August 2009 Archives

I found Wired's list of 10 photography pet peeves interesting, so I decided to come up with my own list:

1.  HDR that looks unrealistic.  Dynamic color correction is one thing; making your photo look like you see the world in pastels is another.

2.  "You take great photos; you must have a nice camera."   It's like saying that a painter does well because he has a great brush.

3.  Terrible photos on FaceBook.  People that upload all 146 photos that they took at the wedding, even the ones that were taken by a two-year-old on a sugar high ... let's just say that they mildly annoy me.  Pick your favorite 12 and no one will get hurt.

4.  The "hold the camera above my head to take a self portrait" shot.  Usually a female pose. 

5.  Power poles & power lines.

6.  Most cell phone photos.

7.  Most pet photos.  Especially if your pet is named "Fluffy," "Biscuit," "Prissy-Lilly," or if you consider your pet to be a member of your family.

8.  Purchasing camera gear and then not using it.

9.  Cameras that make non-mechanical noise.  If you allow your camera to beep, you automatically forfeit the right to own that camera.

10.  Drunk people photos.  They aren't funny after the event; in fact they probably aren't funny to anyone that isn't drunk.

I posted what goes in my bag; I think that my Mac's apps are much more interesting:

Of course the usual culprits are on my Mac:

::  from Apple
Mac OS 10.5 Leopard
  • Photobooth gets a workout - great fun with Cynthia
  • Automator launches my chat apps on startup
  • Font Book gets used often enough
  • Image Capture - because I catalog my photos with Finder, then import into Aperture.
  • Mail.app - for work's Exchange
  • Time Machine, iCal, QuickTime, Activity Monitor - obviously
iLife '09
  • iPhoto - for our iPhones
  • iWeb - fourpointedstar.com
  • don't really use any of the other iLife apps
iWork '09 - only really use Keynote
Aperture - Oh how I love this software!
Final Cut Express - like Final Cut ... for notebooks

:: paid apps
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Aperture has replaced most of it's use with my photo editing, but I tried to use Acorn, and I found that I still love PS because of its actions and familiarity.
  • Microsoft Office 2008 - I only use Excel to create documents, I use Word and PowerPoint only when I need to read a document, and I refuse to use Entourage.
  • I bought both NetNewsWire and OmniWeb before they were free; and I still use NNW for all of my RSS needs.

:: free apps
Connectivity
  • Adium - it's all in one client, even FaceBook (which I disabled)
  • Chicken of the VNC - for all (1) of the Win2000 PCs on my network
  • CoRD - all of my remote Windows connections in one window
  • Cyberduck - free and easy to setup for FTP
  • Google Notifier

Browsers
  • FireFox with VertTabbar - only use FFX because I can put my tabs on the right side, ala OmniWeb
  • OmniWeb - no longer use because it would lock up RAM and wasn't likely to get the "remember session" feature
  • Camino, Flock, Opera, Safari - all for logging into multiple accounts at once
  • Stainless - because I have to use a crashy browser every once in a while

Etc.
  • Disk Inventory X - it's like SpaceMonger, but slower and uglier
  • FileWrangler - for all my renaming needs
  • Flip4Mac - .wmv on my Mac
  • Google Earth - way too cool
  • MacTracker - because I am a Mac nerd
  • Picasa - because I am a photography nerd
  • Quicksilver - my app launcher
  • FLV player
  • TextWrangler - editing html and css
  • TinkerTool
  • TwitterPod

Every day I carry a 20+ pound bag; here are the contents:

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