Category: Tools

To Keep or To Delete – Are All Your Photos Worth Keeping?

Expertise, Interesting Stuff, Organization and Management, Photography, Tools

My last post was about printing your favourite photographs to put them on display in your home. In order to decide what are your favourite photographs though, you need to review your collection. That opens up a whole other topic and it’s one that has gotten some airtime lately – should you keep all the photographs you ever shoot or spend some time initially culling and sorting good from bad and deleting the bad?

The topic has surfaced because of the proliferation of online resources that now enable or even insist that you keep all of your “assets” in the cloud. The convenience of working on your collection anytime, anyplace, on any device seems to be what has prompted this discussion. Or perhaps it was the fact that even professional photographers now use many different devices to capture their work. And of course, the larger your collection, the more challenging is this idea of managing everything in the cloud. Cost aside, the larger the collection, the more organized you have to be in managing it and the more time you need to devote to it.

There are so many elements that factor into a decision on retention. This post explores some of the most relevant considerations for hobbyists primarily. Professionals have to be guided by contractual conditions and by their own marketing and branding interests. This is not that. This is for those of us who have full creative control over what we keep and what we don’t without the pressure of legal obligations or earning an income from it.

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What to do with your Favourite Photographs?

Photography, Tools

If you are a hobbyist photographer like me, you have a big collection of digital images, all taking up space on your computer, separate hard drive or even memory cards tossed in a glass jar (yes, I have friends who do this!).

We are creating an amazing legacy of our lives and, sadly, much of it is hidden away. It’s estimated that 5 billion photographs are taken every day around the world. The reality is that our digital lives make this easy – click, click, click – and it also means that only a fraction of these ever see the light of day. It’s also true that only a fraction of these are really worth keeping. From my own experience, I know that my keeper rate is about 10% once I take the time to actually review what I shoot.

But what do you do with that 10%? It shouldn’t sit hidden away. Here’s what I’m doing.

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The Pros and Cons of Product Competition

Astrophotography, Gear, Photography, Tools

Hobbies are a great way to spend money. They are also a great way to spend TOO MUCH money. Just when you’ve bought the kit you need, you discover the one more thing that will make it perfect. That is certainly true in astrophotography, which is my latest creative focus.

I decided fairly early on that I would invest in only tried and true solutions, including techniques and gear that would fully support my enjoyment of the hobby without a lot of testing or tweaking. That strategy has paid off for the three plus years of effort. But just once, last fall, I decided that I would try another approach instead. I was looking for a way to control some equipment using a tablet or my phone, and there were several options, including one that had only recently been released a few months before. The appeal of that option was versatility: a claim that the device could handle so much more than any other available option for about the same price. I decided to give that a try. Find out how it went.

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Adobe’s Puzzling February Update

Expertise, Laws, Photography, Tools

Whenever Adobe releases a new version of its photography software package components (i.e. Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop), there are typically a multitude of videos that explain the new releases and, again typically, comment on how great the new features are.

Not this time.

The bulk of videos I have watched, mostly from long running pro photographers, have described and demonstrated the features, but also offered some very puzzling or at least unexpected commentary. Find out what.

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Trying 3D Printing

Photography, Tools

Note the word “trying”. Turns out, this type of printing is not quite as simple as queuing up a file, loading a substrate and hitting print. The hardware and the “substrate”, which in this case are spools of filament, are not cheap and require a well designed project file to start, with an assembly or “slicing” plan to complete, and a printer whose temperature and mechanical settings are perfect.

I wanted to explore this because my astronomy hobby relies on being able to connect devices and hardware items to the top or sides of your telescope, in order to ensure the telescope can move freely without tangling cables or slamming into stationary detached components. I’ve ordered 3D printed items for this purpose from talented folks who designed and printed them for sale. How hard could it be to print my own? Turns out it was a lot harder than I thought.

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Budget vs. Hobbies – Finding a Balance

Life, Photography, Tools

Happy New Year all! Hope the holiday season was everything you wanted and that you received and gave everything that made your season perfect. I was actually quite ill over the holidays, struck with a seasonal flu (and maybe other bad bugs) that kept me at home for quite some time. Eventually, this becomes boring, so I turned my diminished brainpower to exploring a topic I had not explored lately: how best to balance budget and hobbies in retirement?

I actually have had a budget every year since retirement. And at the end of every year, I check it to see just how much difference it has not made to my end of year finances. I’ve decided to give it a more meaningful try for this coming year, especially since travel will be big on the agenda this year.

Budgeting has long been the mantra of financial planners who work with young investors, particularly the part about saving for retirement. But few seem to have good advice on how to manage that money after retirement. Why of course the floodgates open, no? This post is not financial advice. This post is about a few things I’ve learned about having fun responsibly in your golden years.

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The End of Photoshop – For Me

Astrophotography, Photography, Tools

It happened unexpectedly, unannounced. One day I was minding my own business, reading email, and one popped into my feed. Oh, no, another ad. But this one was different. It was from that venerable king of creative editing software – Adobe. It was a reminder that my subscription for my Photography Plan would renew in a month. Ok, great. Then I saw it, at the bottom.

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Why AI is No Big Threat

Career, Life, My Community, Photography, Tools

Back in 2020, I did my first blog post on AI, commenting that while many saw its emergence as a threat, I didn’t. With the choices available to them, people like me could elect how much if any machine-learned automation might become part of our lives.

It’s five years later and I thought I would revisit that idea again, again from the perspective of a senior retiree. I do recognize that other lifestyles and financial circumstances might result in a different viewpoint, but this is mine.

Here’s how AI has impacted me in the last five years and how it might impact me in the future.

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Why Edit Your Photographs?

Artistic Ideas, Photography, Tools

Frankly, it’s a question I’ve never thought about. Ever since I starting shooting digitally, and ever since I became aware of software available to edit, I’ve edited. But I’m preparing a short talk for a group of hobbyist photographers and I’ve discovered that some of them don’t edit, have never edited and have never considered editing. I find that fascinating. We will talk more about why they don’t edit in a bit.

There is a long standing debate about in-camera skills vs. post-processing skills. From the early days of photography, and rightly so, it was decisions about framing, composition, exposure, and using natural light and shadow properly that determined the end result. I agree with that perspective and continue to refine my skills in-camera. But artists being artists, more options were discovered for adding a unique look, a mood or an effect to that end result. Today, the options can be almost endless, including AI driven editing technologies. So let’s explore that a bit further.

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When Technical Support is No Support at All

Expertise, Gear, Photography, Tools

Happy New Year all! Playing with those Christmas gifts? Here’s the story of one of mine.

Any hobby that relies on technology will eventually bring you to a point where you need to contact Technical Support. I’m pretty savvy and can solve most technical things on my own. I frankly prefer to do that, as I learn better that way how to avoid the problem next time.

I had a situation recently though that made it necessary to seek help. I purchased a piece of equipment before Christmas through my favourite telescope shop. The item was made by SkyWatcher, a reputable, well-known and trusted brand. Sadly, the item did not work at all out of the box and despite my best efforts, I could not solve the problem. So I contacted technical support, first at the shop where I purchased it, then through SkyWatcher. Here’s what happened…

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