EMAIL - Old Fashion Communication

It has come to my attention that SPAM Filters have captured the emails I’ve sent to some of the waitlisted people. (Probably some of the enrolled people.) What did you miss? Details about the Sampler Share Photo Album and proposed ways we might connect later this semester. 

SPAM could also be capturing other information from seminars, forums and presentations as well as other “old fashion” senders. Yes, there is texting and social media for up-to-the-minute pseudo-news. 

So this is a reminder to me, not everyone uses email. But it is also a reminder to everyone else: Check email when signing up for classes. Check your SPAM folder for missed communiques. Add seminar leaders to your address book. When seminar descriptions include web links - GO THERE! 

I’m signing off now, got to search my spam folder for missed items. 

Social Media resources, anyone?

Where do you find inspiration? How do you record ideas? 

I'm pretty much a "lurker" when it comes to social media, meaning a lookie-loo not a poster. Social media accounts often send emails to alert us to things we want to see (clickbait and algorithms). I'll show you mine and I'd like to add your suggestions here. 

• Pinterest - 101 Things to Photograph (with examples & exercises!) by livesnaplove.com seems right up our alley. 
• Flipboard - with a photography interest displayed You Don't Need to Constantly Change Your Composition by Darren Spoonley on ftoppers.com is a reminder to be-in-one-place and take-it-all-in while keeping your iPhone at the ready. 
• What say you? 

How and where do you keep track of your inspirations? I'm asking for an intervention here! 

Shared Album by Invitation

Just to clarify, for our waitlisted folks. You should have an invitation to the iPhone Photo Studio Sampler shared photo album in either your email, messages or in the Photos app > For You. 

If you are confused ... welcome to our world! Shared Photo Albums live in the Photos app. Apple has detailed instructions for How to use Shared Albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac . You have to turn on the feature. You have to know your Apple ID and the phone number and email address associated with it. 

So don't freak out about missing this invitation. That is one of the topics for our Meet and Greet session on February 8th at 10 am. 

New iOS 17.3 available

A new release this week adds Stolen Devise Protection. Check Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Stolen Device Protection > ON. Because our iPhones are out-and-about with us, protecting your device is priority one. 

General details on iOS 17 features are available as a PDF document. 

Is this the time for a device check and tune-up? The iOS_device_details_ios16.pdf was revised August 2023 and with iOS 17 there could be changes. Right now it still fits on 2 pages but the type is getting smaller. 

Reference Pages - Revised and Old

Let's put our heads together and look at our list of Apps. Identify your favorites and note any that have gone subscription. Some In-App purchases are worth the expense ... We want to put our new participants on the correct path to workflow enlightenment. 

• Day 1 apps: Pro Camera, Slow Shutter, Snapseed, Metapho, MPIX, Touch Retouch, Image Blender
• Day 2 apps: PicCollage, Diptych, Camera+2 Legacy, Waterlogged, Lenka, PhotoScan 
• Day 3 apps: Prism, Painnt, Pixelmator, Brushstroke, Inkwork 
• Day 4 apps: Obscura, Procreate, Distressed FX, Halide, Spectre Camera 
• Day 5 apps: Tangled FX, Toon Camera, SnapDot, Spectral Art, Hydra, Focos 

Please use the links on the App page to get the specific apps we use. Many apps have the same names and it is important to spend your $$ wisely. 

The Cheatsheet page, is an out-dated but slowly-getting-revised review of app settings. A good starting place for making choices on best starting place for apps. Includes list of Image Editing Techniques and the apps that will do the job. Print or Save-to-PDF for reference. Best to use Safari Reader View and print 2-up per page. 

The App Catalog includes the app icons, brief details from the App Store descriptions and a column for your notes. Print or Save-to-PDF at full size. The apps are grouped based on workflow: Catalog, Camera, Editing and Stylizing. For Spring 2024, the App Catalog now includes a worksheet page for apps that have crossed over - iOS/iPadOS apps that can be installed on MacOS if you are on an M1, M2 or M3 Apple Silicon computer. 

New Links to Previous Galleries

I've not created any new studio galleries lately but much of the work we currently do is reflected in past galleries. Images from our Shared Photo Album are presented with photographer credit. Here are a few links to explore for ideas about what we do and why we keep coming together to do it. 

• Fall 2020 
• Fall 2019
• Spring 2018 
• Spring and Fall 2017 

Old Mac OS vs New Camera RAW Format

Finally I hit the brick wall of old vs new. My ten-year-old 2013 Mac Pro laptop can only be updated to Mac OS 10.15 Catalina. At purchase, the laptop ran Mac OS 10.9 known as Mavericks. So it is stuck well below the newer versions of Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura and, currently, Sonoma. 

Many of the applications I use on the laptop easily can save files to iCloud Drive to be opened on my newer Mac computer for final touchups. But this month I learned that NEF RAW images from my Nikon Zfc were not visible to any application including the Finder. 

Lesson #1 - When on a road trip with 2013 Mac Pro laptop, change Nikon settings to shoot RAW + JPEG. Then some images can be previewed, sorted and ranked - even shared. 

Lesson #2 - The Nikon Snapbridge iPhone app can come to the rescue and transfer a 2 megapixel, low resolution, image to iPhone or iPad for edits or sharing over an adhoc wifi connection. 

Lesson #3 - Consider budgeting for a new laptop after evaluating how an iPad Pro with USB-C port can power an SSD and the apps needed to edit Nikon's NEF files. Maybe begin budgeting for a new iPad Pro. 

SSD Failure Warning

It happened to me just last month. The on-screen warning popped up when I attached my Photo Vault external drive. And I have been putting off doing anything until I check my SSD backup drives. 

Message to you - Drive failures happen. Accidents happen. Fires happen. Build in backups to your backups. Keep an off-site backup of important digital (and analog) documents and images. 

Backstory - OK, back in 2015 I started using an external SSD (solid state drive) when using Lightroom for DSLR photo management. My image management process uses three Western Digital 2TB SSDs purchased at Costco. The primary drive is the one where new photos are added and photos are edited with apps on Mac. The second drive is also a 2TB SSD that stays in my home. The third 2TB SSD lives off-site and out-of-town. After downloading photos or a big editing session I use ChronoSync Express for macOS to manually sync the folders on the primary drive to the second drive. When visiting off-site, the primary drive travels with me along with a 2013 Mac Pro laptop and ChronoSync Express is used to sync the primary drive to the third drive. All of this in addition to a Time Machine backup of the Mac computer. 

Online Research - Reading Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac has a line that jumped out at me: "If Disk Utility tells you the disk is about to fail, back up your data and replace the disk—you can’t repair it."  

I have been wanting to update the SSDs from USB3 to USB-C and will check at Costco for new drives in 2024. Now is the time to consider if 2TB is the best size going forward. In Summer 2021 I purchased a Nikon Zfc mirrorless camera. This retro device has the same size APS-C cropped sensor as my Nikon D7000 & D5000 cameras. RAW files are still about 25-29 MB in file size with 22 megapixels. This is the "right size" image for my camera work, and full-frame mirrorless gear was in my budget but not for easy carrying around. 

Another possibility is to buy new SSDs, copy the data to a primary drive and then retire the drive to a local safe deposit box. Ahh. Maybe a two-drive solution with one locked up and another around the house (for trips down memory lane). But I'm tempted to begin anew in 2024 -- storing new photos from Nikon and iPhone shoots with the same photo management process of three drives using new USB-C SSD drives.  Stay tuned.