If you are getting paid to photograph there are a ton of things that will qualify you as a professional – and there are a few things that will destroy your reputation if you don’t plan ahead.

If you have one camera and one lens and call yourself a professional then hang your head in shame. What happens if you are photographing a wedding – and suddenly your only camera takes a nose dive onto the cement? Then you are a up a creek without a paddle – a photographer without a camera is just a bystander.

This rule can also apply to batteries, lenses, flashes, and memory cards. If your only lens suddenly won’t focus or cracks and you are about to photograph the CEO of a major corporation then that is bad news. Sure you can grab a credit card and run to a camera store – but sometimes that is not an option.

For any paid gig – I always have a back up camera, lenses, flashes, and gear in the truck of my car or a secured location where I can get to it if the worst happens. This past week my brand new camera had to be sent in to the shop – fortunately I have 2 other DSLRs ready to pick up the slack. If those fail I do have a film camera, a point and shoot and even some Holgas.

So invest in a second camera body – and make sure it is one you like to use. A few years ago my backup camera was so old and out of date that when I actually had to use it – it was a painful experience. The next day I bought my Nikon D90. And I now frequently will photograph with both my backup camera and my main camera (the Nikon D300).

Also have some backup lenses. I had to send in my Nikkor f/2.8 70-200mm lens for some cleaning and repair – while it was gone I had several lenses that would help cover that focal range. And if I had a big event I can plan ahead and rent a second lens as a backup.

How much do you value your photographs? If you have spent several hundred dollars on a camera – spent thousands of dollars on a trip to Hawaii and then you lose your Hawaii photographs because your hard drive dies then your trip was in vain and memories lost. If you keep your photographs on just one hard drive then you are going to lose your photos. You may be lucky and upgrade to a new computer before that hard drive fails.

Google, who stores their data and a heck of a lot of hard drives, has found that hard drives will either fail in the first month or they will last about 3 years and then every year after that 10% of the remaining drives will fail.

I use to have about 6 external hard drives and used Superduper to back up my data – and then I had 2 of those harddrives over heat and die in one day. I new I needed a better backup solution.

What do I do now? I use a Drobo which has 4 hard drives that share the photographs. If any of the drives fail then the data is safe. In fact, I have had one of the drives fail and I replaced the failed drive with a new one and the Drobo picked up the data protection.

Drobos allow you to use whatever SATA drives you have laying around and you can upgrade them. You can also share the drive on the network and act as a Network Area Storage device.

True back up solutions also require an off-site solution in addition to the Drobo I store the photographs on SmugMug. If a meteor ever hits the house or a fire consumes the Drobo and my computer at least my photographs are kept off site.

So backup your photographs and your data!