Do you have The Fear? That nagging feeling that keeps you up at night? The Fear of the thing that can strike at any time and totally debilatate the unprepared? Hard drive failure can be one of the… [hold on a second, you might say, Hard drive failure? that's The Fear?]. It sure is. Read on to find out why.

Hard drive failure is one of those things that everyone will face at some point – kind of like life, death and taxes. If you haven’t experienced it yet – you will.

Scott Kelby has experienced it and, as a result, has ‘The Fear’. If it’s ever happened to you, you’ll know what I’m talking about. After it happens the first time, you’ll do anything and everything you can to prevent it from ever happening again. Irreplacable photos can be lost. Days, weeks, months or years of work and emails can go down the tube. Yesterday, Scott Kelby posted his answer to The Fear right here. It is a very elegant system for backing his photos up all along the way – from capture to permanent storage. Check out his full update here.

Scott’s list of backup hardware is impressive, toting everything from the Drobo to the Epson photo viewer. One thing Scott didn’t list, though, was the price tag. I did some informal calculations and his setup runs somewhere in the $2500-$3000 range.

So, the question is, hHow much are you willing to spend to protect your data? In most cases, every additional level of protection costs more $$.

My magic equation is as follows:

• No immediate backup after shooting. I’d like to purchase one of the Epson units mentioned above, though.
• I download the photos from my card to my laptop, when on the road. If I’m on a longer road trip, I’ll then backup the photos to a portable hard drive.
• Once back home, I transfer the photos to my main PC. I backup the hard drive on my main PC 3-5 times/week to an external hard drive sitting on my desk.
• About once a month, I’ll backup my PC to an external hard drive that I store off site (in case of theft or fire).

Do you have The Fear? If not, you will. Or, if you’re wise, you’ll follow others and begin your backup plan today!

Time for some Wednesday news! Read on for some excellent resources – enjoy your Wednesday!

• Strobist Training Video: The Strobist just announced a new training video he created. It’s available from Midwest Photo, runs around 10 hours and sells for $140. If you’re able to swing it, I doubt you’d be able to find better training for the price. Check out the Strobist’s description of it here.
• John Nack: If you haven’t checked out John Nack’s great blog, you’re missing out. He’s on the Photoshop team at Adobe and provides a regular mix of general news/interesting links and news about Photoshop directly from an Adobe insider. If you like to stay up to date on Photoshop and understand the vision of where it is going, check out his blog today.
• Canon Blogger and Aspect Ratios: Are you ever confused about why parts of your photos may end up cropped off unexpectadely when you print them? If so, check out the Jason’s description of aspect ratios. It includes a video on how to solve the problem in Photoshop.
• Best Photo Tip Ever: The Digital Photography School posted on the best photo tip ever received. The best part about it is that there are dozens of tips submitted by the readers in the comments. Many of them are excellent – check it out here.
  

See below for an intial shot with the new Canon G9 (you can tell I didn’t want to go far for my testing). I also processed the photo with the new Adobe Lightroom 2 Beta, which has the ability to light/darken isolated areas of the photo.

So far, I like the quality of the pictures, but due to its smaller chip size, it does get noisy faster than other digital SLRs at high ISOs. It starts appearing at ISO 200 and jumps up after that.

I should have a comprehensive review on the G9 next week.

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Summer is upon us! Colorado is having unseasonably warm temperatures, which means more time outside and less on the computer. I’m catching back up on the last few days of missing blaogs. In the meantime, here are some Monday evening links – enjoy!

• Want a chance to win a free trip to Tasmania? Check out this promotion, sponsored by a group of folks currently in Tasmania taking photos while using the new beta version of Lightroom.
• If you haven’t checked out the Layers Magazine blog yet, you should. R.C. Concepcion brings a fun style to it and tons of great links and resources. I also really like their Monday contests. The questions are usually pretty easy (they usually require tracking down some interesting fact from their site) and offer great prizes, including software, books and more. Go check out their site here. It’ll be worth it.
• The folks at FlashFlavor are doing something interesting. They posted a shot of a wedding reception area and asked the readers how they would light/shoot it. Check out the post here. Make sure you read the comments, though. It is really great to see inside the minds of other shooters and find out how they would approach a siuation and do some problem solving.
• For a more esoteric, yet interesting topic, try this event. It is a Digital Media Day, which aims at celebrating and raising awareness of the digital media community (which most photographyers are a part of).
  

I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I’ve finally entered the world of Twitter. If you don’t know much about what Twitter is, you can check out more here. In a nutshell, it’s a way to post very short (140 characters or less) updates on what’s happening in your life.

Until now, I avoided joining because I felt I didn’t need another thing to do (honestly, I still feel that way a little). But, I just got the urge to try. I like to throw things against the way and see what sticks. Thus far, the experience has been fairly decent. The folks at twitter have done an excellent job at making posting your own updates or reading others’ updates really easy.

You can past at their web site, from several instant messenger programs or via text messages from your phone.

You can read others’ posts via the same channels (instant messenger, text messages or the web/RSS feeds).

How I’ll Use It

People on Twitter post all kinds of things. Personal, business, etc. I plan on posting things mostly related to photography and graphic design. Good books, blogs, news and other things happening in my professional (and occasionally personal) life. I’ll post things that are interesting and hopefully useful to others, but that aren’t large enough to dedicate an entire post here at the blog.

You can read my Twitter items several ways.

• You can create a free account at Twitter and add me (I am listed as profsnapshots). You can then sign up for updates via your phone or Instant Messanging program.
• You can subscribe to my RSS feed here.
• I’m posting the most 5 or so recent items on the sidebar of this blog. Scroll down and look to the right and you’ll see what I mean.

Hopefully, this will be a good way for me to communicate additional thoughts and happenings with family, friends and those that frequent Professional Snapshots!