Month: January 2019

Pulaski at Night, Andrew Bird

Last week this tweet by Alex Boyd hit my feed a few times by a number of photographers that I respect greatly.

Controversial photography opinion: I honestly don’t care if you shot your images on film. It doesn’t make you or the work you’ve made special unless maybe you made the film yourself. It also doesn’t make you work slower. You make you work slower.

This opinion is fair — but I think it misses the reason why those of us choose to include the name of film and/or analog camera in our photographs on social media.

For me, it’s about community and inspiration.

There is a vibrant and friendly community of film photographers on Instagram and Twitter. It’s been there for years and I am very grateful for it. It has led to real friendships around the world. I wouldn’t have made these connections if they didn’t tag their photographs.

Photographs made with film aren’t necessarily better but they can be beautiful and meaningful. I think tagging exposes the merits of film and encourages people to try it. And the more we shoot with film, the longer it will be around.

And that is a very good thing.

(ps: i love film)

https://bijansabet.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/03-dylan-thomas.mp3?_=1

Dylan Thomas, Better Oblivion Community Center

Wow. This new album is so good.

Mary Oliver died yesterday. My meditation teacher ended class yesterday with her poem, The Summer Day.

Beautiful and haunting.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver

I have a very inconsistent behavior when it comes to online privacy. That is likely grave an understatement.

I mean, I consider myself someone who cares about my privacy. And yet we use Nest cameras at home and I use gmail. I also use a Verizon phone and it’s pretty well understood that mobile operators are selling our location data. Even television manufacturers are also selling us out.

I have come to realize I haven’t been thoughtful about the choices I’m making. Either it’s been a lack of thought or I have been too trusting. I suspect (and sort of hope it’s the latter). The looming question: is this trust justified?

I’m starting to take some steps and want to be more mindful about this issue. I deleted my account on Facebook once and for all. It takes 30 days to go through which is sort of crazy but I’m ready to move on.

I changed my settings on Safari to use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine. And now Apple Maps is integrated with DDG which is quite nice. I’ve also stopped using Waze and Google Maps on my phone. I’m trying out Firefox. I am switching from Amazon Echo to HomePods. I disconnected our TVs from our network. I have a growing list and I’m working through it.

I can already feel the change and it’s a bit mixed. There is a real convenience to giving it up and letting Google, Facebook and others personalize your online experience. Google Maps and search are just better. But they need to earn back my trust and so for now, I’m taking back some of choices. I’m already getting seeing less retargeted ads follow me and that feels refreshing.

I’ll end this quote from this fascinating book I’m currently reading called Feel Free by Zadie Smith.

But here I fear I am becoming nostalgic. I am dreaming of a Web that caters to a kind of person who no longer exists. A private person, a person who is a mystery, to the world and—which is more important—to herself. Person as mystery: this idea of personhood is certainly changing, perhaps has already changed

 

No One Changes, Conor Oberst

I use an iMac when I’m sitting/standing in front of a desk.

My portable computer is an 11″ iPad Pro. I don’t carry a MacOS laptop anymore.

But occasionally something will come up when I’m on the go and I need do something that isn’t possible with iOS and I need MacOS.

Thankfully Screens meets this need quite nicely. I simply tap on Screens on my iPad and it connects to the Mac back home. Then I get the full Mac experience over the network on my iPad.

You do need a reasonable internet connection to make this work nicely. But I’ve used Screens successfully over LTE and also public Wifi hotspots without issue.

Highly recommend it if you want to make the move to the iPad.