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Video
Adobe Lightroom Video
The same edit controls that you already use to make your photography shine can now be used with your videos as well! Not only can you use Lightroom’s editing capabilities to make your video clips look their best, you can also copy and paste edit settings between photos and videos, allowing you to achieve a consistent aesthetic across both your photos and videos.
Benjamin Warde on Adobe’s Blog: June 2022 photography releases
I have never applied a concentrated effort into shooting a quality video because I’ve been so comfortable with photos. Video editing is difficult and expensive. This seems to be a simple solution for beginners such as myself and I am digging it’s simplicity so far.
Media Log- May 2022
“There is now a little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds, our lives are largely shaped by how we use them.” – Sam Harris
In other words, we are what we consume. I want to create a monthly log of my media consumption that tracks my passivity, and cultivates my creativity. Example: If I go further, I could map how reading a book sparks a desire to see a show based on it for a broader perspective. A podcast could point me towards a book I otherwise would have passed up.
I’ll attempt to track the shows and movies I stream (no cable service for me!), books I’ve read, podcasts/music I’ve listened to and the rare YT video I watch. This second edition to the media log rounds out the month of May.
Views
The Toy
Top Gun
Top Gun 2
Fifth Element
Frasier
F1 racing- Barcelona
F1 racing- Monaco
EUFA championship
Stranger Things S4 pt 1
Strange New Worlds
Books (April/May)
Laser Writer II
Debt- the first 5,000 years
The Utopia of Rules
Bullshit Jobs
Podcast
Not Lost
iPhoneography Podcast
Music
Streaming Audio Denbow playlist
That’s all for the month of May!
Digital Essentialism
How is your digital life? Feeling overwhelmed by all the clutter in your inbox, hard drive and cloud service? I know I was.
Though I consider myself to be a minimalist essentialist, there does come a time when I get lazy and the discipline slides. Clutter, digital or otherwise, can get distracting over time. Now may be the perfect time to clean up your digital room, so to speak. If not daily, then weekly because a well-organized computer will yield positive results for your state of mind and your workflow productivity.
Here’s how to get started:
Backups
When was the last time you backed up your data? If you can’t remember, then it has been too long. I set a calendar reminder for once a week, then plug in the dedicated external hard drive, flip on Apple’s Time Machine and let it do its thing-creating and preserving a snapshot image of everything on the MacBook’s drive. Before all that, I suggest sorting through your Downloads folder and assign to a proper folder or delete. How are your other folders? Photos, Music, Videos, Documents all need to be sorted. Toss what you have been holding on to for some reason. After all that, then take out the Trash and delete everything in that folder.
Cloud
Just as the computer gets cleaned up, so too your Cloud backups. My Cloud mimics the desktop with everything in place. Run Time Machine again and ensure good backups.
Software
If you have dozens of software programs and apps, it is time to have a think about what you are actually using. If you haven’t used a program in say six months, then uninstall and free up space on your machine. It will thank you for it. Do you really need four calendar apps, two music players, three browsers and who else knows what? Pick the right tool for the job and stick with it. Uninstall the rest.
Desktop
A cluttered desktop can be overwhelming and distract from your focus and productivity. A messy computer desktop is akin to a messy physical desk. Nobody wants to see that. Sort that clutter into their respective folders, empty your Trash can folder and enjoy the serenity.
Web Browser
Now, wait just a damn minute, Chris. This is sacred. If I don’t have multiple tabs open or bookmarked, I run the risk of losing and forgetting them. I might even return to them…someday.
That mentality is an old way of thinking that needs to be corrected. You won’t go back to them. You don’t need it. One of these days, your browser’s memory will slow to a crawl, and you’ll be forced to reboot the thing and potentially lose all those open tabs you’ve been saving.
Inbox and RSS feeds
If you cringe every time you access your email inbox, then you are doing it wrong. Email should be assigned from an inbox to a folder, replied to or deleted. Don’t forget to take the trash out again when done. If the mail is piled up, and you are overwhelmed, most email applications have a search feature.
RSS feed readers are a remarkable resource to stay current on the websites and blogs you enjoy. Shameless plug inserted here- https://chrisdenbow.website/feed But how does your “Unread” count look? Either read the article or save it to the “Read It Later” folder. Everything else can be deleted. The same can be said for podcast episodes!
One Password To Rule Them All
I dislike passwords, and captchas and just about every modern day credential grabber. Who can keep track of them all? I used to and failed. Then I tried a third-party password manager. I only needed one password to log in to that, and every time I needed to sign in elsewhere, that application would pop up and log in for me. That was fun until their data center was hacked and everyone’s passwords were in the open. I currently use Apple’s Password manager.
I’m already signed in to an Apple account, so I don’t have to remember a password there. Any website I visit, the Password app is ready to log me in, or help me create a new username/password. Once credentialed, Passwords will retain the info and be ready to use again. All it requires is my Face ID or Touch ID.
The Takeaway
Our digital usage over multiple devices can overwhelm us, and we open ourselves up to clutter. Who has the time to organize when we just want to scroll a feed or watch a video? I find that currently we need to be more mindful. Digital simplicity, essentialism, and minimalism is more important than before.
Long Live The iPod
The iPod is a discontinued 1(as of May 10, 2022) portable media player designed by Apple in 2001. At 20 years, the iPod brand is the oldest device to be discontinued by Apple. It’s the end of an era, that’s for sure.
I fondly recall my first Sony Walkman that had the ability to not only listen to AM/FM radio, but play 90 minutes of music on cassette tape. We maxed in as many songs as we could on that tape drive, but it was never enough, so we had collections of cassette tapes lying around to keep track of.
And when Steve Jobs promised “thousands of songs in your pocket”, most of us were amazed and just.had.to.have.it. It was portable music freedom. I’ve owned three iPods, the original (sadly lost forever, a 5th generation classic iPod (shown below) and an iPod Touch that closely resembled an iPhone. My toddler daughter quickly assumed ownership of that last one.
After this month’s announcement, I decided to grab as many compact discs as I can find to then load onto my MacBook and transfer my songs to the iPod. It’s a multistep hassle for sure, but they are there. They are mine. I don’t have to pay a monthly subscription for them. I don’t need Wi-Fi or cellular connection to play them. There are no notifications or interruptions when I have those wired earbuds in. I’m amazed at how much I have relied on Bluetooth wireless AirPods and streaming music.
This 5th gen iPod was the first to play video, review photos and still retain the classic, iconic scroll wheel. Podcasts, audiobooks, videos, and photos are all synced to the device when plugged into my computer via iTunes. Can a podcast still be called a podcast without iPods? What do we call them now, “Netcasts?”
This iPod projects me back in time, and I am overwhelmed by the nostalgia. It feels less like a novelty item, but a more pure form of music ownership and enjoyment.
Long live the Apple iPod.
Media Log
“There is now a little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds, our lives are largely shaped by how we use them.”
Sam Harris
In other words, we are what we consume. I want to create a monthly1 maybe? log of my media consumption that tracks my passivity, and cultivates my creativity. Example: If I go further, I could map how reading a book sparks a desire to see a show based on it for a broader perspective. A podcast could point me towards a book I otherwise would have passed up.
I’ll attempt to track the shows and movies I stream (no cable service for me!), books I’ve read, podcasts/music I’ve listened to and the rare YT video I watch. Don’t judge me. I’ve been in bed for almost three weeks nursing an ankle issue(!) I may even expand this log to web links I’ve enjoyed and favorited for future use 2eventually. To kick off, I’ll just log what I can remember from April and May of this year.
Viewed
- Suspicion- Apple TV
- The Machine That Kills Mean People- HBO
- Severance- Apple TV
- Outer Ridge- Amazon
- Devs- Hulu
- Tehran- Apple TV
- Frasier- Hulu
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds- Paramount
- Star Trek: Picard season 2- Paramount
- Star Trek: Discovery- Paramount
- Star Trek: Generations- Paramount
- Reservoir Dogs- HBO
- The Book of Boba Fett- Disney
- The King’s Man- HBO
- The Batman- 1/2 in theater, 100% on HBO
Read
- Ghost Fleet
- You Are An Artist
- The Nowhere Man
- Orphan X
- Reliquary
- Kaiju Preservation Society
- The Return
Listened
- Not Lost
- iPhoneography Podcast
- Dialogues
- Focused
- Mac Power Users
- Music- I borrowed a lot of compact discs from the library to transfer music to my iPod. Remember those?
Video Denbow
When I am not capturing portraits with my camera, I am documenting where I have been, what I am doing and the people I am with.
I want to start focusing on creating stories. Sure, there are a few photos that tell a story in themselves, but what about a montage of photos documenting the times individually and as a whole?
Then I started to think about that montage and how to combine a photo series to tell a story. And since video is all the rage these days, what with short attention spans, I looked for inexpensive video creating software that is compatible with my ignorance.
That is when I remembered I already have it installed on the iPad- iMovie, Apple’s stock video software application.
Dropping images into iMovie was so simple even a dummy could do it. I threw a couple of images in and the proof of concept is complete.
Now I cannot wait to capture more images and combine them either into a digital zine or a video. Probably both if the images are worthy!
Click the link to the Video page of the photography website.