Photographer. Podcaster. Blogger. Reverse Engineer.
This month Micro.blog is having a photo challenge to help spur some posts and creativity from the growing community there. When Jean asked for recommendations I threw bisect at her and she accepted it as one of the themes.
I thought I’d cull some of the posts as favorites.
The first photo is just beyond the scope of anything I thought someone would do with the theme.
I should just include them all but I wanted to select just a few that I appreciated the most.
Marcus Peddle, remarking on making Jim Grey’s aforementioned list of film photography blogs:
I’m honoured, but slightly embarrassed because most of my photography these days is digital. Still, a photo is a photo, right? I hope you won’t be disappointed by the paucity of film photographs if you came to this website by following the link from Jim’s list.
I understand Marcus’ humble acknowledgement here but it is crappy that anyone should defend what they choose to shoot photos with. A photographer should be able to use whatever tool she/he would prefer to use for any given project or at any given moment and they should never have to apologize for it.
His point is more so that he made a list of film photography blogs and isn’t sharing much about film photography lately. But, you can still read between the lines when he says “a photo is a photo, right?”. Right!!
Personally I use a myriad of “cameras”. A incomplete list of cameras that I currently use regularly are a drone, my iPhone, the Canon AE-1 Program, my now 14 year old Canon Digital Rebel XTi DSLR, an ancient Ansco Speedex, paper negatives shoved into just about any contraption I can find, MY BEDROOM, point and shoot cameras, and many many many more.
I hope everyone on that excellent film photography blog list does the same and shares what they make.
I need to share more photos and will soon.
Here’s a photo I took on a $3 roll of consumer film I picked up at my local grocery store, shot through a Pentax body that I paid $5 for at a garage sale, mounting a $25 lens from ebay. So never mind not having the top-of-the-line equipment, use what you have and stop making excuses.
“Use what you have and stop making excuses.” – Joseph Irvin
I wish that either Safari had Containers or that Firefox had Safari’s tab view. But I cannot find a way to make either thing happen.
It’s time for my annual list of film photography blogs! A great joy of film photography is the community of people who enjoy everything about it: the gear, the films, getting out and shooting, and looking at the resulting photographs. Lots of us share our adventures on our blogs.
I am so very happy this list exists. So many great, active blogs by photographers focused on so many different things. I’ve subscribed to nearly every single one that has an RSS feed.
Thanks to Jim for putting this list together.
The R5 and R6 may very well save Canon. But then again, they may not. As a Canon fan this is worrisome.
But aren’t blogs dead? · Um, nope.
Also, this bit:
Since most of us don’t even try to monetize ’em, they’re pretty ad-free and thus a snappy reading experience.
I’ve successfully monetized niche blogs in the past that made enough for a few incomes.
I’ve only tried to monetize my personal blog a few times over the last few decades of writing it. Each time didn’t really pan out. I cannot recall any singular month where my personal blog scored more than just a few hundred dollars per month. So I gave up. I’m so happy I did. The experience of both writing and reading my blog is better as a result. I do not plan to ever try to monetize my personal blog ever again.
/via Jeremy Keith.
I’m noticing that I’m sending this link much more often these days.
When I first read that Slack was taking Microsoft to court I thought it’d be too much of a distraction for Slack. Reading Stewart’s tweets makes me think they had no choice.
I think we may look back at many of the brand identities that Pentagram has redesigned lately as misfires. If you’re going to remove all personality from a mark it needs to end up being iconic. They are hitting somewhere in the middle in my opinion.
If someone could please make ear hair fashionable you’d be saving me some of my precious morning time.
Unfortunately I haven’t published one of these lists since April. I enjoy looking back at the archives so I need to post these regularly more-so for me than for you!
This list should be three times as long. But I didn’t keep good records.
A few days ago I came across Ton Zijlstra’s post about trying out Obsidian. I didn’t have the time to read it just then so I quickly stored it in Unmark (shameless plug alert) to read later.
After reading his post I realized he is attracted to Obsidian for the same reasons that I was to give it a try. It stores your notes in a format that keeps the data local, readable, and accessible to any text editor. I really like Simplenote but it only stores notes in Simplenotes cloud service and not as local files (although, it did before Automattic acquired the service many years ago).
As the capabilities of cloud services get more and more robust I find myself drifting back to the early days of my computing where I wanted complete control of all of my data. Even though I can have all of my data accessible from any device, anywhere in the world, doesn’t mean that I want to rely on those services to provide me that data. And, I certainly don’t want the data to be locked into any single app.
Web 2.0 addressed this issue by pushing for accessible APIs that allowed data to be imported or exported in a variety of standard formats. Which is great! However, I find that it is the storage that should be standardized and not the method by which you can move data around. And text notes are just one example. I’ll give another example in a moment.
Zijlstra links to another one of his posts regarding “networked agency” that leads to a super interesting post by Ruben Verborgh titled Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web.
I need to spend more time digesting Verborgh’s post (which I somehow missed when he published it late last year). However, the principles that are mentioned within it really land with me. One that stands out:
As apps become decoupled from data, they start acting as interchangeable views rather than the single gateway to that data.
This is exactly what I want for so much of my personal data. Any note taking app should be able to read notes written in any app – making the app’s interface simply a view into my note data. Like email. I can choose any email app for any email address. And switch whenever I want.
I’m currently working at building the very same capabilities for my photo library. In the past, I’ve written about why Photos for Mac isn’t a good long term storage solution for our photo libraries. As I write this I’m creating a set of tools and a workflow for my photo storage that allows me to store my photos in a readable format and structure while retaining the ability to use an app like Photos for Mac as a view into that library.
I still have more work to do, and I plan on writing a post sometime in September on what I’ve made so far, but it is a challenge to be sure. My overall goal is to have a photo library that does not require an app, but that an app enhances the experience of browsing my library. And, that all metadata related to a photo (EXIF, tags, faces, etc.) are stored within the file itself and not only within a photo management tool’s database. This will not be easy but I’m determined.
Notes and photos are not the only data that I wish I had in a standardized readable format. My links from Unmark are important to me. Unmark can already import from a variety of services and formats, and it can export into a JSON file. But I’ve recently started working on an export process for Unmark that will spit out a standardized HTML file so that people can export their links to be ingested in any browser or app they desire. This is, of course, the Web 2.0 approach.
I’m glad I read Zijlstra’s post. It has reinvigorated me to continue my effort to decentralize as much of my personal data as possible.
Shattered window panes – July 2020
I haven’t been shooting very many photos in the last few weeks. Partially because life is very busy and also due to the pandemic. This photo, taken on a nature walk, was shot on the iPhone of an abandoned railroad building from the early 1900s.
Please consider adding a photo of yourself to your About page if you write a personal blog. See mine. Putting a face to a name helps a lot! When you do, spread the word so others do it too.
I wish I had the time to redesign my site’s home page. It is something I’ve been thinking about for years. I need to carve out the time to do it.
I feel like most people, including those that rail against Facebook, don’t have the stones to quit Instagram.
I thought I would update to Big Sur when Public Beta 2 arrived but I have far too much going on to take that chance (though, the OS does seem pretty solid from what I’m reading). I think I’ll wait for the public release in September at this point.
Quicktime on macOS bug: Hover to display controls. Roll off on left, right, or bottom of window, controls disappear. Roll off on the top of window and controls remain.
I’m old, so I can still call them tweetstorms rather than threads.
I just posted a tweetstorm regarding Photos for Mac on Catalina. I posted it there because I’m sort of hoping that a few Apple people are still lingering on the WWDC hashtag.
Here are my tweets:
Who knows. Maybe someone will read those tweets.
Steve Benjamins, in a post showing how he makes some money via Spotify for streaming his music:
Every Monday my music gets a spike in streams on Spotify. You could set a watch to it— it’s that consistent:
What makes Monday so special?
Well every Monday Spotify sends out a new Discover Weekly playlist. Discover Weekly is an algorithmic playlist— which means its personalized with songs Spotify thinks the user would like.
I’ve written a lot about how good Spotify is here on my blog. If you haven’t tried it, or if you’re into Apple Music or Amazon, I urge you to try it. These playlists that Benjamins mentions are extraordinarily good. They are eerie. They are magic.
It is no surprise to me that these playlists make a big difference to smaller artists getting recognition, more fans, and some streams. Almost every day I’m exposed to music I would have likely never found otherwise.
I’m spinning some of Benjamins’ music today just to help him out a little. Good stuff. Great to work to.
/via Ryan Singer.
I hadn’t heard of Retrobatch by @ccgus until John linked to it. Perhaps I can use it to add EXIF information to my photos? If so, it can help me significantly in my current photo management workflow.
I’m looking for recommendations on personal homesteading blogs. Something like @dejus‘ @yellowcottage. If you know of any, please let me know about them.
My wish list for this year’s WWDC was pretty well accommodated today. Once we are a few releases into the public betas we’ll know what we’ll really get come the fall.