-
Glass Is Evolving Nicely
Itās good to see Glass introduce new methods for discovering photos on its platform. I would love to see percentages relative to each camera and smartphone brand. Searching by lenses tells us that Nikon is way behind Canon regarding diversity and representation. Canāt wait for Glassās next move.Ā
-
I’ve been quietly testing Exposure recently, an excellent visual storytelling service. I could probably replace my Smugmug page. That’s the goal of my experiment anyway: testing Exposure service’s ability to replace Smugmug. Stay tuned. This is my first short story.
-
Adobe, Lightroom and the Camera
The Adobe Max conference was held this week. With each conference comes a slew of new application update releases. Iām not really into Adobe ecosystem except for using Adobe Lightroom on the Mac and the iPad Pro. This is my main photo processing engine, coupled with the excellent Pixelmator Pro. For About a year, Adobe spent some of its development money to āaugmentā Lightroom, a photo-processing application, with video-processing features. Why? I donāt get it. I donāt want it.
As Adobe is adding video-processing features to Lightroom, I fear they are making it less focused and slowly becoming a bloated piece of software, on the outside but also the inside. Adobe Lightroomās mission was to start over and make a new solid foundation apart from its aging Adobe Lightroom Classic.
I want Adobe to focus on photography; they already have video-processing apps like Adobe Premiere!
Iād love Adobe to focus on making the camera feature compete with a dedicated camera app like Appleās camera app or Halide or Camera+. I cannot remember when the last release of Adobe touched this portion of Lightroom in significant ways. Why is it important? As a subscriber of an Adobe photography plan, I would use the Lightroom camera more, and my images would directly go to the Adobe Cloud, just like the Apple camera app saved photos in iCloud. It would be so much more convenient. I prefer Adobe cloud for my RAW images instead of having to transit my RAW photos through the Apple Photos library. The more Adobe improves the built-in camera module of Lightroom, the more Iāll stay within Lightroom while in a photography moment.
-
On the Dynamic Island Inception and Possible Future
A recent Twitter thread about the possible iPhone Dynamic Island inception by Matt Birchler caught my attention a few days ago but couldn’t find the required time to write my take.
How long could Dynamic Island have been in gestation at Apple? A few weeks, a few months? I think this has been in the works for quite some time. Besides the visual appearance, the API goes with it and needs a design period too. I’m sure Matt understands and knows about that. I would argue that Apple worked on this way before this year’s announcement. Best integration between hardware and software takes time because of how Apple is internally structured. Secrecy plays a significant role in making things longer to achieve too. Apple plan’s for the long run, and I think the pill shape was set in stone last year.
The second thing that caught my attention is this: How long will Dynamic Island be with us? What if Apple can make the camera disappear under the iPhone’s display? Would this make Dynamic Island pointless? No. My take is that the feature is here for the long run, even though the camera and all other sensors could disappear entirely. Apple is training us to accept Dynamic Island as a fundamental part of the iPhone experience. We may even expect the feature to be the de facto standard of the best iPhone user experience. I don’t think we will revert to the previous design that Dynamic Island is taking care of. The black pill share could be dynamically removed when not required but could then pop up to respond to the current context dictated by the user interaction.
The Dynamic Island is such a terrible name but the feature in itself is brilliant, so Apple.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
I never post this type of thing here but I wanted to share my enthusiasm about eating this! Simple and healthy. š
-
Today was a special day. So many memories.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
