How Photographer Zabrina Deng Captures “Once-in-a-Lifetime” Wedding Memories

 

Nervous brides and grooms. Unpredictable weather. Long waits in airports. Fidgety young children who aren’t in the mood to strike a pose.

As a destination-wedding photographer, Zabrina Deng has seen it all—and much of it is out of her control. The one thing she absolutely can control? Her data.

“Photographs are memories,” says Deng. “Once we lose them, we cannot get them back.” The first thing she does after her photo sessions are over is, of course, back up. Deng’s favorite method of saving files is through her LaCie 2big Dock. In the video above she explains how this LaCie hard drive enables her to stay focused on creating photos that preserve her clients’ memories.

Deng says she’s “paranoid” about losing her images, which is why she always makes time to backup her work.

“These shoots are once-in-a-lifetime moments for my clients,” says Deng, who was born in China, studied her craft in Paris and is now based in northern California. “They represent important memories for them. After all the food is consumed and the wedding dress is ruined, these memories are something they can take with them for the rest of their life.”

How to protect her client’s precious memories

Destination wedding photographer Zabrina Deng uses a LaCie 2big Dock to backup and centralize her imagesTo protect her data—and her client’s precious memories—Deng uses the LaCie 2big Dock in the office and LaCie Rugged portable drives during a photoshoot.

The 2big Dock has the high capacity and lightning-fast speeds an artist needs for editing and post-production in the studio or office. With up to 20TB of capacity and Thunderbolt 3 transfer speeds of up to 440MB/second, the 2big Dock is built so creative pros can keep creating and not worry about data-bottleneck hassles.

The 2big Dock has integrated SD and CF card slots, a bonus for photographers. “I can transfer files straight from my camera’s memory files to the hard drive,” Deng says.

When shooting in studio, Deng loves to use the 2big Dock for tethering her camera to her Mac. By tethering using the 2big Dock’s integrated USB-C port, her camera stores every photo in real-time directly to the 2big Dock for a more efficient workflow, and she can immediately see the images on her large computer monitor. “I can see the files, I can see the images on the big screen. So I know exactly what I’m shooting, and I can see the focus points and the color and the lighting — if everything is done well.”

When she’s on assignment, Deng packs a few LaCie Rugged drives in her equipment bag. The iconic drives with the protective orange bumper are super-durable and fast for quickly capturing and moving large data files in the field.

A photographer’s dream opportunity — around the globe

Deng has tapped into a fast-growing business—destination weddings, which has taken her around the world to cities like Rome, Paris, Shanghai, Saigon and her home base in the San Francisco Bay Area. Deng also keeps busy as a fashion photographer—her work has appeared in Town and Country Thailand, Elle Weddings Hong Kong and Cosmopolitan Bride China—and photography lecturer.

“The first thing I do after each session is go back to my hotel room and pack up all my pictures onto the Rugged drives,” she says.

When she’s back in her studio, she consolidates her files onto the 2big Dock, which is equipped with Seagate IronWolf Pro hard drives, purpose-built for multi-drive systems.

“Each year, I do about 30-to-40 photo sessions and weddings, which fill up my Rugged drives,” she explains. “Managing all those drives can be cumbersome, so I need one centralized place to keep all the backup files. LaCie has the technology to keep all these images in a safe place so I can focus on creating memories and romantic stories for my clients.”

2017-12-12T16:17:45+00:00

About the Author:

Steve Pipe