Technology and Photography

If you are not a professional photographer, you might think that all you need is a camera to become a photographer. While that’s true to some extent, to do it right and protect your client’s interests you need more than that. Actually when everyone was shooting film, technology was much less important. As a result obsolesence was much less of a factor. Shooting digital now means we are constantly chasing technology that keeps evolving more quickly.

The technology is more than just camera bodies. As you upgrade to higher resolution cameras (larger file sizes) you then also need more disk space to store those images. Also larger files require more memory and faster processors. Which means new computers. Also with a new camera, you often have to upgrade your software so it can read the new RAW file format.

When it comes to disk storage you have to plan on how you are going to backup and protect your clients images. It could be devastating to lose a hard drive and all images on it. To prevent that from occuring you must have redundancy in your system. Meaning you have to backup all your images with a RAID server or to DVDs or via an online backup service.

I guess my point is that to be a professional photographer today, you have invest in much more than just camera and a couple of lenses.

Thanks for reading!

-Ken