In Ghana, Nell Freeman attracted this crowd of children interested in seeing her photos, which she stored on a Seagate FreeAgent Go solution. (Photo courtesy of Nell Freeman)

By now, many of us know how important it is to backup our digital photos and preserve those precious memories in case of a system failure. Imagine what it’s like as a professional photographer on assignment in sub-Saharan Africa, traveling along bumpy, dusty roads to remote villages with no electrical power. Or how about trekking through China’s Great Xing’an Mountains, home to lush forests—and some wild boars that put your cameras, laptops and other gear to an unexpected reliability test?

For those jobs, it pays to have portable, rugged and easy-to use storage solutions that can stand up to nature’s unpredictable extremes. Many professional photographers are making room for Seagate® storage products in their equipment bags.

Nell Freeman, a photographer with Getty Images, used a Seagate 160-GB FreeAgent™ Go external storage solution, along with a Seagate 160-GB Portable External Hard Drive, while on assignment recently in Ghana, where she worked on a project for World AIDS Day (December 1).

Freeman and other photographers are documenting successful and sustainable HIV and AIDS projects.

“For this project, the backup system is every bit as important as my cameras and lenses,” explained Freeman, who also shoots frequently for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper. “The images for this project are for exhibition as well as editorial syndication, so file sizes are large. I also recorded sound on a field audio recorder, using compact flash cards, which again takes up large amounts of memory.”

A young child watches as her mother is tested for HIV at a rural clinic in Malawi. (Photo by Nell Freeman)

Storage to Spare

Capacity is no problem for Seagate external storage solutions. The Portable External Hard Drive, for example, can store up to 51,200 digital photos, while the FreeAgent Go solution holds nearly 80,000 images. And both products boast ultra-fast performance—a real plus for Freeman, who frequently needed to back up and protect her work on the fly. 

The hard drives, in fact, weathered the journey better than Freeman, who ended up in the hospital with malaria and dysentery. 

“Both products are still in perfect working order despite the rain, the damp, the long bumpy drives and many interested children, who wanted to touch the drives,” she said. “I backed up my work continuously in the field.”

Freeman will return to West Africa later this fall and plans shoots in East Africa and Rwanda as well.  Her exhibition, “The Ocean is Made of Many Drops,” will open in London to coincide with the 21st World AIDS Day in 2008.

This image from the Great Xing’an Mountains was stored on the Seagate FreeAgent Go solution. (Photo by Lu Jing)

Assignment: Great Xing’an Mountains

Seagate also is helping photographers capture and preserve the magnificent landscape of China’s Great Xing’an Mountains.

Earlier this year, Digital Life magazine organized a group of renowned Chinese photographers to document this vast territory, which encompasses 84,600 square kilometers of mountain ranges, fertile valleys and unspoiled jungle. Seagate provided several FreeAgent Pro and FreeAgent Go external solutions to the photographers for protecting and sharing their digital images.

The photographers’ expedition started at the foot of the Great Xing’an Mountains at Zhalantum City in northeastern Inner Mongolia. The breathtaking beauty of the mountains, which are surrounded by lush, virgin forests, is beyond even the ability of a camera to fully capture.

“The vastness and magnificence that one experiences personally on the scene is hard to capture, which is why high-definition and high-quality images are absolutely necessary,” said photographer Li Shaobi.

The problem, however, is that a non-compressed RAW image file consumes up to 10 MB, while a TIFF file takes dozens more megabytes. “Before, I’d have to delete some pictures in order to save storage space,” Li said.

Go Ahead and Shoot

He didn’t have to pick and choose which images to keep on this assignment. “It was easy using the FreeAgent Go hard drives,” he said. “I was able to make precise image selections without having to delete other important images. That takes the pressure off me while working. I can just focus on taking as many beautiful shots as I want.”

Along with the FreeAgent Go solution’s roomy capacity, photographers were also impressed by its rugged design and convenient software features.

“The mountains are a paradise, but getting there is a painstaking job,” said Lu Jing, senior editor of Digital Life. “At one point, we nearly lost all the pictures in an accident. A wild boar crossed the highway in front of our Jeep, causing us to brake hard. Everything was flung around inside the vehicle. After checking to make sure everyone was okay, we checked on our equipment. Everything was fine, including the FreeAgent products. All the work we’d backed up on those drives was intact, which was a huge relief.”

The photographers also appreciated the FreeAgent products’ software, which enables users to carry loads of programs and browser favorites without having to take along a computer. Its strong file encryption protects content and enables users to sync their files from several PCs.

“I use the FreeAgent solution just like my own computer, everywhere I go,” said Lu. “It’s not just a portable hard drive for me. It’s also my own individualized experience.”