Currently, if you are getting your emails from a particular telecommunications giant, you may be getting them really, really slowly. They stick, as you cannot get rid of them. Using the service is an exercise in philosophic patience...
It will likely get better and the backlog will be swept away in time. But it gives to think about a particular aspect of photography; shared material and its exchange.
The cloud storage option is one taken by many to let them save and access digital images from a number of their devices. They send any number of images to a company on the internet who then store them in cardboard boxes in a big hay shed in Manangatang in Victoria. When the user needs their files back someone goes out to the shed, opens the appropriate box, and pours the contents back into the internet aso the user can see them again. At least this is what I've been told. Seems logical - what could possibly go wrong?
- The roof of the hay shed could spring a leak and the cardboard boxes could get wet. Soggy jpegs are hard to edit.
- The company who is storing the images for you could see the flashing lights in the street as the Feds arrive to raid them. One click of a switch and it all disappears.
- Your telecommunications giant could be hacked down to the ground and your images with them.
- The electronic pathway to your images - to or fro - could corrupt in some way and the only thing you would hear from them would be " Ready when you are, C. B...".
Now it is certainly possible to lose digital assets by yourself, on your own equipment, in the comfort of your own home. That is what hard drives are for. For failing. If you are wise you invest in a device with a number of them so that they fail at different times and you can scurry between them in the wreckage and retrieve the files. Cynics amongst us will note that the companies that make these RAID devices can also fail, and it is still possible to be stranded on the side of the digital highway...
But while you have your own images under your own control, you are less likely to be affected by the vast reaches of internetting. And if your telco cannot get their act together, there is always the Post Office and the paper stamp...
