In closing, I’d like to stress that the best tools at our disposal for mastering composition are not bought from camera stores — they are within us. To better express something about our subject matter and ourselves in our photographs, we should take steps to engage more in the process. Before we start we need to take time to establish a relationship with our subject matter; to engage our hearts and emotions. Secondly, we need to engage our imaginations; to let them run wild to form our vision for an image.
Then, perhaps, we bring our cameras and our eyes into the process. That is to say, having formulated a vision we now use our eyes objectively to see what is actually in the scene. Then, we try to engineer the scene, which may involve simply waiting fo something to move, or adjusting our camera, lens, or shooting position, that the scene best reflects our vision. We do this largely by bringing our bodies into play; using our legs to explore the scene and the options different viewpoints offer.
Richard Garvey-Williams, Mastering Composition: The Definitive Guide For Photographers
I have a lot of notes stored in Apple Notes. Thousands of them. Many of them have attachments. And Bear can’t automatically import them; instead, I’d have to manually export, import, and re-attach documents. While I’d like to try the application — support for real Markdown sounds exciting! — I just can’t afford to burn a week or more just moving files from one repo to another. I already spend that time moving from Evernote to Apple Notes!
I accidentally marked about a hundred items in my RSS reader as ‘read’ that I’d been (theoretically) saving to read. The pile’s built up for a few weeks in that feed category. It feels like a huge load off to know that they’re just…gone….and so I only have all the other categories to work through.
Leah Miller has a good take on Unsplash, a website where photographers donate photos which can subsequently be used without royalty or attribution:
They bill themselves as “Beautiful FREE photos for Everyone”. That means anyone, including businesses can go to their website and download unlimited amounts of photography (and some of it is very good) work without attribution or payment to the individual(s) who created them. Furthermore there is no requirement for Model or Property Releases which guarantees that the photographer and end user are likely to get sued. Don’t believe me? Do a search on that website of any popular brand you can think of…sportswear, etc. You will not see a single RELEASE for those images in sight. Large companies like Apple will sue the pants off you should they get wind of their products/logos etc. being used commercially. That “EXPOSURE” you got in return for the image of a Nike sneaker you posted (and was subsequently downloaded and used commercially) won’t be worth an ounce of mercy when that first lawyer letter hits your mailbox.
When you purchase a “creative” person’s professional’s services, be they from a photographer, programmer, editor, writer, or marketer, you’re paying for more than the finished thing that the professional is providing. You’re paying for the suite of skills and talents and knowledge that surround the finished product, and some of those skills and talents and knowledge are largely invisible to the client. And that’s fine: it’s what’s being paid for. But if you get something for free or at a deeply discounted price it’s important to know that all those hidden extras that you don’t see when you hire a professional can quickly become your problem. Sometime those problems are just a massive pain in the ass when they arise. But at their worst they can be a terrible drag on whatever you have going on in your life and career, and can be poison to either your hobby, your side gig, or your professional career.
Really cannot wait until this movie comes out! It looks like it’ll be a lot of fun and with a very different tone and feel than the ones released over the past two years.
I’ve been putting a lot of thought into how to structure my life, not just on a day to day basis, but with the intent of accomplishing something meaningful this year. Some of that relates to personal projects I want to pull off.1 But perhaps the most important thing I want to do this year is develop a really boring habit.
Mike Vardy wrote about his intent improve his personal fitness this year. His description of past attempts to become fit and how that differs from his current behaviours resonated with me. He wrote:
When I was trying to achieve a “body for life” before, I was single and doing it mainly to improve my physique for any potential ladies that I may wind up dating. I wasn’t really doing it for myself.
In contrast, this time he’s doing:
it for myself — and my family. My wife deserves to have a husband who’s in decent shape, and my kids deserve to have a father who can keep up with them. When my youngest turns thirteen, I’ll be fifty. I want to be able to roughhouse with him at that age and not feel it for weeks afterward. I’d also like to give myself the best shot at seeing my kids’ grandkids. Without exercise and proper diet, that just ain’t going to happen
In the past I tried to become more fit by taking it to the extreme. I also felt I had to hide what I was doing to avoid recriminations from family and people I lived with. I exercised when no one was around, or up, and hid the fact I was going on long challenging walks to avoid all kinds of hurtful commentary: getting fit was something that people were bemused about, at best, and openly mocked, at worst. I don’t have that kind of negative energy around me now and, instead, I have the support of people I love.2
I don’t know that my motives are quite the same as Mike: I’m not a father, and don’t intend to become one, nor am I doing this because I think someone else deserves my body in one format or another. No, I’m doing this purely because I would like to be in a situation where I can just say ‘sure, let’s climb that mountain’ and get going. I want to be able to hop on a bike and cycle across one of Canada’s smaller provinces because it would be neat to take that ride. And, more importantly, I want to get in the habit that regular active exercise is just so routine that it’s a normal, established, and boring part of my life.
Tim Cook was asked in the Apple earning call that took place in February about the company had considered whether, and if so how, their battery replacement program might affect replacement rates. The implied comment was the replacements might reduce the likelihood that consumers would upgrade to the new versions of devices, on grounds that some upgrades had historically taken place because people bought new phones as a result of their old ones slowing down or their batteries not providing adequate charge to get through a day. Cook responded that Apple:
did not consider in any way, shape, or form what it would do to upgrade rates. We did it because we thought it was the right thing to do for our customers. I don’t know what effect it will have for our customers. It was not in our thought process of deciding to do what we’ve done.
This is a great answer. Though I do suspect that the battery replacement program will delay some upgrades, I don’t know that such a delay would be inherently bad for the company. Jason Snell wrote that the iPhone 8 — not the X — was a really amazing phone for most people because they tended to be coming from devices that were release two or more years ago. As a result, people that were coming from iPhone 6, 6s, and 5s devices didn’t just get the updates of the iPhone 8 but also all the updates that came to the iPhone 7 and, in some cases, iPhone 6s.
In effect, people who waited three or more years to update ended up being wowed by all of the features in the new iPhone. These are everyday users who really do use words like ‘magic’ and literally utter ‘wow’ when things happen. They laugh with joy when Siri just does something right, or they have calendar items automatically added from their mail. These are the everyday consumers that Apple is making its money from.
These normal users are the ones that are going to be blown away whenever they do an upgrade, and are going to be especially appreciative of all the incremental updates that take place in the extra year they might delay an upgrade. They’re going to talk to their friends and family and co-workers. They might also talk about how the battery situation sucked while, simultaneously, mentioning how no other company offers a similar replacement program. Probably the only equivalent they’ll be able to think of was Samsung’s global recall of devices that were literally exploding in people’s hands.
Quotation of the Week
“By retreating into ourselves, it looks as if we are the enemies of others, but our solitary moments are in reality a homage to the richness of social existence. Unless we’ve had time alone, we can’t be who we would like to be around our fellow humans. We won’t have original opinions. We won’t have lively and authentic perspectives. We’ll be – in the wrong way – a bit like everyone else.”
I’ll update as I’m successful on those projects, instead of indicating what they are then failing to deliver. ↩
It also helps that my father died of a heart attack last year; getting fit isn’t just aimless or directionless, but it’s to reduce the likelihood of a similar event befalling me. ↩
Matt Green has a good writeup of the confusion associated with Apple’s decision to relocate Chinese users’ data to data centres in China. He notes:
Unfortunately, the problem with Apple’s disclosure of its China’s news is, well, really just a version of the same problem that’s existed with Apple’s entire approach to iCloud.
Where Apple provides overwhelming detail about their best security systems (file encryption, iOS, iMessage), they provide distressingly little technical detail about the weaker links like iCloud encryption. We know that Apple can access and even hand over iCloud backups to law enforcement. But what about Apple’s partners? What about keychain data? How is this information protected? Who knows.
This vague approach to security might make it easier for Apple to brush off the security impact of changes like the recent China news (“look, no backdoors!”) But it also confuses the picture, and calls into doubt any future technical security improvements that Apple might be planning to make in the future. For example, this article from 2016 claims that Apple is planning stronger overall encryption for iCloud. Are those plans scrapped? And if not, will those plans fly in the new Chinese version of iCloud? Will there be two technically different versions of iCloud? Who even knows?
And at the end of the day, if Apple can’t trust us enough to explain how their systems work, then maybe we shouldn’t trust them either.
Apple is regarded as providing incredibly secure devices to the public. But as more and more of the data on Apple devices is offloaded to Apple-controlled Cloud services it’s imperative that the company both explain how it is securing data and, moreover, the specific situations under which it can disclose data it is stewarding for its users.
After failing to complete a deal for a used Olympus 12-40mm 2.8 lens I’ve decided to save a pile of money and instead satisfy my curiousity with iPhone lenses. So I’ve now got a Moment Macro lens and accompanying Moment walnut case inbound. Way cheaper compared to a much more expensive macro micro 4/3 lens and easier to carry with me at all times. Super curious how it actually performs though…
I was excited about the idea of the Apple HomePod but the more I learn about it, the less it seems to make sense for my home. I only use one set of speakers — connected to my TV — for the Apple TV as well as Playstation 4.1 But it seems like I can’t hook my TV proper to the HomePod? And if that’s the case, then I’d just have another speaker in my house not doing anything particularly novel or special.
OK, and a crappy Bluetooth speaker in the bathroom for podcasts while showering. ↩
Excited Pixels 