Thursday, April 15, 2010

Improvements to Technological Infrastructure

Being a photographer means more than just clicking a button. I know how paramount it is to have a working library to house all of my images. As a result I've made it a point to improve the technological infrastructure that I have working for me:
  • A faster Internet connection. As of yesterday I replaced our 8 year old cable modem. As of last week I upgraded our Internet connection from 3Mb/s download and 256Kb/s upload to 10Mb/s download and 1Mb/s upload. Actual tests come in around 9Mb/s down and .7Mb/s up.
  • External library. I house all my pictures on my MacBook 5.1's 500GB hard drive. But I'm finding that I have to delete stuff to make room for new pictures so I have enough virtual memory. I'm now in the process of moving my Lightroom library to a larger external library (3Tb). I'll keep the recent shoots on the computer but archive the finished shoots off-computer. I'll be backing up both this library as well as the HD on the computer.
  • More processing power . The MacBook 5.1 is a great computer. Even at 4GB DDR3 1066MHz and 2.4GHz Dual Core. It still starts to chug when rendering Lr previews and certain blurs in Photoshop. I'm custom ordering a MacBook Pro with i7, 8GB DDR3, and 256GB SSD, . Should be at least a little faster.
  • iPad. I'm not real sure how this thing plays into the whole infrastructure but I'm finding that it's a hugely convenient way to show pictures when I'm at the studio without bringing people to the computer. I'll be uploading pictures into iPhoto soon.
Hopefully I'll have updates soon...

2 comments:

  1. Totally agree with You Charles about Internet, Today I switched to 100Mbps down, 79Mbps up. :)

    Do you backup your pictures on DVD?

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  2. Charles, check out the ioSafe as well. Here it is at Costco: http://tinyurl.com/y57habs

    Welcome back, by the way. How was the trip and workshop?

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