Free Training? You’d be daft not too!

Aug 23

PhilTechnology, Training, Web , , , , , , , , , , , , No Comments

online learning.jpgWhen something is advertised as ‘Free’ it often comes with strings attached and is rarely, really, free.  The good folks over at creativeLIVE are offering something for nothing, well almost, but the something they ask back is a little bit of word-of-mouth promotion and it is well worth it for what you get in return.

I have enrolled on several of their Photography courses in the past and the talent they have brought in has been considerable, including Chase Jarvis (who was instrumental in setting this project up), Scott Bourne (Aperture master), Zack Arias (Rock photographer/Lighting guru) and that’s just the Photographers!  There are many more talented people who have lent their talents to the creativeLIVE courses and who have shared their knowledge for free.

If you can’t tune in at the time the course is going out live, you can catch up later, sometimes they stream the event on a loop for a few days afterwards and then video courses are available for purchase afterwards, at a fairly reasonable rate for the number of hours tuition you get from the professionals involved, usually around $79-$129 depending on the amount of content.

They even streamed a whole weekend workshop live (actually 3 days) with the awesome Vincent Laforet on HD DSLR Video Production, which was very detailed and fascinating for the bits I was able to tune in for.

To top that, starting this Wednesday 25th creativeLIVE are running a Jasmine Star (super adulated Wedding Photographer with the best looking blog I have ever seen) workshop for 5 days, to include live streaming of the Photographer as she covers a real wedding.

That’s 5 days!  What these guys and girls are providing for free is really, really impressive.

The only downside is that the time difference can be a bit of a pain for us in the UK, with some courses, such as the one I have just enrolled on Web Design Boot Camp running very late, in this case from 11pm – 1am GMT.  So unless they stream that one for free afterwards I would have to pay to see it probably.

If you are at all curious about the Photography, Web Design, Photoshop, CS5, even Water Colour world, you should definitely check out the creativeLIVE calendar and see what is coming up, you can’t beat the price!

Data loss: It is not if, it is WHEN!

Jul 01

PhilPhotography, Technology , , , , , , , , , No Comments

Part of my job is to explain why we need to backup our data, and whilst it is very hard to appreciate why you should go to all the effort when the chances of data loss are relatively small, the chance is there, and ever present with the increased amount of digital data that we are storing nowadays.

Chase Jarvis is a really amazing visual artist. As well as being a top notch Photographer/Media producer, he is also a great Teacher/Instructor and, unlike many professional photographers in days gone by, he loves to share the secrets behind what he does to get the results. I have learnt a lot from Chase and his team and been inspired in the past by their practical approach to Photography, but also the artistic side too.

In the video below Chase, and his (very professional) team, show us how their workflow has been setup, from capturing the shot/video through to final storage and output via backup processes for servers and individual machines. It is something to aspire to and is based on a full-on professional studio, but the principles of redundant backups, off-site backups and individual machines with Time Machine running (giving hourly versions of files), are useful to anybody.

If you have ever been unfortunate enough to lose cherished photos of moments that can never be repeated (I have) then you will know how painful and time consuming, (not to mention expensive!) data recovery can be.

It is vitally important to have a solid backup policy in place. At the very least it should include an on-site daily backup, copied to an off-site/online location of your key data.

Please, take the time to watch this very stylish and informative video, even if you have just a passing interest. One day you might be very thankful you did. And if you have any data loss horror stories feel free to leave a comment and share the pain.

Remember: With data loss, it is not if it is WHEN!