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AirTags Can Make a Difference
I want to chime in here, following the publication of this article from Om Malik about AirTags. I’m leaving for Italy in a few days. Knowing how bad the airport experience can get and reading those stories about airline companies’ inability to keep up and keep losing track of customersā luggage, AirTags can make a big difference. I’m going to double-down on AirTags. I already own four, and I’ll buy another four before leaving, so I get my base covered. AirTags already saved me a lot of trouble in the past on more than one occasion by reminding me that I left something behind. It’s well worth the money.
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Building a Photo Diary Using Craft ā An Experiment
I started another experiment: a photo diary of my upcoming trip to Italy. I’ll be using Craft for this. My objective is simple: testing Craft for photography-related work. I explain why and how I will do it in much more detail on the website. Here’s the link.
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Waiting for the Surprises
Interesting fact: I rarely look at pictures of the places I’m going to visit. I could go online and look at many images of Milan, for example, or all the other places I’ll be visiting starting next week, but I don’t. My trips are organized by my wife. She’s the one doing the scouting and spends hours looking at where we’re going. I’m the guy who spends hours post-processing images I’ll be taking during the trip, making our trip live forever.
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My Photo Publishing Flow for Italy
Following my post earlier this week, I finally found my publishing workflow for my vacation in Italy. From time to time, I’ll write a story on my Photo Legend Series. Glass will be for regular publishing of my best shots of the day. I’ll use Craft to build a photo diary, it’s part of another project. I’ll share the link when I’m ready. Finally, Micro.blog will receive posts from my blog and Glass via the RSS cross-posting feature. What I think will be my best photos of the vacation will go to Unsplash and Smugmug when I return from vacation and after post-processing them in Lightroom. Unsplash will only get a few of them, while the full set will go to my Smugmug page.
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No, no, no, and no.
I’m sorry, Dropzone, you’re good but not that useful. I mean, for such a narrow-usage utility, I’m not going to pay that much monthly. I’m the one who buys and rent software but come on. It’s becoming ridiculous. Provide a lifetime contribution, and I’ll make the deal. You’re a feature, not a product. Delete. š
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Wondering About Photo Journal for My Upcoming Trip to Italy
I’m two weeks away from a long trip to Italy, and I’m wondering about posting photos while on the trip, but where? Since I’m not active on Facebook or Instagram but have a SmugMug and Glass account, what will I do? My Glass and SmugMug accounts aren’t for photo journaling, after all. I’m very selective with those. Maybe I could create posts in my Photo Legend series on Ghost? Could I try experimenting with Craft and adding photos to a shared page? Unfortunately, Craft isn’t the best app for images. Craft is much more about written words. What about posting here, on Micro.blog, using Sunlit? Decision, decision, decision. š¤
But, fundamentally, who cares about my trip to Italy? š
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About Heavy Camera Gear for Vacations
In The Weight Of Creativity ā On my Om, Om Malik thinks about camera gears weight during trips. I’m on the verge of going to Italy for a three weeks vacation, and I’ll have to decide about the content of my camera backpack. As the iPhone is taking a more prominent role in photography, there are fewer incentives to bring heavy gear with me.
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Switching from Instagram to ...
It is surprising and fascinating that we seem to skip Flickr or 500px as a replacement for Instagram when thinking like this about Instagram possible replacements. Those platforms should take advantage of the Instagram pivot to something other than photos. They donāt and they are missing an occasion to reinvent themselves. Iām a paid user of Glass and Smugmug, and I love them.
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I never post this type of thing here but I wanted to share my enthusiasm about eating this! Simple and healthy. š
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Today was a special day. So many memories.
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Two Years Agoā¦
On March 13th, in 2020, the world flipped, my world flipped. So many things are different now. This short blog post is about reflecting on the last two years and how they became the foundation for what is to come in my life.
Time flies and making judicious decisions is more important than ever. Working from home is important. Iāll never return full time at the office. Even if I move to another job, working from home is now a requirement. Visiting customers for the sake of shaking hands no longer make sense to me. There has to be more than this. The price is too high to pay: wasted time.
Traveling is more important than ever too; thatās the only way for me to do more photography. Something that I didnāt do much in the last two years. This visual work posted in April of 2020 was the trigger to write this blog post. Iām sad about this because photography is my most important source of inspiration and my biggest creativity playground after writing. Still on the travel subject, I can envision traveling abroad for more than two weeks now and splitting my time between leisure and remote work. Leaving for a month or more is now possible.
Speaking of writing, Iāll probably continue to write but probably not as much as in the last two years. A more balanced life is taking place and will take away some of my writing time. Itās ok. Itās also part of making better choices.
The last two years of COVID-19, the more and more frequent climate disturbances and the recent events in Europe are telling me this: the world is more than ever in a constant state of emergency. I better learn how to cope with this otherwise Iām not finished at being in constant consternation mood while reading the news.
Thanks for reading this. I know your time is precious too and you made the decision to read this short piece.
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Still Mystified by ProRAW
Even after reading this excellent article by the guy behind Halide, Iām still mystified by Appleās ProRAW format. The question that keeps popping up in my mind is: if computational photography processing is involved in creating the ProRAW file (in DNG format), how can we still call this a variant of a RAW image?
Photo credit: Jason Strull on Unsplash
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Bye Bye 500px
It was written on the walls: my subscription to 500px is coming to an end next week, and I won’t renew. It was a nice ride for sure, but Smugmug + Glass took over. Sure, comparing those services isn’t fair. For my needs, 500px doesn’t fit anymore. Another reason is the fact that I’m not taking as many photos as I used to, thanks to the pandemic.
I’ll keep my 500px account but in “read-only” mode for the year to come.
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Working from home since March 2020. Over the months, I made quite a few tweaks to my home office. I’m so much more at ease at home than at the office with a desk, a chair, a lamp, and devices that I chose, instead of being imposed on me.
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One More Gripe Against Appleās Photos Memory Feature
Jim Novell & Stephen Hackett both have valid points against Appleās Photos Memory feature. I would another one: memories are created on a very aggressive schedule. There are way too many; I miss most of them. I donāt know if this is related to the fact that my library contains more than 42K images or if other factors come into play here. There should be a way to reduce the frequency.
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Those Curvesā¦
Iām a big fan of curves, but up until now, I didnāt really know how to take advantage of them. š Enter this short tutorial for Pixelmator Pro. š Youāll learn how to use the curves adjustment to tweak colours and luminance of any photos. I usually prefer to use sliders just because up until now I didnāt really get how to use the curves. Now, thanks to this tutorial, I have a much better idea. Many more tutorials are available on the Pixelmator Pro YouTube channel.
The production quality of these tutorials is impeccable. I really love Pixelmator in general, and I always thought this photo processing application could have been done by Apple, when they cared enough about making one, back in the days. This isnāt a paid advertisement. Iām just being enthusiastic about great native macOS applications. š
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He says "Hi!"
For no apparent reason, I started a photo series of this little guy in all sorts of visual contexts. I’m using an album to store them all. I’m currently at 23 photos of him. He’s so cute, isn’t he? I got my inspiration from someone here on Micro.blog who did the same in recent months. I can’t remember who, though. So who knows where this is headed. It’s the time of the year for frivolous projects. š
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Completed The Servant Season 2 - At Long Last!
Finally was able to finish season 2 of The Servant on Apple TV+ yesterday, just in time for the third season. What a weird story. The only occasion I can spend time watching TV series is during the holidays. Using AirPods Max for the listening experience is pure magic; nobody in the living gets distracted by the TV, and the sound quality is impressive. Now, I should finish For All Mankind Season 2.
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Glass ā Maybe We Need to Be Patient?
Matt Birchler blog post about his interest for Glassās fading out:
I was very high on Glass, a new photo sharing app this summer, but my enthusiasm for it has dropped in perfect sync with the temperature dropping here in the Midwest since then.
Lee Peterson blog post about his interest is so low that he canceled his Glass subscription:
I still feel it was a bad slope to start down by adding appreciation and Iāve cancelled my subscription.
Finally, Andy Nicolaides on Twitter thinking out loud about the introduction of āappreciationā (a term used instead of ālikesā):
Iām not one of the folks that wasnāt a big fit of Glass adding the likes / appreciation function, but Iāll tell you this much, in my small case study of one, itās completely killed off any comments I used to receive.
Letās be honest: Glass has been alive for less than four months. They kept updating the service since the beginning to improve the experience and discoverability. They didnāt fall in the āme tooā trap yet. Arenāt we expecting too much too soon from such a small organization? Should we expect them to come out with the right recipe on day one? Could this be much more difficult to be different and yet familiar in the crowded space of on-line photo sharing? I would argue that your feed is as good as the people you follow. Sure, Glass needs to attract great photographers. I suspect they are working on it as I write this. People are busy. Living in a pandemic put a lot of stress on everybody and cancelled so many opportunities for doing photography, but it created others too. It wasnāt the best moment to launch such a service, and yet, theyāve done a great job so far.
I do have a subscription to Glass (my profile page here) and Iām willing to be patient here. I have a goal of posting at least one picture a week, even though I have another place to do so, on Smugmug (my profile page here).
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An idea. The iPad. A Brainstorming Session. Another Article in the Works.
I love the iPad. Appleās Notes.app in dark mode is š. Youāre currently seeing a brainstorm of ideas for an upcoming blog post in early 2022. The subject? Can you tell just by looking at my notes? Hint: Itās a meta blog post. Another hint: https://numericcitizen.io.
Yes, I know, my handwriting sucks. š¤¦š»āāļøšš
