Hi guys,
welcome back to the blog and a new series of episodes, where I plan to give you more detailed insights into my content workflow and how I handle things in its different stages.
If you haven’t read my last episodes, where I’ve talked about my new partnership with G-Technology and which of their gear I use, make sure to catch up here.
In this very first episode of My workflow with G-Technology, I’ll give you a short overview about how my usual work and creative process looks like when I’m out in the field or travelling and how I protect my content while doing so.
The value of content
For those of you following along my work for quite a while now, it should be pretty clear what I’m after in terms of content. Nevertheless, it might make sense to quickly talk about it in more detail.
A lot of my work is related to urban environments and architectural spaces all over the world. Next to this, lifestyle and street photography play a major role too. Usually, I either travel on behalf of a client, to capture images for a specific project, or I travel on my own, having a mission in mind and distribute the created content through different channels afterwards.
Rainy days in Shanghai, China, 2018
G-DRIVE ev RaW drive protected within a G-DRIVE ev ATC enclosure
That being said, a lot of these places I visit exist in far away countries and a lot of the moments I capture will never happen again, right after I press the shutter button. So it’s not only the circumstance that I make a living from this content but also the uniqueness of it, which ultimately makes it so valuable for me. In fact, the most important thing for me is to protect this content as much as possible, because a loss of it could mean a serious threat to my business and has the potential of destroying the career and partnerships I’ve built for many years within a second.
Time is money
The saying Time is money might sound worn out and old-fashioned to you, but this doesn’t mean it’s less true. In fact, I try to speed things up and enhance steps throughout my whole creative process whenever possible. And while I take my time to carefully think about the execution of a project, it’s the overall efficiency which defines a big part of being successful in the long-run.
Editing and backing up while on location
We live in a digitalised world, always connected to the internet and once uploaded, information and news tend to spread like wildfire. This also remains true for the business side of things: Clients can’t wait for weeks to get their content delivered and mostly gone are the times where a single image stays relevant for many weeks. Next to this, I often have to deal with last-minute requests for additional content from an already finished project or other opportunities, which might come along my way on short notice. Long story short, I get paid for the content I create and the more I’m able to deliver, the more revenue I can generate.
All of this leads to the fact, that I have to be able to provide content within very short periods and have to have access to a variety of older projects, no matter where I’m currently at. This means the mobile storage media I have with me does not only have to be very lightweight and easy to travel with, the performance of it is one of the other key factors as well, as the types of content get more complex and also bigger in file size. On top of this, reliability of the media and straightforward integration into my overall setup has to be second to none.
My personal choice
During the many years in photography, especially since travelling around the globe on a regular, I came up with quite a lot of approaches to support my content management and creative workflow. All of these setups had one thing in common, which is being cumbersome to use and none of them could solve all the requirements mentioned above. I had to constantly fight making decisions about either opting for speed or capacity. So I often ended up having one setup based on performance for editing on the go and another one focusing on capacity to bring my older projects along. Most of the time, it was a constant hassle dealing with storage solutions from different manufactures, not even talking about syncing these medias back to my main workstation when being back home from a trip.
My choice when being in the field: The G-DRIVE ev RaW SSD
The G-DRIVE ev RaW drives are compact and featherweight
Since I moved my whole content workflow to G-Technology, I can happily say, that I could solve all my prior issues. For the purpose of travelling or being in the field working on a project, I use a range of G-Technology’s G-DRIVE ev RaW drives. They either are available as a SSD version with 2TB size being the largest option and having transfer speeds of up to 425 MB/s or you go for the traditional G-DRIVE version with sizes up to 4TB and around 136 MB/s in speed. So I usually carry the SSD versions as my main editing and backup drives, while I keep older projects on the traditional G-DRIVE ev RaW drives, providing larger capacity when on a trip.
Except for the internal construction and the above mentioned differences in capacities and transfer rates, both versions share a common set of very useful specs. First, no matter if SSD or not, both drive types look and feel the exact same. They’re both equipped with a protective rubber bumper and a durable, lightweight enclosure made out of a custom polycarbonate to keep them strong and featherweight at the same time. This makes them the perfect choice for travelling to far off locations all over the globe.
From out in the field to the office and back with the G-Technology Evolution series
The best thing though: The G-DRIVE ev RaW as well as the G-DRIVE ev RaW SSD either can be used as stand-alone storage, or plugged into a G-SPEED Shuttle with ev Series Bay Adapters storage solution, to let me quickly offload, or easily back up my content when I’m back in the office. It’s a seamless workflow which supports my diverse process, all based on the G-Technology Evolution Series products.
Stay tuned for the upcoming posts to see how it all fits together, from being out in the field to being back in the office and delivering content to my clients.
In case you have additional questions, feel free to reach out to me at any time.
Thanks for reading and following along!
Talk soon,
Chris