This week's podcast was devoted to explaining the benefits of using a PogoPlug (plus a USB Hard Drive) as a server that would allow you to share photos with your clients - simple, easy, no learning curve, reliable, etc. The list goes on. Well, today my PogoPlug icon told me there was an update waiting, and guess what, this one brought the heat: Automated backups. Well, they all it 'Active Copy', but it's the same thing.

The three folders it offers by default are your pictures, music, and movies - although you are free to add any folder you want. This is a dream-come-true for someone who wants an additional level of backup and doesn't want to pay for a service like Carbonite. Don't get me wrong, I like Carbonite, but it's not for me, and it's also no their fault. The bottle-neck in off-site backup solutions is most often the ISP - they cap the maximum amount of data that can be uploaded per day. I found that I got about 3-4 GB/day uploaded successfully - not great seeing as how I added between 4-8 GB/day in photos. At that rate, I would never catch up. The PogoPlug backs-up through the LAN, so it doesn't need to go through the ISP, saving me from the same problem as off-site backup.

Keep up the good work CloudEngines.

If you're interested, check out the PogoPlug here.

Here's how conversation usually went when I first began in photography:

Q: So what line of work are you in?
A: I'm a photographer.
Q: Oh really, what sort of photography?
A: Just about everything - real estate, weddings, portraits...Let me show you, do you have a computer? Oh, right, we're outside, of course you don't - I'll send you an email.

Argh. So what's the solution to this conundrum? The portable portfolio.

Do yourself a favor right now: Go out and buy an iPhone, iPod Touch, or some sort of Android device with a great screen.

Be Prepared:

If the conversation prompts someone wanting to see your work, you're ready. You don't have to ask them if they have a computer, you don't have to email them a link, you don't have to let the conversation dwindle - you can grab their attention immediately and make your pitch.

Update it Regularly:

Now that you have it, update it. Allocate 15 minutes each week to adding your new top picks, dropping your new low picks, and rearranging the rest. This will keep your portfolio fresh and reflect your best work to date.

Digital vs Print:

Nothing beats your work in print. The look, the feel, the smell, the sense of finality - it's unbeatable. It's also inconvenient, time-consuming, and expensive. The digital portfolio is all about instantly being able to showcase your work anywhere at anytime. It doesn't attempt to replace your printed portfolio, it supplements it for brief encounters.

So if you don't have a portable portfolio already, get one.

I think by now, we all know the importance of backing our data up. Additionally, I think many of us have begun taking extra steps in the field to back-up our photos in case a memory card becomes corrupted, or more likely, goes missing.

Enter the backup devices. Surprisingly, there's not much of a selection. Check it our for yourself, there are only a handful of reputable devices on the market. And guess what else - they're expensive.

If you read the title of this post, I'm sure you've already caught onto what I do: I use a netbook as a backup device. Why? A few main reasons:

1. They cost less than the majority of photo backup devices that offer comparable storage. Case in point - my Dell Mini 10v cost me $334 - 10 inch screen, 160 GB Hard Drive, 6 hour battery life (with wi-fi turned on). An Epson P7000 would have cost me $725 - 4 inch screen, 160 GB Hard Drive, no idea what the battery life would be (every review I read reported it differently due to the fact that every photographer uses the device differently). Even the P6000 would have cost $530 and only offered 80 GB of storage.
   
   
2. They are infinitely more useful than dedicated photo backup devices as you can compose emails, browse the web, check the news, uh...I think you know what a computer can do at this point. Essentially, these little netbooks can keep you from lugging your 15" or 17" notebook around all day - so long as you don't attempt to actually do any post-production work on them.
   
   
3. (This one only applies to a certain audience) If you pick the right netbook and are willing to take some risks, you can make yourself a neat little hackintosh. You probably already know by now that I'm a mac-person, and that while I'd live with Windows 7 on a netbook, I'd much rather be using a mac.

Make sure to consider netbooks when you're shopping around for a backup device, you may be surprised at what you find.  

I waited until the hype wore off to post anything about Lightroom 3 Beta. Yeah, it's out. Yeah, it's 'neat'. And yeah, it's buggy. Come on, it's a beta, that's to be expected.

To be blatantly honest, it's a minor upgrade with a few additions. The adjustment brush interface has been tweaked, it can now export to Flickr within a window, you can now see sharpening at any percentage, noise reduction has been improved, importing is faster and more pleasing to the eye, it asks to back-up when you exit the program as opposed to when you open it, there are new slideshow exporting options, etc. The list of significant, but small, improvements goes on. What does this mean for real estate photographers? ...Um…watermarking…?

I couldn't think of anything else, that's really why I said watermarking. I don't watermark my images before they go to the MLS, but some do, so it should be a welcome addition not to have to rely on LRMogrify (it only exports 10 at a time unless you donate). Lightroom 2 offered us the adjustment brush - one of the single-most useful tools in Lightroom that enables us to spend less time in Photoshop. I guess I was just hoping for another big change like the adjustment brush. I do see the video slideshow's being useful to some, just like watermarking - but again, not for me.

In all seriousness, I imagine Lightroom 3 will be a great program that will, in fact, make our lives easier. If the program I spend 95% of my time in is stronger and more user-friendly, count me in.

Check it out here.

So I was reading Larry's post the other day on PFRE about the fact that some real estate photographers seem to wonder if other real estate photographers shoot anything else other than real estate (what a sentence). I thought I'd give my opinion on that one: Yes, and I'm proud of it.

Take this whatever way you want, but I like doing two things: paying the mortgage and photography. It's because of one that I can do the other, and vice vera. My view is that if you can make a living taking pictures - no matter what particular area of interest - you're doing just fine.

One drawback, and there's truth to it as well, is that a jack of all trades tends to be a master of none. Look at it this way - Person A shoots architecture full-time for 5 years while Person B shoots architecture, portraits, and weddings full-time for 5 years - all things being equal, Person A will be ahead of the curve when it comes to architecture. There's really no disputing it. Hey, I admit it, I'm Person B and I love what I do. How about you?