Hey Everyone! Hope you're doing great today. This week I want to tell you about a weekend trip me and some other "Photo Nuts" took to South Carolina to Congaree National Park.  If you haven't heard about it don't feel bad I hadn't either.  My friend Robert a partner in Photo Crimes , had suggested the trip and he always seems to have good trips planned. So after saying yes I started a little research.  The first place I went was YouTube.  I'm a big fan of YouTube and like to see what other people say in a review of a place. Well the first couple of reviews talk about Congaree as the worst National Park in the US.  That was not what I wanted to learn about this park. Located about an half hour drive from the eastern side(right side of the map)  of Columbia SC.  It is mostly a swampy National park great for Kayaking and exploring through the swampy land.  But as a hiker it had some trails but it also has a 2.5 mile boardwalk over the swamp to the Congaree River.  Now I love National Parks and want to visit as many as I can and this summer I'll add six more parks to my been there list.  So if nothing else it will me a tic mark on my list of National Parks. We, Me and Robert and another "Photo Nut" Mike decided to leave Friday night stay in Columbia do some night photography and go to Congaree in the morning.  Robert and Myself were going to do about a 7 mile trail and Mike was going to shoot some wildlife stuff near the water.  This park is known for flooding and the forecast was for rain.  Not looking good.  But that was the Plan.  Here is what happened.

Friday- Left home about 1:30ish in the afternoon for a 31/2 to 4 hour drive to Columbia. We started our trip and it was interstate driving most of the way so kind of boring and crowded.  But we passed the time cutting up and having fun conversations as three retired Military Vets would have.  You know War stories and the such. When we got to Columbia it had started to rain.  We found our hotel for the night near Ft. Jackson and put most of our things in the room. We donned our Rain Coats and headed out to our first destination. A man made waterfall at a park.  It was really coming down now.  When we got to the park the water was cut off to the waterfall and it was raining hard. We decided to go eat and see if it would let up. We went to Quakerstate and Lube and automotive themed restaurant that was a Sports Bar theme to it. We ordered Burgers and Wings and after we finished we were stuffed.  I mean loosen the top button of your pants full. We decided that the night was a wash (literally ) and to make plans for the next day.

Saturday- We had called the park Friday and found that some of the trails were under water.  So we figured we could at least show up , get the fridge magnet, T-shirt and call it a day and head to an alternate place Santee State Park. When we got to the park there wasn't too many cars in the parking lot of the visitors center so we got out and started to explore.  We found the Boardwalk and started to see how far we could go. Let me tell you it was gorgeous , lush and green and some of the trees were enormous .  There are some champion trees here, Loblolly Pine , and Birch. Champion trees are the largest of their species.  Pretty Cool. We did come to where the water overcame the boardwalk and had to turn around.  I actually didn't think that I would get anything good here but I was happily surprised. Our last stop in the park was the visitors center where we got our National Park Passports Stamped and souvenirs. Our next stop was Santee State Park a South Carolina State Park. It was an hour or so drive there from Congaree.  When we arrived we went to the Camp Store and walked out on the dock and could look upon the Lake Marion.  We then went on a hike that was suppose to be a 1/4 mile hike but ended up to be about 4 miles or so. We got a little off course. After the unexpected hike we were hungry and tired and a little sweaty. We went to a BBQ joint called Lone Star.  It was absolutely fabulous .  A comfort food home style cooking in a Buffet.  What could get better.  We did it again and ate too much but you can't pass on Banana Pudding. We then drove home about a 4 hour drive.

The whole trip we were cutting up and having a ball.  And it goes to show you that when your going on a photography trip you have to be flexible and you might find something better than what you had planned. It was a great trip and I got some good photo's to boot.  So until next week go out and explore and take a friend you'll have a blast. Here is a link to a trip video by Robert O'Sullivan Congaree Trip Video
 

Hey Everyone, Hope everyone is doing great in these trying times.  This week I want to talk about my mobile workflow when doing photography on the road.  My mobile situation has changed many times but I’m always trying to make it better more streamline and lightweight in the long run.  To prove my point I’m writing this blog using my iPad mini 5 and a Bluetooth travel keyboard.  Like I have said I have tried all sorts of ways to backup my photography and video files and edit while I’m on the road with the less fuss and bulk and weight.  Now this system is just the way I do stuff now I’m sure it will change again but I seem to have it pretty dialed in.  First of all it has to be light weight and versatile I’m not as young as I used to be and if it can be used for more than one thing even better. If you remember from last week I was exploring and testing out ways to back up my SD cards without an laptop. I ran some test on the Ravpower Filehub at work and it worked like a champ it is in my travel kit for this trip. I also used it as a mobile WiFi router and it also worked great. I had five computers working off of the WiFi and it handled it with no problem. So if your in a hotel that doesn't have WiFi or it is very weak and they have a wired port you can hook this device up and make a small WiFi network at 5g speed. Well enough about the File Hub here we go step by step of my workflow for mobile photography.

- First I bring at least one SD card for everyday with a few extras.  So if I go for a week I have at a minimum 7 SD cards.  I didn’t buy them all at once.  When I find them on sale I’ll buy a few.  Before you know it you have plenty.  The original SD card will be the first copy of my workflow and will not be used again on this trip.

- Second When I get back to the hotel I take the SD card out of my Camera and put a newly formatted one in my camera and charge my batteries for the next day.  I then take that SD card and back it up using a new little gadget I just got.  The RAVpower File Hub.  I can attach a SSD (solid state drive) up to 3TB to the hub and then take my SD card and insert and push a button and it will transfer all of the files to the SDD drive in a time stamped folder.  I don’t have to be hooked up to the internet or anything.  I then can take the SD card  and put in my card wallet to the same space that was left empty by the card I have just put in my camera. I put the card in upside down so I know not to use it again.  Now I have two copy’s of my photo’s or videos and I never keep them in the same place. Always in different bags.

-Now for editing. All my editing while on the road will be done with my iPad mini and an iPencil.  I don’t plan on doing a lot of editing while on the road maybe one or two for social media and I can do this easily with the iPad.  I have Lightroom and Photoshop Express which is plenty of power for these types of edits. I can see my files using the RAVpower File Hub or with an SD card reader that I can hook to my iPad via lightning port.  The file hub works great and I can hook to it via WiFi and using an App on the iPad I can access my files. This system I have tested and seems to work very well to edit and post to the internet.

So that’s my workflow and how I manage my files while traveling. Carrying a laptop and charger, mouse and all of that is quite a lot just to backup files especially if the laptop is your main computer. If something happened to it on the road what would you do? I also use my iPad for many other things also like maps, gps, etc…  and its a cellular/WiFi so connectivity is pretty good when on the go.  The iPad mini is also smaller than a normal iPad and can fit in any bag.  The file hub is about the size of a deck of cards so the footprint of this setup is much smaller than the 13 inch MacBook Air I have used in the past.  This system gives me two copy’s of my photo’s and videos and when I get home I can import them into Lightroom or any other software I may use.  When they make it on my main computer then they are backed up to the cloud via Backblaze. So as you see I like multiple copies of my files.

I have tried many systems from WiFi SSD drives that worked but clunky to an Android tablet that didn’t work at all.  My main goal is to be mobile and still do all the things I want to do on the road. If you think about it I really don’t need the iPad I could do everything with my phone but not as easily. My eyes aren’t the same as they used to be so the iPad mini works for now .  I may have to go to a regular size one in the future! LOL The iPencil works well as a editing tool and works well as a mouse too.  

This system might not work for everyone you might want your laptop but for me the ease of being more mobile and versatile is what matters the most.  Hope this helps and gives some tips for a better travel experience on photography trips.  So until next week keep shooting and get outside!

Hey Everyone! Today I'm talking about a topic that I've been trying to perfect for the last couple of years.  Backing up my SD cards without using a computer. Why you ask? Well when traveling especially if I'm only going for a few days up to a week or so I would like to do so without my computer.  It seems the only thing I use my computer for is backing up my SD cards to an external hard drive. Especially if your Laptop is your main computer what would you do if it got stolen or damaged? I've got a large trip for me coming up in a couple of months that I am going to be so busy traveling and taking photo's and video that I won't have time to do anything but photograph eat and sleep.  Most of my trips are like this .  Go,Go,Go!  I want to see and photograph all I can and then edit when I get home.  Taking a bulky computer with me just to backup an SD card seems like a waste of time , space and weight.  So for the last couple of years I have tried different things but always come back to using my computer.  The first thing I tried was a small Windows based tablet.  I could get my cards backed up but the tablet was so weak that it couldn't do anything else except browse the web.  So I quit using it.  I tried a wireless SSD that I could plug my card into and it would backup my card and I could access my files via WIFI.  This worked but was very slow and costly.  The unit cost a few hundred dollars and it was clunky.  This year I'm going to try something new. Actually two things.  The first is that since I have been trying this ,IOS (Apple devices) have come up with a filing system.  So I can plug in a hub via lightning port and copy files from SD Card to SSD drive. The other is a small file sharing hub/server that you can transfer SD card to SSD drive without having the IOS device plugged in.  It copies everything off of the SD card into a Time Stamped folder on the SSD,  Then you can access the hub via your IOS device and edit photo's with your iPhone or iPad.  These two methods are the ones I'm going to use on my upcoming trip. Then I can choose a photo to edit if I want to to put on Social media while I'm gone using my iPad or iPhone and LightRoom the mobile version. Let me explain how I plan to employ these two methods.  

First Method.  Using iPad/IOS filing system to transfer info from SD to SSD.  First you will need a hub that contains a SD card slot and a USB slot or USB C slot so you can connect a SSD drive to your hub and plug in the SD card at the same time.  The hub I purchased from Amazon has both of these slots and some more micro SD , HDMI, and another USB slot.  It has a lightning connector because my phone I use and my iPad both use the same slot.  I have an iPad Mini 5 and a iPhone SE 2021 version.  I could uses either of these to do the transfer process.  Its real simple you connect everything to the hub ( SD card and SSD drive) and hook the hub to the IOS device.  Then you go to the file app on phone or iPad and the different drives will be shown.  You can go to the SD card and find the file that has your photos in it and copy that file.  Then you can go to the SSD drive and either copy directly to the drive or create a file and name it with the date and paste the file you copied to the SSD drive.  I did a test run last night with a SD card that had 92 raw files from my Sony A6500 and it took about 3 min.  One thing to note is that when you first hook up your hub it might take a min or so for the devices to populate depending on size.  I hooked up this 64 gig card and it populated pretty fast but a 1 TB Drive took a few min to populate.  I think the iPad was scanning the disk and it just took a while to get through the 1TB.  But after they populated it was easy to backup the SD card.  Now I shoot one card per day.  So my original SD card is one copy and the copy I put on the SSD drive is the second copy.  One copy will go on checked baggage and the other will go with me on the plane when I go home.  I put a fresh newly formatted card in my camera for the next day.  SD cards are fairly cheep and I can use one or two per day and fresh ones on the next day.

The next option is the RAV Power File Hub wireless travel Router. There are Four things you can do with this device. (1st) its is a backup battery source.(not a large one at 6700mah battery) (2nd )it can act as a wireless router from a wired ethernet cable or (3rd) it can be hooked up to wireless intent say at a hotel and be a secure WIFI with another layer of security. You don't have to subscribe to some sort of VPN service. With this device you can do many things but the main thing I want to do with it is (4th) backup my SD cards.  To use you simply Plug in your SD card and your SSD drive hold in the transfer button for 5 seconds and the device will copy everything off of your SD card to your External Drive into a Time Stamped File.  You can then access your files via WIFI and edit them on your device.  This is pretty cool .  The very cool part is that its only 60 bucks.  There are fancier devices that can do this but they can cost up to 800 dollars for a 1TB drive one that they don't even make anymore.   The draw backs are that transfer times of data are not as fast as a laptop.  But it's not terrible. Maybe only a minute or two longer from SD to SSD.  But you can choose what hard drive you want to go to by hooking up any drive you have to it. So it's versatile . The size of this device is small at 4.4 X 3 X .9 inches weighing only 7 ounces. 

I will be taking both of these devices with me on my trip. That way I will have a backup if something goes wrong with one of the devices.  But they are so small compared to Laptop and charging cord. This system of backing up my files and being to access them wirelessly to edit one or two while I travel should work great. I am testing as we speak but you never know until you use it in the field for the first time. I will let you know how it goes. So until next week Get out and shoot!