Fototripper on wrangling huge travel-shoot folders

Fototripper is Gavin Hardcastle, a landscape shooter and filmmaker who spends months on the road. In this Sept 25 2024 video he walks through the “shockingly boring” file routine that keeps multiple cameras—Hasselblad X2D, Sony A1, drone, Osmo—safe and findable. It’s pure pragmatism: a single external SSD, plain-text folder names, and zero time wasted on deleting shots. If you churn out thousands of RAWs per trip and need them backed up tonight in a motel, this hits home.

For: travelling pros (or hobbyists) coping with terabytes a year; anyone who’d rather tag keepers than agonise over what to delete.

Tools mentioned

• Portable SSD (2 TB SanDisk Extreme) – primary travel vault, plus a second copy on the laptop or desktop
• Finder / Windows Explorer – initial folder tree
• Adobe Bridge – fast thumbnail view, “Copy to” / “Move to”, five-star rating
• USB-C card reader – one fast port for the drive, slower dongle for cameras

Steps to follow

1. Create a master trip folder on the drive: Canadian Rockies 2024.

2. Inside, one folder per shooting day + location: Day-1_Peyto-Lake, Day-2_Bow-Lake, etc.

3. Inside each day, one sub-folder per device: X2D, A1, Drone, Osmo.

   • Copy these empty sub-folders first, then paste into every new day so the structure is ready.

4. Copy—not move—files off each card via Bridge (Right-click ▸ Copy to).

5. Back-up immediately: keep the laptop’s internal SSD as a second copy when space allows.

6. Optional clean-up

   • Name focus-stack sequences (Focus-Stack-02) or add suffixes like -closeFG, -backBG.
   • Five-star burst winners; leave the rest.

Advice (do’s & don’ts pulled from the video)

• Use the fastest USB-C port for the SSD; card readers can live on the slower hub.
• Keep two copies in separate bags—gear gets stolen, cards fail.
• Storage is cheaper than the emotional cost of culling; Gavin admits he’s a “photography hoarder” and is fine with it.
• Tag the best, ignore the rest—same mindset Lucas Roberts preaches for iPhone snaps.

Grab a coffee and watch the full 18-minute breakdown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2GUlwYUu6M (posted 25 Sep 2024). Gavin calls it “the most boring video” he’s made, but it’s exactly the nuts-and-bolts pros keep asking for.