Features

How to start in photography? Well, er, hum, let's see. Mike gives some advice and is surprised by the results.

On Saturday my friend George James made one of this regular trips to London and suggested we meet in Borough Market to get a few shots with our matching Leica M-Ps and 50mm Apo-Summicrons. It was a good idea but the market was far two crowded.  So, after a few scuffles and near misses, we adopted Plan B: A visit to the Thames Barrier, way out beyond Greenwich in the east. 

Concorde was so ahead of its time, yet it is now 15 years since it was withdrawn from service. John found a retired Concorde in Seattle while Mike discovered a second example at a south-west London museum

Reader Ricky (/xxxxxxx) is also an enthusiast of minimalism by digitising as much as possible, from music to bank statements. In a comment to my post on XXXXXX he raises the interesting topic of protecting digital assets. Opponents of relying too much on computerised records often point to the possibility of losing all the data; yet often these same people rely entirely on filing cabinets stuffed with paper and, in extreme cases, carry their life around with them in the form of a giant Filofax. Who, I wonder, is taking the greatest risk?

Digitisation in the interests of minimalism is actually bar far the safer method of archiving, provided you know what you are doing and take basic precautions. There are three main threats to digital records: failure or corruption of storage media, theft and, lastly, loss through disaster such as fire, flood or magnetic interference from alien spaceships. We can't do much about the latter, but the other threats are easily managed.

Backup of data is crucial, of course - not just once but in several places. I use a Time Machine backup, plus an incremental backup on an external portable disk (which travels with me) and, to make absolutely sure, an incremental backup on a Drobo system. Next comes off-site backup. I cover this in two ways. First, is an incremental backup on an external disk which I leave with friends. Every week I connect it and perform an automatic backup.