David Gomez is a Seagate Technology IT professional and photo enthusiast who has taken more than a few photos. He developed a passion for photography as a child, borrowing his parents’ camera. Later in his youth, while working in Yosemite National Park, David met the legendary photographer Ansel Adams, who encouraged him to capture the natural wonders of the world through photography.

David’s work has been shown in galleries across Northern California, published in magazines and used by some of the world’s leading outdoor adventure outfitters. For David, having the right equipment, a solid workflow process and lots of digital storage is critical for improving picture quality and protecting photos from damage or loss.

Improve Your Picture Quality

For photographers wanting to take higher quality pictures, David suggests buying a digital camera that shoots in RAW (Raw Image File) format. David prefers shooting in RAW format for finer control in processing photos. RAW image formats are either minimally compressed or not compressed at all, to retain as much photographic information as possible. Of course, retaining the information results in very large files.

On safari during a recent trip to Kenya, David took about 700 photographs a day in RAW format. Shooting 20-MB photos of exotic birds at six frames per second can quickly add up. David suggests that you have plenty of storage and an organised workflow system to process, manage and secure your photos.

Create a Regular Workflow

Amateur photographers, and more serious photographers like David, carry cameras with them on a daily basis. When you are creating that much content, the only way to effectively manage it is by regularly off-loading your photos to a secure location.

For David, his workflow process is automatic. “Your workflow should be something you do every day so that you do not lose your pictures or forget what you photographed. Categorise your photos and name them right away—otherwise, you may never be able to find what you are looking for.”

Immediately after taking photos, David always downloads his content to a hard drive. For his trip to Kenya, he took along as much digital storage as he could. David used a Seagate CompactFlash Photo Storage hard drive in his camera, which let him take thousands of photos without having to change the drive. He also carried multiple Seagate Pocket Drives with him to store his photos while shooting during the day. Back in his hotel room, David kept two 100-GB Seagate Portable Hard Drives. By constantly downloading and saving his photos to multiple hard drives, David could keep his images safe throughout the trip and keep the drive free on his camera—ready to capture the perfect shot.

Process and Protect Your Photos

David uses a total of four hard drives to process and archive his work. He uses the speed of two internal 300-GB Seagate Barracuda drives in his PC to run software and process large images. He also uses two 400-GB Seagate Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drives as a fast and easy way to protect his work.

Each hard drive plays a different role. The first Barracuda drive is David’s application drive. It contains his operating system and software applications. He does not actually store any photos on this drive. The second Barracuda drive is the working drive where David puts all RAW digital image files as they are copied from flash cards and portable devices. This is also where he renames pictures, manages files, and adjusts the picture quality until he is satisfied the photos are ready to print.

David uses the Pushbutton Backup drives to store and archive all of his completed post-production RAW, TIFF and JPEG images. He always makes duplicate copies of his files and stores the originals and duplicates separately on the two drives. When it is not in use, he keeps the drive with his duplicate copies in a fireproof safe.

Keeping multiple copies of your most treasured photos is critical to making sure they are never lost. “The important thing with my current workflow is that I save my images in multiple sources and that I take precautions to ensure that at least one of my drives is protected against destruction,” David says. “Otherwise, if there was ever a fire, all of my memories and photos would be gone. Just gone.” Today’s advanced digital storage solutions enable David to take his passion for photography to the next level—and keep his body of work safe for future generations to enjoy.