More than half of my planned errands for the weekend is already completed! It’s a rather productive day. One thing that I did that wasn’t planned at all: doing photography! That’s my bike that I bought last year[^1]!

[^1] Unprocessed image taken with my Nikon Zf.

On Comfort Zones

Today, I’ll bring my camera to the office1, as I’m declaring myself as the official photographer for the two-day yearly sales kickoff event. I’ll take photos of humans, which is not my cup of tea, but I need to try it more and get out of my comfort zone. Usually my problem while photographing humans is anticipation and timing. Some people are very good at it, but I’m not. So, I need to practice. Comfort zones are killing creativity and learning.

  1. My iPhone will stay in my pocket, I’ll use my Nikon Zf with the 40mm F2 lens. ↩︎

Taking photos of decorative materials with the iPhone is really tricky. The automatic white balance makes everything look wrong and we cannot trust the photo to reproduce what we actually saw and perceived. How are designers doing with their phones?

Went outside today for lunch and took my camera1 with me. What a good idea it was. I like this a lot because it is an opportunity to take a mental break from work. When I’m coming back to work, I’m more enthusiastic.

  1. Nikon Zf with a 44mm F2 lens. Great combo. ↩︎

For the first time since its release1, I’m using iCloud Shared Photo Library with my wife for the home improvement project. It’s really well done and fits perfectly my needs.

  1. Released with iOS 16 in 2022. ↩︎

In Search of a New and Optimized Photo Processing Workflow

Now that I’m no longer in Adobe’s ecosystem for my photo processing needs, I depend on Photomator and Synology Photos. I need to create an optimized workflow: upload photos to Synology1, browse and tag the pictures I want to process using Synology Photos tags, then edit them in Photomator. This is the last is a challenge: RAW images need to be converted to a DNG format2, and then edited in Photomator before exporting the end results in JPEG. I need to download RAW images manually out of Synology Photos then import them in Photomator for processing. Processed images should then be imported into Apple Photos for easy access.

  1. Done automatically over wifi from the camera to the Synology NAS. ↩︎

  2. As of 2024-04, Nikon Zf RAW image format is not supported natively by macOS or iPadOS on which Photomator depends. This conversion process is cumbersome. ↩︎

Sold my little Mac Pro trash can for $600 CAN1. Not bad for a 1TB SDD, 128GB of RAM and the 12-core Xeon 2.7 GHz configuration. And the Thunderbolt 2 cable and TB 3 to TB2 adaptor. Not the keyboard or mouse, as they are still useful for me. Sometimes. 🙂

  1. I barely knew it. It’s sad because I loved this little machine. ↩︎