www.seanarbabi.com

How did you get your start as a commercial photographer?

I always knew I’d be a photographer—I picked up a camera at 11. In 1988 I enrolled in the Brooks Institute of Photography, where I received my Bachelor of Arts in Commercial Photography in 1991. That summer, I started my own business combining outdoor, on-location, and studio photography. 19 years later, I've traveled the world capturing images for hundreds of clients, and have been published thousands of times in numerous countries.

What have been some of your favorite events to photograph?

I enjoy a mix of subjects, all challenging in unique ways—from adventure sports to environmental portraits, from culture to landscapes, from wildlife to studio still lifes. One of the most amazing experiences I had was traveling through Borneo photographing an adventure race and subsequently capturing images of the Penan and jungles of Sarawak.

I always know my digital images and business files are backed up on a fast reliable drive, and that they’re easily accessible. I can get to large files quickly, and set up new hard drives easily. Anywhere I go on assignment, my LaCie portable drives go with me.  Having a FireWire connection on my Rugged means my USB card reader and backup drive can be simultaneously connected to my laptop for quick file transfers. When a shoot is done, my files are on a secure piece of hardware that I know can make it through the airport and back to my studio, where I can archive them for safekeeping.

With 2TB of space in a RAID 0 array, I can use the 2big Quadra as a backup for my other drives, which creates a one-stop shop of all my images. I can index all my work—if I need to find an image from a shoot, I can grab it off the drive and edit it for a current project if necessary. I like that the LaCie drives I use both are intuitive and visually compelling—you see the blue light and you know that drive is up and doing its job and that you can get to work.

How long have you used LaCie products?

I picked up my first LaCie hard drive (a 200GB d2 Hard Disk with FireWire) in 2004 from the Apple Store after reading a number of reviews about the best hard drive.  I've bought and owned seven or eight since, from a 500GB and 250GB, all the way up to 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB disks.

Describe an experience with your LaCie drive where our product greatly improved your workflow.

It’s hard to describe just one; my LaCie drives help my workflow everyday. Whether it’s accessing files from Adobe Photoshop and Bridge, adding images to my Extensis Portfolio database to track and reference thousands of images, or open original files that are hundreds of megabytes large straight from the drives, my drives help me do what I need to quickly and dependably.

My experience with LaCie products is that they’re incredibly reliable. Both of my desktops and laptops are backed up with Time Machine to the LaCie drives. My business, my forms, my accounting, my marketing—all of it is on my LaCie and has been since I started using hard drives. I’ve always been interested in figuring out how to use the tools on the market to my advantage, and I don’t just accept that equipment is there and it is supposed to work. I’ve tested a lot of gear to figure out what’s reliable. With digital photography there isn’t an original to refer to if there’s a problem. You always have to back your work up and there aren’t CDs that can store the amount of information you need for archiving. That’s why I rely on LaCie drives.