01The number that surprises people is the backup one
One copy of a shooting year is a manageable figure. Three copies of it, which is what a working photographer actually needs, is the number that decides what drives you buy and whether cloud backup is affordable. The 3-2-1 rule exists because the two things that genuinely destroy archives are a single drive failing and a single location burning, flooding or being burgled. A second drive sitting on top of the first solves exactly one of those problems.
Cloud storage is priced per terabyte per month, so it scales with your shooting rather than with your budget. That is why high-resolution bodies have a running cost, not just a purchase price: moving from a 24MP body to a 61MP one roughly doubles every figure on this page for the rest of the time you own it.
02Culling is the biggest unbilled block in the job
Every hour above happens before any creative work starts. It is not editing, it is deciding what deserves editing: opening previews, comparing three nearly identical frames of the same moment, working out which one has both eyes open, flagging, changing your mind, and doing it a couple of thousand times. Most photographers underestimate it because it happens in fragments rather than in one visible block.
The three levers on it are shooting less, culling faster, and culling in fewer passes. Shooting less is rarely realistic on paid work where the client is paying for coverage. Fewer passes helps a lot: one decisive pass beats three tentative ones, and the common habit of a rough pass, then a second pass, then a third to break ties is what turns two hours into five.
03Cards: buy for the shoot, not for the price per gigabyte
The cheapest card per gigabyte is usually the biggest one, and putting an entire wedding on a single card is a risk with a known failure mode. Two medium cards beat one large one, because a card failure then costs you half a day rather than all of it. If your body has two slots, write RAW to both and treat the second as your first backup: it is the only backup that exists while you are still at the venue.
04Frequently asked questions
A full day is typically 2,000 to 3,000 RAW frames. On a 24MP full-frame body at about 28MB each that is 56 to 84GB for one copy, or 170 to 250GB with the three copies a sensible backup needs. A 45MP body roughly doubles it.
Three copies, on two types of media, with one off site. It targets the two real failure modes: a drive dying and a location being lost. A second drive beside the first only covers the first of those.
Manually, two to five seconds a frame including preview loading and comparing near-duplicates. Three seconds is a fair average, which puts a 2,500-frame wedding at just over two hours before any editing begins.
Keep delivered shoots for as long as your contract requires and usually a year or two beyond. Obvious rejects, blinks, misfires, test frames and duplicate bursts can go once the client has approved the gallery. That habit alone typically halves an archive.