Nature and landscape photography can be difficult in central Ohio during the winter. My aesthetic has me on the hunt for color and for abstracts. Finding color can be a challenge, but it can be found.
Hard Road Park in November
Hard Road Park in December With Snow
Inniswoods Before Snow in December
Inniswoods in February
Nothing says covid quite like this photograph of Nancy
Olentangy Trail on Christmas
Woodbridge Green Park in December
I have been forced by life circumstances to learn as much as I have about all things technology. I could write a lot about all the modifications we made to our home to make it totally accessible for Pauline. We made it possible for Pauline to communicate in all ways and manipulate her home environment from the couch. If you are interested in this technology, I have described it in my book which you can find on this web site and order from Amazon. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Pauline H. Siegel Eclipse Fund for Research (Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association).
I am one of the least technological people around. My daughter in law enjoys telling the story about how I used to call my son, David, to ask him to come to my house to change lightbulbs. In the computer days of DOS, I used to make one of my colleagues totally insane because I could never remember the commands for save, print, copy or paste. Over the years, I’ve become quite comfortable with my ineptitude with technology. Unfortunately, I am also amazingly organized and highly neurotic about being responsible. Both characteristics have forced me to be way more technological than my innate aptitude allows.
Much of this article describes how I use hardware and software in my photography, including my system for backing up my images. This article is not about my workflow for ‘developing’ my raw images. I will describe this process and software in a different article.
Through my studies in photography, I’ve learned that every serious photographer has a system for storing and backing up their photographs. Computer technology, storage and backup processes have been an important lesson in every photography class I’ve taken. If you do digital photography, these issues are core to how you do your work regardless of whether you are a student, amateur or professional. I read photography blogs and watch videos about these practices and I’ve learned some critical techniques and strategies. I’ve adopted many of these practices and even if you are not a photographer, there are some important principles to consider about storing and protecting your information if you are going to be operating in the electronic universe. My 96-year-old mother has an email account, is on the internet and uses zoom. If you aren’t in this universe, you need to be or you are missing out on some important information, education, and entertainment.
My digital life has been significantly complicated by my role as president of the Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association. For almost 20 years, most of the work being done was accomplished by four volunteers. We backed up each other’s files and we shared a complex workflow. When we began our work, home computers were relatively new and the internet was just getting off the ground. The cloud was pretty much the puffy stuff just below heaven. In those days, storing and backing up files was far less complicated than it has become. With more and more people on the internet and more business being done electronically, the need for redundancy and security has increased. With all the ways criminals can use to monetize their evil, the need for protecting oneself, has become critical – for everyone.
I had the membership database on my computer. Our planning, day to day operations and our history were stored on my computer. Important research projects were on my computer. The need for a reliable storage system, a good backup strategy and an effective security system were critical.
I’m going to start with security. Other than hardware malfunctions, a great way to lose files is to be the victim of cybercrime. My homeowner’s insurance now includes a provision to cover you if you are a victim of this type of criminality. If this insurance has made its way to the residential service market, these attacks are likely pretty common. Learning good security practices is so important. There are lots of web sites that I avoid because if they are outside of the mainstream, they are also great places for criminal activity. Also, I just don’t click on links, particularly if I don’t know the person sending me the link. I go to the website myself and find the pages they are referencing. I also don’t open an attachment unless I know the sender and the context for their sending the file. None of what I described are surefire ways to avoid getting hacked by the eight year old Ukrainian, but I work to up my odds. I use good protective and security software on my computer that also includes a firewall.
I also have a hardware firewall in my computer system. When we remodeled the house to make it accessible for Pauline, we had open walls and took the opportunity to create a LAN by wiring the house with CAT 5E cable. The LAN originates through the modem in our basement. On the house side of the modem, we’ve installed a firewall router with four ports. The cables then go to four different rooms in our house. Each of our computers and laptops can be hardwired into this LAN. I also have a wireless router in my study that is attached to this LAN. The entire house receives service through this router. As we have all these wireless gadgets in our house that can be manipulated by voice command (amazon echos and dots) and on our phones, the wireless signal is important.
One of my most important security measures is my password software and my password practices. Like all of you, I went through phases of using the same password for every website that required this protection. I then evolved into 27 different versions of this password. If you are using these practices today, you are a sitting duck. Fact is, we are all sitting ducks regardless of what we do, but you are the sittingest of all the ducks. You might as well just give the eight-year-old Ukrainian your social security number and ask him to have his way with you. I use Lastpass as my password software. Most password programs work the same way. My passwords are in the cloud; they reside on their servers. I have to remember one password; the one I need to access the vault. I can generate passwords using their software of any length I select and using the characters required by the site. I never use the same password more than once. If my passwords are more than a few years old, I go through all my sites and I change them. As more services and programs have become cloud based, the numbers of my websites have increased. My vault is large and it continues to grow. I never have to remember any of my passwords beyond the one that gets me into the vault. And I have the program set up so that if I experience dementia as part of my developmental process, my son can get into my vault. The last time I changed all my passwords, it took me two days to complete the process. It involved many hours of work, but it is worth it to avoid the problems that could happen if you don’t do this.
Another important security strategy I use is to delete accounts that I no longer use. I don't just allow them to dangle free in the universe. That approach is asking for trouble, particularly when you never use the account and forget about it. I periodically review my accounts in the password vault. If I don't use it, I go to the website, log into my account and delete it.
My software program auto fills most of my usernames and passwords. If you pay for the program, you can use it on multiple devices. Thus, I can access the same vault from my desktop, my laptops and my phone. On my phone, I can set up most of these sites so I can access them by using the touch pad identification thing. It is fast, safe, and easy.
If a site allows, I set up two-step authorization. I have this set up on most sites. I’m never without my phone, so receiving the text code is not a problem. I have authorization software on my phone from about five different programs. That is a pain in the butt because I’m never sure which software they push the authorization to, so I often have to check a few of them to see where they went. Adobe just created their own authorization program (of course) so I know where to go if it is one of their programs.
Eventually, companies are going to figure out that if they don’t create a universal and easy to use set of security practices, people and companies will implode and all these devices will become useless hunks of rare materials that are only found in China. Our society has become entirely dependent on hardware and software that is too complicated for the average person. Me. And as you can surmise from this article thus far, my use and knowledge of this stuff is slightly above average, as I have been forced to adopt, as noted.
By the way, I was also our newsletter and journal editor for years, so I had to figure out how to create a publication, print it and mail it all over the world.
I am using a ten-year-old computer. I’m thinking most people don’t use their computers for ten years. My approach on technology is to buy on the horizon of memory and storage, processing power and features, get the highest quality possible and then use it until it rolls over dead. I had the same philosophy about cars, except I also had to factor in that the kids would total the cars before they could reach full maturation.
Through the advice of a tech guru and long-time leader in our association, Jim Lubin, I purchased my computer from Puget Systems. Their computers are exceptional quality. They test all the components for compatibility and they use only the highest quality parts. The computer is constructed like a tank. Since the original purchase, I have added a hard drive, I doubled the original memory and I added a better graphics card to support a 30-inch 4K monitor. Other than those additions, I’m using a computer I purchased in 2011. When I’m having a computer issue, it is more often the windows operating system, and not the hardware. I’ll eventually purchase a new computer, and it will be from Puget Systems. In addition to their computers, they offer great technical support.
I have three hard drives in my computer. None of them are solid state drives. My C: drive stores my windows 64 operating system and all my programs. My E: drive stores all my files except for photographs and video. All my photographs and video are in folders on my D: drive. I only have jpeg images on my computer hard drive.
When I have completed a shoot or a travel vacation, I open Lightroom, insert my memory cards into the card readers and upload my images. I have my upload set up so that they are left as raw images but converted into the Adobe DNG format. The images are copied onto my D: drive and Lightroom is set up to eject the card when the upload is completed. The images are physically stored on the hard drive and then are virtually entered into my Lightroom catalog.
I remove the card with all the images still on the memory card in the original Canon raw format. I put the card away without deleting any of the images from the card. It isn’t until I have the photographs worked and backed up that I delete them from the card. I never delete images from the memory cards in the computer. I delete them in my camera by re-formatting the card.
When I complete my work on an image, I save it into the same folder as the raw image in the highest resolution jpeg that Lightroom allows. These remain large files, but smaller than the raw images, as the jpeg format is a compressed file. I have about 90,000 images in my Lightroom catalog and these files take up more than two TBs of space on the D: drive.
After I have all the images worked in a folder, I move the raw files off the D: drive onto two different external drives. I do this manually in windows file explorer and then return to Lightroom and synchronize the folder. Any time you change the contents of a folder outside of Lightroom, you need to synchronize the folder so the program has an accurate record of its contents. Everything is virtual in Lightroom which is really one of the powers of this program. I will describe how this works in an upcoming article. I move all the raw files off the internal hard drive because they are each 30 MBs in size, about twice the size of the compressed jpeg file. The external drives are mirrors of each other.
In addition to the two identical backup external drives for my raw files, I have two system-wide backup strategies. One of my backups is done once a week to a local external drive. The second backup is to CrashPlan which is a cloud service. Both backups include all my preference files from programs which live on my C: drive, all of my files from the E: drive and all of my videos and photographs from my D: drive. My CrashPlan backup runs in the background whenever my computer is turned on. All new files and any changes to files are backed up immediately. As both backups involve only new files or incremental changes to existing files, they don’t take long to complete. The original backups took weeks. My drives store multiple TBs of data.
My backup strategy involves a local backup and a cloud backup. If any of my drives were to fail from a mechanical error, all my files could be restored locally which is a much faster backup than doing this from the cloud. If I should experience a disaster locally and all my computer equipment were destroyed, I would still have all my files safe and sound on a server which is outside of my home. In fact, my files are on a server hundreds of miles from my home.
As our lives become more electronic and the important moments of our lives are recorded more often digitally as opposed to on paper, our treasures become susceptible to the vagaries of technology. Stuff breaks. Think for a moment about what you have on your computer or on your phone. How would you feel about losing all of it? Your photographs, important correspondence, your contact lists. There is so much of sentimental value on our devices. If you aren’t backing up and backing up to multiple external drives, you are vulnerable to losing all of it. We are all also vulnerable to attack by nefarious people who are seeking to steal your identity or are attempting to hold your files hostage in exchange for a ransom. If governments, medical institutions, and every large company around the globe are vulnerable, how secure are you?
I have no doubt in my mind that there is no failsafe way to protect yourself in this crazyland universe. But you have to try. Using a good password generator and program with multi-factor authentication is important. Using a good backup strategy to both external local drives as well as drives in the cloud is important. If your computer does get hacked, all your files are going to be safe. You can wipe your drives, start the computer from scratch once it has been cleaned of hacker cooties, and you download your files.
The hours and effort I expend working on my photographs is more than substantial. If I were to lose my work, I would be pretty upset. In fact, I also upload all my photographs to Shutterfly because it is free to do so. I also upload all my favorite photographs to Flickr. My Flickr account is a paid account and it allows me to upload full resolution jpegs with unlimited storage. Shutterfly also offers unlimited storage of your images.
All the work I have done for The Transverse Myelitis Association and the Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association is also stored on my computer. The thousands of pages of writing, the many research files, the history of the association resides on my computer. Losing all of that would really suck.
I hope this article has given you some ideas about protecting your personal life and perhaps your professional life from the problems that exist because things break and because humanity is loaded with many crazy people and some who aren’t very nice. Being responsible and organized can save a lot of possible and irreparable problems. It involves some work and some money to set up, but ultimately it is a lot easier and cheaper than having to learn what bitcoin is and how to find enough of it to satisfy an eight-year-old Bulgarian.
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