I can’t believe it took me so long to do this, but I finally got a second monitor. I bought a Samsung 245T, which has a nice IPS panel in it, which has good color and wide viewing angle. It goes nicely with my old Samsung 910T. I’m enjoying it so far!
So I’ve set up bridge to show me the thumbnails on the left, and the full-size preview on the right. Right now, I have to manually set this up every time I launch Bridge. Does anyone know how to make Bridge remember my window set-up so it just launches automatically like this? That would be handy.
Here’s an interesting speech by Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. She brings up some interesting points about creativity and how western society’s attitudes towards it have changed in the last few thousand years. She contemplates the difficulty that arises when we realize that it’s possible that our best creative moments are behind us.
I do appreciate some of the concepts she brings out, because I have sometimes felt, both in photography and in improv, that there was something else speaking through me that allowed me to rise to new levels. Sometimes it feels as though I’m just channeling something, because afterward, I wonder, “Where did that come from?” At the same time, it runs against the grain of my natural tendency to insist on full accountability for everything we do. I think that both things can be reconciled though. She insists that we have to keep “showing up for work” in order to catch the inspiration as it is handed to us. And in the same way that I accept that I can not control the weather, I can accept this too.
In any case, watch the video. She’s a wonderful speaker, and her ideas are worth your consideration. Laura sent this out to her mailing list on the weekend, and I’ve seen it a few times since then, so I think it’s catching on…
I’ve been having fun with Twitter lately, using it to post the tiny things that don’t warrant an entire blog entry, but I still feel like saying. I was wondering about other uses of Twitter that would suit my life, and I was inspired by my friend Karen’s account called shortpress. She was writing story fragments, none of them really interlinked, but each of them beautiful and meaningful in some way. I decided I would try it. So, I created the account microprose.
It turns out this type of writing really suits me. Since each entry is limited to 140 characters, it enforces a type of concentrated and disciplined writing that I really enjoy. How much meaning can I distill into one entry? How succinctly and clearly can I express myself? How strongly can I make someone feel something? After having done a few of these, I now see that I write them exactly the same way I take photos. I try to use the 140 character limit the same way I might use a limit in shooting conditions, focal length, available light, etc. I always want to push the limits. It’s fun to me to see that in some ways, the more I change, the more I’m the same.
We finally finished the four seasons series. We’d tried to shoot this a couple of weeks ago, just before Christmas, but there was a full-force winter storm raging, so we decided to call it off. Anyway, the weather cooperated this week, and we managed to get the shot.
I signed up with Animoto and made a couple of videos to promote my business last night. There are a lot of things to like abuot Animoto. It’s easy to use, and nearly completely automatic. You just upload your photos, choose the music, and write in a title and description. You can also choose to create a button that shows up at the end of embedded video to point users to a specific website. There’s a decent selection of music of various genres too. The music is available for use royalty-free, which makes things quite easy. After you’ve made your movie, you can download it in DVD quality. Sweet.
The things I don’t like are that it takes a long time to render a movie (about 15-30 minutes, typically). You also don’t get much choice in which transitions and effects are used to display your photos. It is all automatic, so you kind of get what they give you. If you are not satisfied, you can “remix” the video and it will run through the process again, coming out slightly differently, but that takes another 15-30 minutes.
Anyway, here are my first two movies… more to come later.
