1700 square feet. My universe right now. A backyard too, and a weekly trip in the car to the grocery store. In and out in 30 minutes.
Most of us have similar stories. In fact, exactly the same stories.
Efforts to stay connected to friends and family, and to be productive at home, have been marginally successful. At first it was kind of surreal: figuring out how to do things remotely that normally are done face to face. Strangely, part of the problem now seems to be that in our increasingly technology-driven world, using technology ALL the time gets monotonous and boring quite quickly. I’m of a generation that never had technology until we became adults. We still choose other ways to get things done. Now we can’t. Continue reading “Working from Home”
Over the past year, I decided to include filters in my camera kit. I took them on several trips and even on local outings, determined to take the time to use them properly. I started out with the standard collection of screw-on filters – a polarizer, a variable neutral density filter and a graduated neutral density filter. I quickly discovered the pros and cons of these types of filters and expanded my kit to include a square-format drop-in filter system. This consisted of a lens adapter, filter holder and a variety of 100mm square filters.
Recently, one of these subscription channels included a short discussion on how Instagram has influenced the way photographers approach their art. The premise was that Instagram has completely changed photography. Their argument: its technical requirements and this generation’s social norm of wanting instant gratification and continuous stimulation of the senses has resulted in a new standard for photography. What is that new standard? 
But first we had to decide what the heck is “fine art”? We’ve had several animated discussions in the past few months, even a field trip to our local art gallery. In the past, I’ve written about 
I’ve set myself a goal for the next year to become more proficient at Photoshop. I use a variety of editing tools now, most of which are slider-based. You move a slider and watch what happens on the screen. The sliders in most applications are laid out in a nice orderly fashion, and you can literally move from top to bottom and achieve a well-edited well-presented image.
Add to that the challenge of learning something new as an older adult. We don’t absorb information the same way as we did as a child. We don’t necessarily retain it even when learned. Memory declines in uneven ways too – with muscle memory and the memory of physically doing things changing at rates different from the memory of reciting things or recollection. So I’m not only setting a goal but trying to find the best method to accomplish it. 
On your camera lens, you may find an inconspicuous button or buttons labelled “IS”, “OIS”, “VR” or something similar. On the newest bodies, there is no button and you don’t need to turn anything on at all – image stabilization or IS is built into the body and is just there for you all the time. What is it? It’s a wonderful technology that stabilizes the image on your sensor when you can’t stabilize yourself or your camera. We “need” stabilization to avoid a blurry image when the camera is moving. And despite our best efforts, the camera moves ALL the time.
There are also times when you have to move to get the shot – you’re tracking something, you’ve just found that perfect angle, but it’s on a branch up high in the air in the wind (not that you would climb up there), or you’re just plain in the wind and it keeps knocking you and your camera. Or you are walking and vlogging, which seems to be popular now, and we naturally shake when we walk. So what can you do? 
I’m becoming more puzzled and concerned about new products released by hardware and software companies that invariably get poor reviews and need to be “fixed”. We’ve seen that lately in the Apple 15 inch MacBook Pro (which has been “fixed” by the 16 inch released Nov 15/19). We’ve seen that in Skylum’s Luminar 3 (which as of this writing, has been “fixed” by Luminar 4, released Nov 19/19). We’ve also seen that very recently in Adobe’s Photoshop for iPad, which as of this writing, has not yet been “fixed”, after having been essentially trashed on its release in Oct. First-release mirrorless cameras from Canon and Nikon both needed firmware “updates” (i.e. fixes). And lastly, ON1’s Photo Raw 2020, released in October, seems to have a bug that causes it to do what should be background file management tasks in the middle of a photo edit, preventing any meaningful work from getting done. As of this writing, that has not been “fixed”.
Modern digital cameras, particularly “prosumer” quality and above, include several different modes or ways of interacting with the camera settings. Although labelled differently for different manufacturers, all good cameras have modes that range from fully manual (where the photographer picks all of the settings) to fully automatic (where the camera evaluates the scene and picks the settings).
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