with the ’90s rap reference (for those of you who, like me, then need to watch the video, here’s the youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL2txMU50CI. I also highly recommend doing a search for the song on you tube because it brings up some hilarious home videos of people backing their asses up.)

But alas, I do not have the opportunity to back my ass up all that much, though I do have a lot of opportunities to back my PHOTOS up. (like that transition sentence, huh, huh??)

A good friend was in town this weekend (holler Joelle!), and as we were getting our INSANE pedicures at Pro Nails in Norwell, she asked me how I deal with the millions of photos Jesse and I take of Autumn (I currently have 1,118 photos on my iphone!!). Like this one where she laughs as she rips Jesse’s face off:

Or this one where she blows a raspberry as she blesses us like the Christ Child. She’s a multi tasker:

The good thing for us is that we already had a system for backing up photos, so we set her up with her own folder on the computer and external hard drives, and got to backing up.

I thought, then, that this information might be of interest to you folks, for your own personal preferences, and to know how we as professionals care for your photos.

Hypothetical wedding scenario to illustrate my point:

Step 1: Shoot wedding (if only it were that easy!)

Step 2: Come home, download RAW files and back them up on hard drive and FTP server.

Step 3: Edit RAW files; save them as jpgs

Step 4: Back up jpgs on external hard drive

Step 5: Back up jpgs on a pay-for-service website dedicated to hosting large files

Step 6: Back up jpgs to flickr. (This is a “just in case” measure in case the first two back ups failed. It’s a royal pain to download from flickr and I hope it never comes to that!)

Step 7: Burn a DVD of the wedding and store in a fire proof safe.

Step 8: After 6 months (or less, depending on how quickly it fills up!), the external hard drive moves to an off-site location.

Step 9: Order a bunch of prints. In the case of weddings, the client orders a bunch of prints, gets an album and whatnot so that the photos don’t just live online. With Autumn, or other personal photos we have, I tack on a bunch of 4x6s and enlargements with almost every order I place for clients. I keep some serious old fashioned boxes of prints in our closet, and it’s so fun to “waste” time when I’m supposed to be cleaning.

Somewhere in the middle of this process, the client is mailed their DVD with instructions for backing them up on their own. While CDs are awesome now, they probably won’t be in the future (hello, remember floppy disks? I have a ton of those with my college papers on ‘em, but no way to ever look at them again!), and they are really fickle (they hate heat, cold, moisture, shard scratchy things…), so backing them up online is good. Don’t just back them up on your computer, because it’s not a matter of if your computer will crash, but when, and don’t just back them up to an external hard drive when your computer fills up because those suckers crash all the time. I’ve had like 3 or 4 of them go, usually at the most inopportune times.

So, for you, this is probably overkill. You can probably just put your photos from your camera or phone onto your computer, and then back them up online (flickr’s a good, cheap option. It’s only $25/year for unlimited space.)  With Autumn’s pics, we haven’t yet burnt DVDs of everything, but I probably will and I’ll probably store that in our fire proof safe here at home. I’m even toying with the idea of dedicating an entire hard drive to just Autumn photos, but then I’m scared of leaving everything on one drive.

So, to recap, we back everything up in multiple places (hard drive, computer, DVD, online) so that everything isn’t in one place in case something fails on us.