Since joining the Digital Photography revolution in 1995 I realised one thing very quickly - it is all to easy to take 300 photos in a short amount of time. What do you do with all your images so that you can a) sort them for easy recall later and b) how do you back them up in case of technology failure. In the old days I would use a floppy disk, DVD or ZipDrive. These days I use a multi-pronged approach to backing up my files after learning some very expensive lessons.

1. Download all the photos from your memory card and rate them

One of the worst things you can do is go out and take a lot of photos and then store all the bad photos the same way you do the good. What if you had taken ten photos of a wedding cake but you only liked one or two? That's a 1 in 5 rate which means if you delete the 8 out of ten photos you have room for eight more good photos. Are you storing photos that should be deleted but can't be bothered? Imagine how you'll feel if you run out of external storage because you weren't able to take a small amount of time to sort through and rate  your photos. I learned the hard way that without diligence you can often have folders of images that really should make way for new ones. Try to get into the habit of using a photo management software such as Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop Bridge or the software that came with your camera to view and filter your images.

Rate each photo on a scale from 1 to 5

Photos to be deleted (obviously faulty images beyond repair) rate a 1. Absolute best quality 'I'd print that' rate a 5. Delete the photos rate one and tag or label those that rate 5

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