Red Fort and Old Delhi

One of Delhi's most famous landmarks, The Red Fort dates back to the 17th Century and comprises of a complex of many buildings constructed by the Moghal Emperor Shah Jahan.

The Red Fort is located in what is known as Old Delhi and the area opposite is well worth a visit.  On leaving the main street area it rapidly becomes a warren of crazily narrow, winding streets full of the constant buzz of Delhi life.  It's a good idea to get a guide, and there are plenty around the Fort vying for business.  So with some haggling a price is agreed and we're off on his pedal rickshaw.  My guide was very good and took me into all sorts of secluded spots that I would never have found on my own.

Hong Kong - Nan Lian Garden & Chi Lin Nunnery

I had heard of the Nan Lian Garden and Chi Lin Nunnery but had never visited before today.  Getting there is easy by MTR up to Diamond Hill and then it's literally just round the corner and across the road.

What I love about Hong Kong is the contrasting experiences everywhere you look.  One moment your immersed in the hustle and bustle of the city and next thing you turn a corner and find utter peace and tranquility such as the Nan Lian Garden.

 The Pavilion of Absolute Perfection

The neighbouring Chi Lin Nunnery is a stunning temple complex and a fine example of Tang Dynasty architecture.

The Nunnery is home to various religious relics contained in its' many halls while lion guardians protect the doors.  This one tested my new 50mm.

Peaceful lotus pond

On the way back I thought it would be rude not to grab a couple of cliched shots over Victoria Harbour!

Always, Always, Always Back-Up your stuff!

Everyone seems to have a story when it comes to losing precious data from their computer and it's not just photos I've lost in the past, it's been pdf files, bookmarks, contacts etc. . . . Let's face it, if your computer suffers a major failure there's an awful lot of stuff we take for granted that can suddenly disappear in the blink of an eye.

That's why backing up your data is vitally important and while I'm mainly going to describe my photography back-up processes, it's equally important to back-up your personal files and folders as well. This is purely my advice, and it's what works for me, so hopefully it will help shed some light on what can be a confusing subject.

After shooting a load of images the first thing to spring to mind is to download the files onto my laptop. But, before I even do that I plug in my flash drive as that's going to be my first stage in the back-up process. Personally I use Adobe Lightroom to import my photos from the memory card and it has a great little option on the Import screen called "Back-Up to" which allows the files to be copied to another location, in this case my Flash Drive, as they are imported onto my hard disk. If you're not using Lightroom then it's simply a case of copying the content of the memory card straight to the flash drive with drag and drop.

After importing, all my images are now in an appropriately named folder within "My Pictures", similarly stored on the flash drive and still on the camera's memory card. Now I burn these originals to a DVD, again stored in a suitably named folder. So why do I bother with the flash drive stage if I'm going to burn them to DVD anyway? Well, every now and again I pop a blank DVD in the drive and it's a dud and won't work. I'm more often than not doing this in a hotel room somewhere and don't carry lot's of blanks around with me so it just means I have a separate, albeit temporary, backup should there be problems with a DVD.

So I now have my files on DVD, which is now my primary back-up, and also on the flash drive. I'll leave them on the camera's memory card until I use the camera again at which point I'll format it for a clean start. I'll then do my post processing work within Lightroom at the end of which I'm ready to move the files onto an external hard drive. I move them off my laptop's hard drive to keep as much space free as possible and therefore maintain performance. By doing this within Lightroom, it will still keep track of the images by associating them with being on the external hard drive. Finally I plug the external hard drive into my desktop computer at home and copy the images into a similarly structured folder on it's hard drive.

At the very least I always have copies of my images on an external hard drive, a separate computer's hard drive and on DVD. I know some people would argue this isn't enough and indeed I know of people who keep another external hard drive at a friend's house just in case their's burns down! But this works for me for now, though I might just invest in another external drive at some point, just in case!

The external hard drive I use is an Iomega Prestige Portable 320Gb.  As I travel a lot I wanted something small but reliable and this one seemed ideal from all the product reviews I read.  I've had it just over a year and it works just great!  Here are the links if you're interested:




The key thing in all this is to have your files saved to different external locations such as DVD, External Hard Drive, Flash Drive, separate computer etc. Having everything on only one computer, as thousands of people do, is just too risky. If that machine is damaged, stolen, or fails, it's a nice feeling to know you can get all your stuff back again. How you exactly do that is another story!!