Most of the footage is from my favorite point n’ shoot on the planet; my orange, waterproof & bombproof, Lumix DMC-TS1. It shoots a type of “lite” HD. The remaining footage was shot by the official Whistler Heli-Ski photog, Duane who followed us around for a bit. I grabbed it from the daily DVD that Whistler Heli-Ski sells. Thanks to Cynthia for the music selection.

1. Using your preferred FTP program, log into ftp.johnckmedia.com with the username and password we provided to you.
2. Navigate to the folder with your company name and your file(s) will be there.
3. Please let us know when you’ve successfully download the files.

Instructions for FTP newbies:

1. Get yourself an FTP program. My favorite is the free FireFTP plugin for Firefox (donations accepted). Others for mac users I recommend Fetch and Transmit. For PC users I recommend WS_FTP and BulletProof.
2. Learn how to use the darn thing! It should only take about 2-5 minutes of your time reading the users guide or asking a friend to walk you through the steps to connect to a FTP server.
3. Using your preferred FTP program, log into ftp.johnckmedia.com with the username and password we provided to you.
4. Navigate to the folder with your company name and your file(s) will be there.
5. Please let us know when you’ve successfully download the files.

FTP and Browsers (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera)

Give it a shot! Most browsers usually have some type of FTP support built in, HOWEVER, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. We can’t keep track of how FTP’ing works in all the different versions of browsers our there. For the smoothest, fastest, and error free transfers we highly recommend using an FTP program or Client as they are called.

1. Type ftp.johnckmedia.com into the url address window. Do not type www or http://
2. Hit return and wait for the server to respond with a pop-up window asking for a username and password.
3. Enter the username and password we provided to you.
4. The browser window will display a list of folders. Navigate to the folder with your company name to access the files.

Windows Explorer FTP Option

1. Open a Windows Explorer window (not Internet Explorer)…. open something like My Documents, My Computer, My Music, etc..
2. In the address bar at the top enter: ftp.johnckmedia.com
3. A pop-up window will prompt you for a username and password.
4. Wait a few secs while you connect to the FTP server (in WinXP the little flashlight will be waving around).
5. All of a sudden, viola, the contents of the FTP server will load will load. You can navigate around, drag/drop, etc..

What is FTP?

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and it’s a great way to share files. The reason we use it here is because it allows us to easily and quickly electronically transfer image or video files that are too big for email. Another product we use quite often is You Send It. It’s not as fast a FTP, but it is secure and simple to use and they have a free account too!

Here is my shortlist of resources for aspiring shooters.

Get yourself a copy of the American Society of Media Photographers, ASMP Professional Business Practices in Photography, book. If you want to get paid for your work you better learn the language.

The Travel and Outdoor Photographers Alliance is an organization of working photographers discussing the business issues of the profession. Their site has an abundance of info.

Nick Nichols is a long time National Geographic photographer and he has some thoughtful things to say on his site about making it in this business. He poses the question, “Do you want to be a traveling adventurer, or do you want to be a photographer? They’re not the same thing.” in his post on becoming an adventure photographer.

Thinking of submitting your images to a stock photo agency? Photoshelter put out a nice summary of what they are looking for in a travel image and in my opinion their advice applies pretty well across the board to other agencies as well.

Check the Editorial Photographers (EP) site for in depth advice on starting out, the EP Estimator tool with pricing tips for the publishing industry, and a FAQ section that should answer most of your questions.  EP is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health and profitability of editorial photography.

First it was CDs, then external hard drives, then DVDs. But as everyone knows burning CD’s and DVDs takes time and is viewed as a hassle. I wanted a completely automated, real-time, backup system. So about 2-years ago, after much research, I installed a RAID system on my desktop. A RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. I purchased 4, 250-gig hard drives. Two of the drives (500-gigs) would be one volume, and the other two would be the backup (this is known as mirroring). All 4 drives were “mapped” together so it appeared as one giant volume. In addition for speed, the data was split evenly across all the drives. Every time I placed an image on the main volume, the RAID system would automatically copy that file onto the backup/hidden volume in real time. If one of the 4 drives failed all I would do is get a new one, pop it in, and the volume would rebuild itself with no loss of data. This has been great. No more time consuming backups to other types of media. I was loving life…. until last week…

“Hi Didrik, yeah, uh, this is Marcus calling with the damage report.” Marcus is a computer technician at my local computer store. I had taken my desktop in for two reasons, (1) I had maxed the storage out on my RAID and needed more space and (2) one of the drives had failed. The request to Marcus was simple. Install 4, new 500-gig hard drives, RAID them together, and copy the data from the old drives to the new drives. After dropping the computer off, my last words were, “Oh yeah, just FYI, my life’s work is on this machine.” Two days later, a surprising damage report came in from Marcus. For some reason the entire purpose of the RAID system (which was automated data redundancy) had failed along with the one bad disk. Needless to say my stress level is through the friggin’ roof. It’s 8:41am in the morning as I write this and so far Marcus has recovered 50% of the data.

In a panic yesterday I remembered all the CD and DVDs I used to back up on. They were in a box in my basement. While I didn’t back up everything I did backup the most valuable images which will continue to sell as stock for years to come. If I lose all the data I will be able to personally recover about 70%, but really the last 2-years of shooting will be lost. Some of my data backups on CD was luck in a way. I only did that because I was in the field with my laptop and making daily backups on CD. This was before everyone had a 300-gig portable external hard drive. What’s the lesson here?? A single electronic backup is not enough; always do a third backup on some type of permanent media like a CD or DVD.