Step Out in February

Michael sent me a note for an upcoming exhibition: Carol Mott-Binkley of Curtis Park is making a name for herself in the art world through iPhone photography. Describing herself as “the Forrest Gump of iPhone photography” to the Sac Bee for having a “charmed hobby,” Carol’s work will be on display at East Sac’s Archival Gallery from Feb. 1-25 at 3223 Folsom Boulevard in East Sacramento (near N Street intersection - east of Alhambra Blvd.). Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 4 pm. 

https://archivalgallery.com/exhibitions/ 

I think we can all agree about "having a charmed hobby." 

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Another visit might be take you to Folsom's 48 Natoma Gallery (at 48 Natoma Street ;-] next to city hall) to see an eye-opening show featuring fabric art - not exactly quilts, not exactly ... what you expected. Stretch your imagination and hold on for a Pixeladies display and fiber sculpture by Susan Else. Gallery hours M-F 9 am to 4:30pm, Tu & Th 6-8 pm until April 6th. Carolyn and I checked it out - Wow! 

Visit pixeladies.com for a "telling stories in cloth" teaser. Digital images of analog art is OK, but if possible, you want to see this display with your own eyes. Explore their website to see details about printing on fabric and resources. 

Pages Archived

Some of the information on this site is changing dramatically for Spring 2023 and pages you might want to review are no longer in the navigation bar under the header at the top of the page. So visit this post to see links to those pages. 

Videos - created as demonstrations for class use 

Apps - the long list of apps we've used since 2017. This page needs some serious edits because more developers are going the subscription route or the products have shifted. Let's talk about your favorite apps - and cull this list to the best ones. 

Prep - current studio participants have been through this drill each semester 

The details of our six meetings have been archived with live links in DRAFT - Fall 2022 All Pages and includes references for video production. 

Privacy Issues and Smart TVs

Privacy is popping up all over my news feeds lately. I guess the algorithm is tracking my curiosity. So many services make suggestions based on recent activities. Buy an app and then you will see other related apps. Binge watch a television show and see similar recommended series. Like a Tweet and see more about that topic or by that same poster. 

Interesting read in Apple News from The Atlantic. Check out Justin Pot’s article “The Hidden Cost of Cheap TVS” from the January 3, 2023 issue. 

‘Smart TVs are just like search engines, social networks, and email providers that give us a free service in exchange for monitoring us and then selling that info to advertisers leveraging our data. These devices “are collecting information about what you’re watching, how long you’re watching it, and where you watch it,” Willcox said, “then selling that data—which is a revenue stream that didn’t exist a couple of years ago.”’ He is quoting James K. Willcox, the senior electronics editor for Consumer Reports. 

Apple devices cost more because Apple does not subsidize their products by selling us out. Or so the marketing campaign declares. I’ve bought the story. 

A smart tv has apps - like our iDevices - that can connect to subscription services Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, ESPN, YouTube, etc. when you connect them to your home Internet. How wonderful to have one remote control to access cable TV shows and your other apps! 

Well, there is another way if you can stand to have multiple remotes.  We have a “smart tv” purchased several years ago but never connected it to our Internet service. Instead there is an Apple TV box that connects to the Internet with HDMI connection to our big screen TV. Most of the same apps and subscriptions available to smart tvs are offered on the Apple platform: Netflix, Prime, YouTube, PBS, etc. at the same subscription price. I have to trust that Netflix or Prime is not selling my watching habits. 

What does this have to do with photography? Let’s talk about it. 

Iconic Museum Visits

Maybe in person or via the Internet, it is time to renew and refresh. Consider old ideas as the foundation for new work. 

As a fun diversion, read Ali Fitzgerald’s Iconoclastic article in MOMA Magazine about analog artist Susan Kare -- the creator of many familiar icons we see on screen. 

What inspires you to see different? 

Apple Pay & Apple Wallet

This post is not specifically about photography, but generally about paying for things. Like cameras, lenses, mobile devices and services. 

If you have any experience in using the Apple Pay service and loading credit cards into Apple Wallet, you might want to know more. Pete Lozzi is a guru about all things Apple and is a member of the Sacramento MacNexus User Group. His 2022 General Meeting presentation was on Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. The core presentation begins at 0:39:20 to 1:20:00 and then goes to Q&A. 

Apple is known as a disrupter in the marketplace. They did not invent computers, cell phones or credit cards. But they are challenging the market leaders and changing the playing field with consumers in mind.  

iCloud Cleanup Time - Again!

I'm still subscribed at 200GB on my iCloud storage. And it is almost full, again! 

To assess the potential for recovering space open Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Manage Storage to see what apps take up GBs of online storage. For me: Photos - 141GB, Backups - 42 GB, iCloud Drive - 5 GB, Pixelmator 2 GB and Mail - 1 GB. Attachments in the Mail app are probably the culprit. Pixelmator creates an in-app Gallery and the layered files have .pxm extension and the details on screen show my file sizes range from 14 MB to 160 MB. (The power of layers increases file size exponentially.) Pixelmator is a smart app and can save work to either iCloud or the device itself. Saving to iPhone is different than saving to iPad.  To clear our the Pixelmator Gallery, use the ( ... ) > Select > tap a file or two > Share > Airdrop to computer. Airdropped files can be found in the Downloads folder. Move this files to an external drive where other files are archived. 

LESSON #1

Back to Photos - where the Library only continues to grow. In addition to moving recent video clips and RAW images to my computer and external drive there is more work to do. The video files are from three recent Today at Apple workshops and follow-up practice. No need to keep these clips in iCloud, they can go to the external drive. Once video clips have been moved then select clips and delete. To move many video files, open Photos > Albums > Media Types: Videos > Select > tap to mark videos (36) > Share > AirDrop to computer. First the videos need to download from iCloud then are copied over. The list is highlighted on my Mac so Control + Click brings up menu with New Folder with 36 Items ... give the folder a meaningful name. Tap Done on the iPhone > while the clips are still selected > Trash. But wait! If you are using Cinematic Mode for video, you are capturing additional information and details in sidecar data. Adjust your options: Photos > Albums > Media Types: Cinematic > Select > tap to mark videos 11) > Share > Options > All Photos Data ON > Done > AirDrop to computer. Again, move the copied FOLDERS into a new folder while the selection is active in the Finder. Look inside the folders to see the .mov and .MOV and .AAE files. Did you also notice two files have been renamed - one includes "E" and the other "O" with the number? What does this mean? So much to learn about moving clips with "All Photos Data" to an archive and then restoring the clips and sidecars for full editing capability in the future. Cinematic Mode in video is like Portrait Mode in photos. The point of focus can be changed in post production. The depth map must accompany the file to make those changes. 

Photos, oh Photos. I've been making lots of stylized duplicate images for future machinations or collages and there needs to be modifications to my general workflow. 

Patterns, texture and stylized images need to be available for new work on iPad Pro. The USB-C connector makes a huge contribution here because the images can be saved to or opened from a thumb drive. The Files app is the connecting glue, especially if the photo editing apps can browse for images using the Files > Locations > iPad, iCloud Drive or external drive options. Apps that recognize more than the Photo Library are key: RAW Power, Pixelmator Photo, xxx (more to be listed soon). 

Thumb drive is 64 GB of storage for images, videos and other documents. This content will be backed up to a Western Digital 2 TB drive with my iPhone Vault (images archived from iPhone for long-term storage, printing and, originally, a Lightroom Catalog. The WD drive is backed up to a duplicate kept at home and a duplicate kept off-site. The content on the WD drive should be re-organized into subfolders for easier retrieval in preparation for new collages. I see finding many images and copying back to a thumb drive as if selecting a color palette and size of canvas to begin work. 

LESSON #2

Copy and Paste of images is sometimes an option. Try testing the process with file types - JPG would be fine; TIF is a larger file size; HEIF is newer file type; DNG is RAW - does the photo editing app recognize all current formats on external media? Does the photo editing app recognize all formats if available in the Photos Library? Adjust workflow as needed. 

On iPad, start at the current month in Photos Library and work backwards to the past. The routine is: Select > Share > Save to Files > external drive > archive folder | Select same images > Trash. Move back into earlier weeks/months and repeat. This is also an opportunity to rediscover photos to include in new projects! Add a Caption for future searches. This culling process will take many sessions. At the end of a session, make a screenshot of the current location in Photos Library to begin again - use Markup to add notes on the image for the external drive used. Make an optional screenshot of the Photos > Utilities > Recently Deleted to record the currently removed images. In 29 days these images will be automatically deleted. However, once I've confirmed the files are backed up to my external WD drives then the Recently Deleted files can be ... trashed before their expiration date to recover some space. 

High Res without iPhone 14 Pro

I've been a fan of Camera+2 for years. It was on our purchase app in 2017 and continues to improve. Under the hood, the version released last week is version 22.3.3 and the title is now Camera+: Pro Camera & Editor. In reading the recent reviews, one commentator mentioned that the 48MP UltraRes feature was not working. Now it does! On iPhone 13Pro: 

12MP 4032x3024 - 6MB HEIF

48MP 8064x6048 - 6MB HEIF 

The other app that offers his res is Hydra by image stacking. 

Normal @ 12 MP 3024x4032 - 7MB HEIF

Hi Res @ 27MP 4536x6048 - 9MB JPEG

Hi Res @ 48MP 6048x8064 - 14MB JPEG

Hi Res @ 110MP 12096x9072 - 29MB JPEG

New people purchasing Hydra will get a subscription prompt. 

File type will also change the file size, HEIF and JPEG are smaller files while TIFF, RAW/DNG and ProRAW are large files. 

Remember, the new 14 Pro quad-pixel sensor technology is the future of imaging. Maybe even the future of imagining. 

Next time I visit with Marilyn, we will test these apps again and update this report to include iPhone 14 Pro and RAW format photos. 

Sharing a project with strangers

Here is a workflow I do not expect to use often: a photo shoot for strangers. Well, strangers with puppies. 

So I'm taking RAW + JPEG photos of a puppy class and then want to make the photos available for the people participants via a website. I will use the Photos Shared Albums public link feature. 

Download the RAW images to computer and open in DXO Photo Lab 5 for some shadow and highlight correction (in lieu of Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop). Export 92 images uncrossed to JPEGs at 90% quality and file size remains 5-to-9MB. 

In Photos, create a new Shared Album. Drag and Drop from Finder directly to Shared Folder does not work. So Drag and Drop to Photos Library first, select all photos from shoot and drag to Shared Album. Now, can delete from Photos Library.  In settings for Shared Album, enable Public Website option and copy the link. Send the link to someone in class to test and if successful, send link to event coordinator to distribute to all participants. 

P.S. - Sharing the photos in a folder in the Files app was awkward. Not recommended for multiple images, would work OK for a document, spreadsheet or presentation file.