Daily Prompt: Photography is the real reason for my external Hard disks

Click over to your favourite blog, and pick out the 4th and 14th words (that aren’t “the” or “an”). Drop them into this phrase:

“_____ is the new _____.”

I remember the first time we had this blog in the dark ages of 2013. I told the daily prompt people then that I definitely not have a favourite blog and the second time round I still do not have one. I think these prompts are going from bad to worse. Why do I do them? Because they are there and because I daily meet others writing their prompts. Most of us have been writing these prompts for some time, we have got to know each other, if only  by name, but together we are strong or something like that.

Anyhow, not wanting to disappoint, I still have something write about. Photography is the new reason for my external Hard disks. Let us begin with a photo.

Not exactly Pulitzer prize suspicious, but it was not easy for me to post this picture. First of all it did not exist, it was still a figment of my imagination. What you can see are three external hard drives. The one at the bottom I have had for many years with not a great capacity, but the top two are the super models. The one on the right has a capacity to hold 1 Terabyte and the one on the left 2 Tera byte. The 2 Terabyte is even labelled with 2 Terabyte to ensure I know which one it is, although it is somewhat thicker than the 1 Terabyte model. I had to take this photo especially for the prompt. This was not easy. First of all I had to organise the lighting effects, persuade my Nikon DSLR to do what I wanted and then upload it onto the computer. I then uploaded it into my photo hosted Flickr and then to be sure that nothing could happen, I inserted the photo into each one of my hard drives. This took me about half an hour because I had to re-organise the file named “Photography”as I had combined it with “Food” which was not a good idea.

Most of us take photos with a camera or our mobile phone and as we no longer go to the drug store to have the film developed we do it all ourself. Where do you put the photos? This could be a problem, especially if you have collected over 11,000 photos over the years like me.

First of all I have them on my computer. At the moment my windows Acer computer still has room, although I am not sure how much. Of course there are external platforms in the computer world to store your photos as a backup. I have mine in a place called Flickr. They all have names, Google, Instagram, Photobucket, SmugMug to name a few. Flickr allows me to post my photos, using their html codes, or perhaps just copy paste, to my blogging site. I prefer html as I know what I am doing. Unfortunately these hosting sites tend to “improve” their offers from time to time, but luckily I still have things under control, unimproving their new looks to how it used to be. This is not so important.

So we have photos on the computer and on a photo hosting site, what could possibly go wrong. A lot actually. Your computer breaks down and the photos are gone. Flickr is still there of course. To ensure that you have further backups you organise an external HD. However, many years ago my external HD decided to strike. I lost all the photos on it and unfortunately not all were on my computer. I returned to Flickr to upload the lost photos onto my computer. I discovered something. The hosting sites are there to host, but not to return the photos they host. This meant I had to reload each photo from Flickr separately back to my computer hard drive. There are programmes that organise this with bulk reloads, but only in the mini version of your photo. The things we learn on the way.

Where do I stand today? Yes, I have all my photos on my computer, plus on three hard drives. Now I can really say what could possibly happen. If my Windows computer breaks down, I still have my photos in Flickr and on the hard drives. The only place I do not have them is on my Apple computer. Oh, I almost forgot, Mr. Swiss has a drop box for his jazz music, No. 2 son also has a drop box, but I am not sure what he drops into it and now Mrs. Angloswiss also has a drop box for her photos. I could send my photos to hover in a cloud somewhere, but would probably have to pay, and I do try to keep expenses at a minimum.

Am I being extra fussy? I was wondering, fellow prompters and photographers, how do you solve the problem of storing your photos? Am I being over cautious with my more than 3 Terabyte space. I think the room for my photos is larger than my apartment.