Steve Simon: Passionate, Prolific, and Paranoid About Backups

Steve Simon has been passionate about documenting the beauty and drama of the human condition his entire photographic life. In addition to teaching street photography workshops around the world, Steve has been published and profiled in a variety of magazines including Life and Harpers. His book “The Passionate Photographer” was chosen as one of Amazon’s Top Ten Arts and Photography Books of 2011. You can read more about Steve’s life and work on his blog thepassionatephotographer.com.

“There has never been a better time than now to be a photographer,” says Steve Simon. “The tools and technology at our fingertips let us shoot amazing quality images with few limits. Having great images is the goal, but keeping them – safeguarding them for the future – is also a top priority for me.”

So how does Steve – who travels more than 100 days a year, and describes himself as “paranoid” about maintaining his archive – ensure that his images of weary passengers on a Brooklyn bus or street vendors in Jaipur stay safe? In this post, Steve tells us about his storage workflow and the LaCie devices he relies on to keep his images secure.

LaCie Rugged RAID
The new LaCie Rugged RAID drive has a few things that I love. First of all, the stylish and rugged orange rubber casing contains two internal hard drives with 2 TB of storage apiece, preconfigured in hardware RAID 0. For a prolific shooter like me, 4 TB is a comforting amount of storage. I don’t have to worry about not having enough space on most shoots.

However, I prefer to configure the device to RAID 1 when I’m in the field. That way, when I download my images to one of the drives, it immediately makes a mirror copy on the other drive for an instant backup. If one drive should happen to fail, the data on the other drive is safe and available. On a long, extended assignment, I might choose RAID 0, giving me essentially one big, fast 4-TB drive.

Another thing that I love about the LaCie Rugged drives aside from the storage, speed and durability is the built-in Thunderbolt cable. One of my photographic pet peeves is the number of cables, wires and battery chargers I’m forced to take on the road with me. With the new LaCie Rugged series drives, not having to worry about misplacing, forgetting or losing my Thunderbolt cable is a stress relief. It’s a genius move, a little design touch that makes a big positive difference to the user — something that LaCie is known for.

LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2
Once I’ve safely uploaded my SanDisk cards to my 4 TB LaCie Rugged in RAID 1, I have two copies of the shoot. I then make a third copy, transferring the files to my LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2. This little gem is state-of-the-art in speed and security. Thunderbolt is plenty fast, Thunderbolt 2 is crazy fast, and SSD are probably the most secure drives. They have no moving parts, which allows them to take a bit more abuse than traditional hard drives. For a traveling photographer I think they are well worth the investment. And because the LaCie Little Big Disk is Thunderbolt 2, I use it to edit, getting maximum performance and speed.

By the way, I don’t put my memory cards back into my shooting rotation after transferring the images. Instead, I keep an “exposed card wallet”, which I carry with me. I’m not worried about my LaCie products failing as much as I am about losing them. Investing in more memory cards gives me added security – my equipment is all insured, but there is no replacing lost images.

LaCie 2big Thunderbolt 2
Once back home, I upload the shoot from my LaCie Little Big Disk mobile storage to my “holding tank”: a 12 TB LaCie 2big Thunderbolt 2. It has plenty of space, and its lightning-fast Thunderbolt 2 connection lets me tweak and finish my edit on my iMac in the comfort of my home office.

LaCie 5big Thunderbolt 2
After I’ve signed off on the edit, I transfer the images from the 12 TB LaCie 2big to my archive storage: the 30 TB LaCie 5big Thunderbolt 2. This is the place where my entire life’s work of digital imagery lives. I make a duplicate copy to my second LaCie 5big , which I then return to its off-site location.

What I love about these massive storage tanks is the safety of RAID 5 or 6, which allows me to swap out a drive if it fails without losing one bit of information. For a prolific photographer like me, these big storage solutions make sense; but all photographers are faced with a growing archive, and being able to maintain up to 30 TB (with RAID 5) in a single unit is a wonderful thing.

LaCie 5big NAS Pro
I also have a LaCie 5big NAS Pro where I export my four- and five-star images so I have access to my best work at anytime, from anywhere in the world. As a professional, the LaCie 5big NAS Pro is a good investment that can make you money when you get a call for an image while you’re on the road. With the LaCie 5big NAS Pro, high-res versions of my best work is always accessible.

So there you have it. I trust LaCie with my most important material possession: a photographic lifetime of work.

Learn More About Steve Simon >

All photos copyright Steve Simon.

2018-09-04T16:55:47+00:00