I signed up to join the local club a few months back thinking it would be a good way to meet a few people with similar interests, maybe make a few friends etc, and by and large, I was right. The second Tuesday of every month an ever larger band of people attend Rockingham Photography Club to hear about latest camera gear, tips and tricks, techniques, look at other photographer’s work, enter competitions etc.

I’ve met some nice folk, learned a thing or two and even entered a few pics myself and done rather well so far. Last night there was a small technical issue and my batch of photos wasn’t included (along with a few others) but I didn’t really care – it was nice to see what other people had done without the pressure of my own stuff being judged. The standard of work submitted is quite good – there are some very good photographers who obviously work hard and have a good eye and then there are some others who are still learning.

Kingsley, the club founder and the guy who does the most organising and presenting was talking about backing up digital files last night and what he said made a lot of sense.

He suggested organising photos in folders by year then by month and then by date taken (I do this, just not the month, they are in the folder name of date taken) and then once that month is done, to simply back it up onto a DVD for long term archiving.

Unless you shoot more than 4.7G a month (which is possible with todays large files, however blu-ray will sort that out with 25G disks) it’s such a simple and inexpensive way to back up data in addition to the normal external hard drive method which most people do (I hope) The most it will cost you is 12 DVD’s a year plus cases and somewhere to store them.

So thanks Kingsley – a great idea – I use Time Machine, a second external drive and I shall also start doing this and keep the disks somewhere separate from the computers in case of fire or something.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my entries for the monthly theme of “looking down” were: