The One that Got Away: Kike Calvo’s Storage Tips for Photographers

Award-winning professional photographer Kike Calvo, combines knowledge, intuition, and serendipity to capture jaw-dropping photos. As a freelancer, he has photographed travel assignments for the New York Times, UNOPS and UNICEF in multiple destinations, and as a Photography Expert for National Geographic/Lindblad Expeditions, Calvo’s photos have been published in an exhaustive list of mainstream publications, including Time, New Yorker, Newsday, New York Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many others. His book, “Habitats,” featured a foreword penned by famed marine photographer David Doubilet and Jean-Michel Cousteau, and before the end of the year, his new drone books, “So You Want to Create Maps using Drones” (foreword by Yale University Professor Xuhui Lee) and “Drones for Conservation,” will be available in Amazon.

On location in Panama, Calvo was followed home by two cars and robbed. The equipment could be replaced: cameras, lenses, laptop, and so on. But what couldn’t be replaced was the loss of hard drives worth of underwater images of humpback whales in the Silver Banks, shot in a region near the Dominican Republic. Devastated by the loss, Calvo resolved to never again lose photos for any reason. Following are Calvo’s tips for protecting images in the field.

  1. While still in the field, make at least two versions of your files, and then send one version with a different person.
  2. Put a third version of your photos in your pocket. Do this by choosing your best images — your “jewels of the day” — at the end of each day of shooting and placing them on a USB key (Calvo uses a LaCie XtremKey).
  3. Don’t touch your images — either by editing, organizing, or importing them into Aperture/Lightroom — until you’ve backed them up.
  4. If you have an Internet connection, upload your best (unedited) images to the cloud.
  5. If you’re on a budget, use multiple, small SD cards. This also lessens the impact of a failed card.
  6. Go faster with Thunderbolt so you can spend less time transferring files and ensure you quickly have duplicate copies of your photos.
  7. Know before you go. This lets you match your gear to local conditions.
  8. When choosing gear, prioritize simplicity over bells and whistles.

Photos ©Jonathan Kingston

2018-09-04T16:42:45+00:00