Splash!
Notes:
- Better quality glassware works better than cheap stuff from Ikea. The cheaper stuff was much harder to get looking crisp.
- Lower flash power gives shorter flash durations.
- Nikon’s Creative Lighting system is fast enough for this sort of work, which I didn’t expect. I started with Pocket Wizards, but didn’t have enough control over the power (because of the cheaper flashes, not because of the PWs).
- I really should get something white and bendable that’s waterproof, as a backdrop – but for now, the card will do.
Dear Apple.
There are a few things I’d like Apple to fix, or upgrade, or just plain finish. They kinda work now, but they’re messy, or feel incomplete.
Full screen: Apple’s much vaunted 10.7 addition of Full Screen Mode works fine on single screen systems, and (I’m told) particularly well on smaller screens, like the Macbook Airs. When I’m just working on the laptop, full screen mode for some apps works fine.
Once you add a second screen, it sucks.
If I have my laptop screen as my primary, that means that my 24″ external is waste space. Sure, it’s waste space with an attractive grey fabric background, but still, it’s utterly useless.
So, the obvious choice is to make my 24″ the primary – then I’m only wasting the 15″ of the laptop screen. Apart from the fact that Aperture isn’t usable like that – the ‘browser’ can only be on the primary screen, while the ‘alternate display’ for images can only be on the secondary – which puts things completely the wrong way around. For some unknown reason, there’s an arbitrary constraint that prevents me from arranging things how I want them.
And don’t even get me started on Aperture’s Full Screen Mode – it’s so limited as to make it unusable.
Full screen should use the full screen of the screen that the app is on, when full screen mode is activated. And you should be able to use two (or more) at once if you choose to, one on each screen.
In short, Full Screen Mode simply isn’t smart enough.
Integrated communications:iChat, using someone else’s servers/services is OS X only. Facetime is on iOS and OSX but has no presence or textual component. iMessage is textual, but lacks any sort of presence information, doesn’t have an OS X component.
Why? Why am I using an AIM account to talk on iChat? Why can’t I see if someone is available on Facetime? Why can’t I send iMessages to someone from a device with a hardware keyboard?
I’m sure that some sort of integration is on the cards, but right now, this is a mess. And ugly. And just plain irritating.
Why I love Android, Microsoft and Canon
Most folk who know me, know that I’m an Apple user and a Nikon* shooter. There are only a few computer related devices here that don’t come from Cupertino, and all of my camera gear is Nikon.
I use Apple (OS X and iOS) because it fit well with how I work. I have the gear, I have no compelling reason to change. I have a significant investment, both in software for it, and time spent learning its idiosyncrasies – time and money that I’d have to spend all over again, if I were to change platform.
I use Nikon because when I was shopping for my first digital SLR, Nikon had a slight edge over the Canon that was the equivalent price point in the features that I cared about. Canon had the edge in features that were less important to me – so, I bought Nikon. Over time, I’ve bought more lenses, flashes, accessories, and spent a lot of time learning “The Nikon Way” so that the equipment just gets out of the way, and lets me take photos.
None of that is the point, other than to attempt to prove that I’m not a mindless zealot for any of those companies. This is why I love their competitors.
iOS wouldn’t be as good as it is, without Android in the market. Number 2 tries harder, and if you pick the right metrics, both iOS and Android are at number 2 in the market. They’re both working to become number 1, and this is nothing but good for users of both.
Microsoft progress stalled for years, when they lacked a viable competitor. Now it looks like they’re making a real come back, innovating again – and I think this is probably due to OS X. Now that they’re back in the race, OS X is improving faster than it has for the last couple of releases.
Canon and Nikon have been competitors for years – they keep pushing each other onwards and upwards.
I’ll continue to be an Apple using Nikon shooter until there’s a compelling enough reason to switch, to discard my existing investments and take the loss caused by the move. I cheer when something new and cool comes out on ‘droid phones. I’m gleeful when Canon raise their high ISO performance, or frame rate.
Because I know that, as a result, iOS and Nikon will have to pick up their game, just a little bit more.
[My wife's camera, purchased by me, is a Canon. Nikon's equivalent range, from all I can tell, is comparable, but I just can't bring myself to buy something called a 'coolpix'. That name is just simply, awful.]
The Strobist Song?
Is it just me, or is this the perfect song for anyone who does off-camera flash photography?
Back in the good old days when dancing meant exploding
The idea was simple for a decent overloading
And for a multiple flash with no cords attached
He came up with a more remote flash trigger
It’s connected to an accessory in his hip
Which automatically fires in perfect synchro
But perhaps his most exciting development is his angle
They call it the dance
It’s the St. Vitus dance
Such flexibility
What an accessory
See his soft bounce
What flexibility
Such a soft bounce
What an accessory.
And for special effects he has six filters
Three coloured red with the others pilfered
And if you really want to know what that means
He could throw a blue flash from eighty five feet
Of course you might want to check your own little output
So we devised a few simple and easy to crack contortions
So you can bump and scrape all the day through
With the dance, it’s the St. Vitus dance, the St. Vitus dance
Such flexibility, what an accessory, such a soft bounce
What flexibility, such a soft bounce, check his hot shoe, feel his output
He’s a light machine, see his angle
He’s a light machine.
Lyrics from: http://www.elyrics.net/
Mistakes
It’s easy to not make mistakes. Simply never do anything you’re not 100% confident in your abilities to do, pay close attention to what you’re doing, and most of the time, you’ll be mistake free.
Of course, if you want to do something new, something you don’t already know everything about, then you’re destined to make mistakes by the bucketload.
This whole blog concept could be a mistake for me – mixing all the sorts of work I love doing, each of which reflects a different aspect of who I am, is and action that is easy to regard as a mistake.
Melding the photography (my creative side), the community (my social side), and the server/technical work I do (my left-brain/nerd side) into one site will put some people off. Many people have told me (and I’m sure that more will tell me in the future) that having everything under one on-line roof is a bad move, that people want to hire dedicated professionals for everything.
I’m hoping that isn’t true. At least, not entirely true.
I’ve never been 100% dedicated to any aspect of my life. I’m a whole person, and I like to think I’m fairly well rounded – and I’ve chosen to honestly reflect that here.
Time will tell whether or not this is a mistake, or not.
Intersections
Intersections are where interesting things happen. Out on the edges, where different disciplines overlap, that’s where things get fun.
Community Management is at a weird intersection, especially in startups.
One on hand, there’s the marketing side of things. The broader community outreach, the the blogging, the commenting, the engaging. The making sure people hear about you, in a good way.
On another, there’s the branding, the how the community around the offering ‘feels’ from the inside, how it looks from the outside. It’s about how the company communicates with its user-base, and the world at large.
It’s about customer service – If you’re looking after the customers right, they’ll help you with actually being a community, they’ll help you grow. A good customer care experience is a game changer.
But it’s also about developer liaison, making sure the dev team hears what the users are saying – without them needing to spend their valuable (and, let’s face it, expensive) time dealing with users all day when you’d rather they were coding. As community manager, you’re representing the user’s perspective to the developers, aggregating and translating and prioritising.
It’s about reporting back to the designers what people are struggling with, so they can find a way to make it more intuitive.
It’s about managing expectations, letting the users in on what’s planned (up to a certain extent), telling them what they can expect, and adjusting their expectations as necessary. You’re representing the company’s perspective to the users. You need to be honest in this. Users will understand if you say “We’re not ready to share that yet” or “Our policy is to release updates, not timelines”. Don’t try and tell people what you think they want to hear – you’re almost definitely wrong.
Through all of this, you need to be genuine. You need to be in the community, part of the community. You need to be yourself, a real person.
You need to have a face, a life outside your role. You don’t need to share all of it of course, but it helps to acknowledge it. People will understand if you take a weekend off, but they can’t understand, if they don’t know. People get that your personal life intersects with your professional world.
Intersections are where the fun is.