The Internet is nothing new to photographers obviously, and it has had a tremendous impact on the overall photographic industry. In some ways that impact has been remarkably good, such as it’s enabling photographers to reach a huge audience at very little cost. And in some ways that impact has been troubling, such as it’s enabling a meteoric rise in the availability of photographic images that has caused a significant drop in the licensing fees paid for stock photography in many circumstances.
The key underpinnings of the Internet are data storage and transfer. Relatively recently, the term "cloud computing" has come into vogue. The idea began gaining popularity around five years ago, but interest in it has exploded suddenly with Apple’s announcement of their forthcoming iCloud service, available this fall. This announcement likely caused many photographers to renew their thoughts about whether they can leverage cloud storage for their own photographic images.
The ability to store files online is not new, of course. But as broadband connections to the Internet have become more widely available, an increasing number of companies have started offering cloud storage services. For many photographers, these services can provide tremendous benefits.
Cloud Benefits
One of the biggest reasons to consider the use of cloud storage is as an online backup. If you’ve ever lost any photos due to a failed hard drive, you certainly can appreciate the importance of a reliable backup system. There are many options available for backing up your photos, but an online backup provides an extra benefit by virtue of the backup automatically being stored in a different physical location from the original data.
