New Tech and Productivity Site!
I've moved my productivity and tech blogging to a new site, born just yesterday.
I'm going to leave this blog for other things, mostly photography, so do subscribe to Multithreaded Mind for helpful tips and tricks for working on your computer.
For photography stories of mine and others, also subscribe to www.28thfloor.net.
Have a great weekend!
Mac Productivity Tip: Fluid.app
One of the programs I use the most on my mac is a free application called Fluid (http://www.fluidapp.com). Fluid very simply, creates a copy of safari that is restricted to a certain website. So you can create an “application” that only runs facebook, or google calendar, or whatever you need. It’s more powerful than that, with built in support for URL shortening, plugins, and skins. Also, if your app crashes, it won’t take the tabs you have open in Safari with it. Here’s how I use it. Today’s examples are going to be google calendar, google tasks, and the excellent music site www.lala.com.
Google Calendar is an easy one. You simply launch fluid, put in the URL (http://www.google.com/calendar), and hit go. It creates the .app, places it in your applications folder and launches it. You can then launch the app, stick it in your dock, and most importantly access it instantly from quicksilver.
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this feature places it nicely out of the way... in your menubar
Google tasks is slightly more complicated. Use this URL (http://mail.google.com/tasks/iphone), and hit go. For extra flair, you can go to the menu bar, and select “Convert to Embedded MenuSBB”. This places it in your taskbar as a handy menu item that drops down on click. Very handy.
the asterixs are wildcards, allowing you to hit any page on the site
Lala.com has one special feature that I will highlight. Lala.com can share the current playing track on twitter, but fluid.app by default restricts your browsing to the domain you set it up on originally. You can expand these restrictions in the pref pane, under Advanced Preferences. Just add twitter.com as one of the options. If you don’t do this, it’ll open up the link in your default browser.
google voice is a very handy app... as is delicious, and google docs!
Lastly, as a mac fiend, we usually like things very pretty. Fluid has an option when you create the app to choose an alternate icon. If you don’t, it’ll use the website favicon, which isn’t quite high enough resolution for me. A great source of icons is http://www.flickr.com/groups/fluid_icons/. Plenty of user submitted high res png goodness to choose from.
So that’s it. As you start to use this, you’ll find yourself sticking more and more of the sites you use constantly in these fluid instances. It’s a bit like a bookmark, but it’s really handy, especially for you social network nuts. PC users, you don’t have to feel left out. The same basic principles hold true for Google’s Chrome browser, which has a very similar feature. If you have any ideas, questions, or suggestions, please leave a comment.
Mac Productivity Tip: Safari Bookmarklets
I keep flip flopping back and forth between safari and firefox, but one feature on safari that keeps pulling me back is the hotkeyed bookmarklets.
Safari and other browsers have two kinds of bookmarks... traditional bookmark folders (which I don't use anymore, more on that in a later post) and what is called the bookmarks menu. In safari, these bookmarks can be accessed by pressing CMD + [number key], where [number key] is the number in order. So in my toolbar, above, CMD + 1 is "Share on FriendFeed," and CMD + 2 is "Read Later."
The real power of bookmarklets is that they can store little javascript programs, not just websites. In fact, that's what all of my bookmarklets do, and they are real handy. I'll focus on just one of them today. It's the one labeled "Read Later". It hooks up to www.instapaper.com.
Instapaper is a great service, that can be best summed up as a place to store temperorary bookmarks. So when I encounter a long blog post, or a youtube video, or a shop item I want for later, but I don't want to log it in a text file or create a bookmark, I simply press CMD + 2, and it's logged away until I come for it. Very handy for all those little things you come across at work that you want to save till later.
So that's it. Bookmarklets can be used on any browser, even stinky old IE, but I wanted to highlight the power of them on Safari. Other bookmarklets I use constantly include Subscribe in Google Reader, Add to Wishlist, and Bookmark on Delicious. I'll talk more about bookmarking and delicious later.
Mac Productivity Tip: Navigating the Finder Using the Keyboard
I’ve always been frustrated since I switched to mac by the file picker dialogues in the Finder and in different programs that utilize that format. I got past the return key being the rename button, but what frustrated me was the inability to navigate down through levels in programs, specifically in coding or editing software.
A good example is software like the excellent FTP program by Panic Software, Transmit. When I want to drill down to a folder called “Banter”, I can start typing “ba…” in order to get to there, but up to this point I’ve grabbed the mouse, double clicked on the folder, and continued as such until I found the document/folder I was looking for. This having to grab the mouse every time has *frustrated* me to no end.
No more.
Today’s shortcut is so mind-blowingly simple, I found it by accident and I feel stupid for not figuring it out before. In the Finder, the shortcut for moving up a level is CMD + UP ARROW. Logically enough, the default open behavior in file pickers is CMD + DOWN. Before, I was frustrated, because in the Finder you can press CMD + O to open, but in software CMD + O brings up an Open File dialog by default. Using the CMD + DOWN ARROW shortcut, you can navigate the file dialogs such as the ones in Transmit, Coda, Textmate, and Espresso with speed and ease.
Stay tuned for more mac tips such as this one, and please share the link with your friends!
Mac Productivity Tip: Using the Help menu as a Universal Shortcut Bar
Are you a l337 keyboard shortcut maniac? Do you wish you could access menu items using a spotlight/quicksilver like interface? Well now you can! Press CMD + SHIFT + /, and on most leopard applications the Help menu will show up, with a spotlight-like box in focus immediately. Start typing what you want to find like "stabilization" for getting at the Analyze for Stabilization in iMovie '09, and items that match the text will show up in the window. This trick is also great for finding filters and tools in photoshop that you can’t remember the shortcuts to.
I'm going to feature some more tricks for keeping you productive and happy, stay tuned!
Reflecting on Light
I think this is my favorite water lily photo I've ever taken. It actually might be my favorite flower photo I've ever taken.
Yesterday I ran over to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens after work, and to my pleasant surprise met ~Amabile~, whose work I've always admired and really loved. She ran out of card space and I ran out of battery, but it was really neat to watch her work.
As many of you know, flickr is one of three or so ways I attempt to improve my photography. I look at other images, and ask myself: "why does this stand out to me?" It occurred to me yesterday that in order to internalize what I'm learning, and replicate it in my work, I in some way have to be able to describe it. I have to be able to quantify a graphic art in words.
The way to be able to do that is to have vocabulary to describe photography. Words like crop factor, leading lines, hard light, soft light, harsh, gentle, saturated, monochrome... and many more like it. Sometimes, I sit there at an image I like and just come up with "tags" almost that describe the image. It sounds really stupid, but it really does help. As recently I'm obsessed with light, most of the time these days I'm drawn to very dramatic lighting, and I try to identify the light source, why it's so graphically powerful, and how I can replicate it in my work. Don't get me wrong... I'm not copying other people's art, but I am trying my hardest to learn from it.
You also have to move beyond the concrete nature of technique and identify message, emotion. How does this shot make you feel? Are you sad, nostalgic, joyous, morose, or angry? And almost more importantly, using that vocabulary, what aspects of this photo capture that feeling?
Anyway, just some thoughts, not really sorted out like they should be.
Light My Way
I have heard the argument on whether we as photographers create beauty, or simply capture it. I think it's just semantics.
Up to this point, I've only captured. I saw something in the world that I liked the way it looked, the way the light fell on it, and I carefully framed that, bottled it up and showed it to you as a series of ones and zeroes. If a subject's light wasn't perfect, I either over exposed and then burned out what didn't need to be there. This to me although a form of artistic expression, is sort of just capturing.
Strobist has set me free.
The power of small flashes is that I am not bound to the restrictions I once faced when it came to natural lighting... Shooting in broad daylight so that I can pull the aperture to a reasonable level, trying to barely contain the highlights as I seek to at least get the thing completely in focus. It brings a brand new set of challenges and complexities surely, but it's worth it in the long run. Now I'm creating.
For this shot, I saw a subject I wanted to capture, and a setting in which to put it. That's two out of the three needed components for a good photo. The third is light, and I luckily brought enough of that in my bag.
The two light setup I'm favoring these days is a mixture of what I've learned over the last few mistakes. I usually put a diffuser dome on the fill light (in this case a SB-600), and place it far back enough so that it in some way cancels out the shadow the key throws on the background. I've been shooting antiques, so I like the grime and character that the years have given the object. To really bring this out, I'll shoot with my SB-900 zoomed all the way to 200. For this shot, because of the glass pane's reflectivity, I shot the zoomed SB-900 through a diffuser which I held with one hand while I shot the camera using a remote. I did check, even though the light was shot through the diffuser, there was a slight change between zoomed to 200mm and zoomed out. I liked it zoomed in. As usual, I threw a gel on there, to change up the color a bit. I think no matter which color shift I choose in raw, adding a hot/cool contrast helps the feel of depth in the image. I then composed, and shot a few until I got one I liked. I then dodged and burned, and did my usual Aperture magic. I hope you like the result, please comment your thoughts.
Always Better Viewed Large On Black
Vision
(WARNING: I am too young and too inexperienced to truly speak about this topic, but that's never stopped me before has it? :D )
Vision is the quality that separates photography from photographic documentation. We sometimes commend it by saying "Good eye for [insert descriptive here]," or sometimes "Well seen." It's the part that takes the science and knowledge and turns it into art. For most of my life, I've sought to acquire and make this part of my brain better by looking at pictures, and studying what parts of them make them great. I pored over National Geographic, studied blog posts and books. I consume around 120 photos per day on flickr, asking myself the same question. "Why did I click on this thumbnail?" I want to know what draws the human eye. I'm going to try and break this idea down into different parts, and address different aspects of this in the next few posts. Feel free to chime in in the comments if you have some input or a good story.
Firstly: Using a film camera, a medium format, shooting blurry lurid street scenes with a holga, blasting out color in an HDR, or dropping photoshop actions like it's acid in the 70s does *NOT* constitute vision. I'm not dissing the use of any of these techniques or technologies. I know amaziing photographers that drop my jaw every time I see their work who shoot exclusively on Medium Format, B&W, and Holga. I don't hate HDR or photoshop actions. I hate using them so much that you dull the part of your brain that allows you to create something new.
I'm falling into that trap myself. I developed a nice little aperture setting that can make a dull photo look quite nice. And while I like the effect, I've been trying to avoid using it *all* the time. Not because I don't want to develop a set style, but because I don't want to prevent myself from discovering something that is equally or more fascinating.
And that's just in post pro.
I know I'm not qualified to speak on this topic. I'm a young shooter, my first pic was taken with a point and shoot on 11/29/04, only five years ago. I am told I have some sort of style/eye/sense of vision, and I've been working on it ever since. For me, much of the learning process is breaking down what makes my previous work successful, destroying it, and reincorporating the idea in a new way. Whether it's composition, post pro, subject matter, lighting... the beauty of digital is constant experimentation is free. Find a rule you have followed in your work, and break it on your next shoot. Deliberately do something you have never done before, and see where it takes you. You may be surprised.
Autumn in Spring.
I went to the botanical gardens yesterday. There were *so* many people there with cameras! It was fun anyway... and I really got to test out my backpack. It works so well... I changed lenses quickly and easily, whenever I needed to. It even holds my small tripod I use for flashes.
This shot was invisible until I walked right under it. The lighting was unexciting until you stood directly under the tree. I didn't see it, I was just browsing around when suddenly I glanced up because of a bird flying overhead and there was this blaze of orange. So I changed my 50 to my 300, and snapped off a few pics. I guess it pays to have your eye out of the lens every once in a while.
(And yes, my study of flashes and pursuit of old antique things will continue presently. :D )
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Don't worry, I'm not having an emotional breakdown. My financial identity was stolen over the past week, and I've been quite tied up between school and dealing with that. Still not over, so if you have any advice as to what to do I'd appreciate it.
As a result of this thievery, I got very angry, and last week decided to turn that anger into some photos, both to calm down and to maybe capture something about feeling out of control of my own social security number/bank account. (How I intended to get that into a photo, I don't know.) I went into a room, snapped off a few photos, they all stunk. Horribly. I threw them into the computer and forgot about them for two weeks. But… last night I decided to see what I could do with them. This was the result.
It's hard proof just how important post production is in this day and age. Here's a progression of what I did. First, monochrome and levels, followed by dodge and burn a judicious crop. Still not the greatest self portrait ever taken, (the model isn't that great) but at least it's not worth tearing my eyes out over. Incidentally, all the work was in Aperture 2.0, not photoshop itself.
This got me thinking. I pondered about how the total image I project on the internet is 50% post production, just like this picture. I send out to the world what is me, and what I want to be me, and it gets jumbled up until it is what you get when you google Evan Travers. It's not really an accurate image, really. After a year of making myself completely open and trying the whole open life/internet thing, I'm slowly limiting access to myself. Turning off notifications, unsubscribing, unfollowing… I guess you could say I'm trying to get quality over quantity but I'm really just trying to focus on the real things. I'll still comment on your photos, but maybe not all of them. I'm going to still post photos. But not every day. Just a strategy.