Reading back on my Travel Photography page here, it all seems so quaint. Photo storage devices; portable hard drives. I wrote that content last March, now it is outdated.
Cloud computing makes all of this unnecessary. You can store all – or your most important images in the cloud and not have to take the time to backup to an external device.
When I was developing his site earlier this year, my client Francois at the Saint Barth Dental Association introduced me to Dropbox. Dropbox gives you 5 gigs of free cloud storage. As you refer friends or add devices, you get more storage.
Unlike sites like Flickr, Webshots or even Smugmug, the transfer is instantaneous. You drag and drop the photos from the folder where you stored them to the DropBox folder on your hard drive. As long as you have internet access, the photos are securely stored. For professionals, you may want to research how securely.
Wifi was spotty in the last 2 hotels I stayed in Ecuador, so as soon as I got through security at the airport, I uploaded. It took a few minutes to transfer 10 days worth of shots.
You can share documents, videos – any sort of file, quickly and easily. You can even store a scan of your passport and credit cards in case of emergencies.
Dropbox has changed my life. I know my files are as secure as they can be and I can eliminate one piece of equipment from my bag. It is still necessary to bring a laptop, but I would be doing that anyway.
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This article was originally posted on August 16, 2012.