August 29, 2019

I assume that everybody except me had figured this out by now … but just in case.

I know that some people strongly suggests that you shouldn’t organize your photos by date. I disagree with that and use some kind of hybrid system that basically looks like this:

My idea was that this would allow me to neatly organize my photos without the need to figure out som kind of tagging/grouping scheme, simple and fast … and it has actually proven to work just fine. Except for one single thing: the list of years has become so long that it makes it difficult to efficiently using some software (too much scrolling).

I have been sighing over this for several years but I haven’t had the energy to move around the photos to make it better. Don’t get me wrong, dragging around a couple of folders isn’t that much work but it has effects on things like backup etc.

However, I’ve been filling up my disks and I needed to move to a larger storage, so I took the chance of making a small but important change. I now have this organization:

And suddenly I don’t have to scroll as much. Lesson learned, even if it looks silly when you start organizing, for example with only one month of photos, it pays off to think a bit further. I thought I had done that but I didn’t take bad user interfaces into consideration.

photography

July 29, 2019

I mitten av juli var det dags att avbryta semestern och åka till Aberdeen för lite jobb. Först några dagars arbetsmöte och sedan några dagars konferens (lugn!! jag ska inte tråka ut dig med några detaljer), men som vanligt så kan jag inte låta bli att passa på att ta en titt på omgivningarna.

Det första som slog mig när jag kom till Aberdeen var hur grått allting är, vart du än tittar så ser du grå granit överallt. Nästan alla hus är byggda av granitstenar och … det är grått!!

Det fanns några olika områden som jag fastnade för Seaton Park, Old Aberdeen, King’s College, stranden och den äldre delen av hamnområdet.

Seaton Park är som namnet antyder en hyfsat stor park nära Old Aberdeen. Som park sett så är det inget speciellt, det är snarast lite av ”man ska inte förhäva sig”-stämning över parken. Den är trevlig att gå omkring i men det finns inget som gör att man reagerar med ett ”Åhhhh”. Det finns tre olika delar som är värda att titta på: River Don - det ska finnas uttrar där sa en kvinna men jag såg inte några, The Hidden Garden - verkar vara ett lugnt ställe att slappna av i och sedan själva huvudgången med kyrkan i bakgrunden.

Fortsätter man sedan in mot centrala Aberdeen så kommer man till Old Aberdeen. Det syns naturligtvis skillnad mot de nyare stadsdelarna men ändå mindre än vad jag sett i andra städer.

Som vanligt så passade jag på att gå in i några kyrkor för att kolla, det brukar vara rätt intressant att se hur de är byggda osv. Vad som slog mig är att även om de hade en hel del historia, St. Machars Cathedral är tydligen byggd på samma ställe som den första kristna samlingsplatsen från 580, så är mycket ganska nytt. Om jag förstod det rätt så var glasfönstren från 1930-talet.

Direkt efter kommer universitetet, detta campus kallas King’s College och är rätt trevligt. Själva universitetet grundades 1495 så det är inget nybygge. Det var naturligtvis här själva konferensen hölls och där jag spenderade mest tid. Det som jag gillade bäst här var faktiskt en staty, ”Youth With Split Apple”, den är visserligen ganska ny men jag tyckte den var riktigt kul.

Om man sedan knatar vidare ett tag så hamnar man vid stranden och det är precis som de fördomar jag har om Storbritannien och havsstränder. En lång sandstrand med några vågbrytare, en gångstråk och sedan några märkliga nöjesställen - inte något som jag kände mig så intresserad av att besöka. Men det är lite kul att gå längs stranden och titta, något som som jag inte är ensam om att tycka. När vädret är OK så var det ganska mycket folk som knatade omkring där.

I slutet av stranden så finns ett litet område som verkar vara en äldre del av själva stadskärnan, husen är små och verkar vara byggda för att stå emot vind och vågor från haven.

Alldeles bredvid så är infarten till hamnen, som i princip ligger mitt i stan, och det åker båtar in och ut hela tiden.

Själva centrala Aberdeen vet jag inte om det är så mycket att berätta om, det finns några intressanta hus, de vanliga affärerna och det du brukar hitta i en större stad.

Jag hängde på en tur till ett slott, Crathes Castle, utanför själva stan och även om byggnaderna fortfarande är byggda av grå granit så är det betydligt grönare i omgivningarna.

Jag hade tur, samma dag som jag åkte så fick jag svaret på en sak som jag hade undrat över några dagar. Hur/vart övar säckpipespelare??? En säckpipa är inte något tyst litet instrument utan det hörs ordentligt, så det känns som om att det inte vore helt populärt att öva i en lägenhet. På min sista promenad i Aberdeen så fick jag svaret: man kan öva på en tom parkeringsplats nere vid golfbanan !!!

Så sammanfattningsvis: får du chansen ska du naturligtvis åka till Aberdeen men jag skulle föreslå att när du har tittat på stranden, Seaton Park, Old Aberdeen och King’s College så tar du dig utanför själva stan och ser hur det ser ut där.

Vill du se fler bilder från Aberdeen så hittar du dem här

resor skottland

May 30, 2019

Isn’t Kendo interesting?

I think I better explain what I meant with

the problem was to make the photos interesting

in a previous post. I did not mean that Kendo isn’t interesting, just that for me the problem was to make my photos interesting. Let me explain, in Jutsu there is a lot of movement like when a person is being thrown

or when someone tries to kick someone

But there are also “slower” parts where it’s possible to concentrate on faces and details.

Add to this the fact that I know some jutsu, which makes it possible for me to guess what is going to happen right before it happens, which of course makes it easier for me to capture a photo at the right moment.

So what is it the makes Kendo more difficult? First problem is that I know nothing about Kendo, making it difficult to predict what is going to happen. Another problem is the protective gear Kendo practitioners wear, the helmet makes it much more difficult to catch facial expressions, the gloves makes it difficult to catch hand/finger movements, etc. My third problem has to do with Kendo itself.

This first attempt told me that Kendo is pretty much two-dimensional. With this I mean that much of the action is along a straight line. This makes things easy in the sense that I could position myself closer and use a different point of view. But I didn’t know that so I didn’t, I didn’t even consider it because if I would move closer in jutsu the risk of getting a body part slamming into me or the camera would be high. So in jutsu I want to keep some distance to the people I’m photographing, in Kendo I could be much closer … but I would of course have to check that it was OK before doing that.

BTW - sorry about no example photos from the Kendo shoot but they didn’t want any images online so I’m going to respect that.

Another thing that differs from jutsu is that the focus of the action seem to be when the Shinai (the bamboo sword) hits the opponent, in jutsu a number of things could happen. This means that I that if I want an action photo I know what to concentrate on, but this happens very fast so it’s more difficult to catch the right moment … and I’m not convinced that it makes for a good photo.

To just see the Shinai hitting the opponents helmet doesn’t make for a good photo … at least not more that a couple of good photos before it gets repetitive.

So the photos I liked best were photos taken at the start of an attack, they showed the fast movements, the energy and other things that seem to be what Kendo is all about. I also liked the more “portrait” like photos I took, which in my opinion shows the other side of Kendo - calmness and concentration.

Well, it was my first attempt so I can easily have missed the important parts of shooting Kendo just because I don’t understand.

martial arts kendo jutsu photography

May 22, 2019

I’m currently trying out the TextExpander demo to se if it’s worth my money. I used to be a TextExpander user but when they switched to a subscription model I switched to Typinator and have been a quite happy user. The only problem is that there is no iOS counterpart. And since I’m trying to move more writing to my iPad I decided to try TextExpander again.

The other reason is that everybody is raving about TextExpander and how it is so fantastic. Well, after a few days of trying TextExpander on macOS I personally think that Typinator is a better way of spending your money (if you only work on one Mac and have no need for synchronization). To me Typinator feels faster and more stable, in TextExpander I find small glitches and it seem to be a little bit slower.

However, I really want something that I can use on iOS also, so that’s what my test is all about - is the iOS good enough to make me start paying the monthly fee?

Well, the iOS version does what it’s supposed to do … almost all of the time. If TextExpander support is a part of the app then everything works perfectly, but since the majority of iOS apps, including Apples, does not. So to make TextExpander useful everywhere it includes custom keyboards. And this is where TE fails a bit

• The design of the keyboards are too distracting, the developers have chosen to make some of the key a very distinct blue … a very distracting blue in my opinion.

  

• Also, compare the screenshot below with the one above. Note that the keys are larger - and in my opinion uglier - and that the characters are smaller which makes them harder to read.

  

• The keyboards doesn’t give me the feedback I get on standard keyboards, i.e. I get no word suggestions, which makes me want to avoid these keyboards as much as possible.

• But the most irritating thing is that sometimes the keys becomes dark to indicate that they don’t have “full access” … they have full access but for some reason TE think they don’t. Unfortunately the keys becomes difficult to read since I get black on dark gray. The easy way to fix this is to turn “full access” on/off and things are back to normal (for a while).

So what is my verdict? Well, I’m pretty neutral about the macOS version - as I mentioned above I think that Typinator is a better use of my money. The iOS version works but contains one bug that keeps popping up. I haven’t completely decided yet but I’ll probably start subscribing since I want the iOS version and I have no alternative … not because it’s better.

May 11, 2019

Two days ago I, for the first time, tried taking photos of Kendo. This after having been challenged by another photographer who said that Kendo was waaay more difficult to photograph than Ju-jutsu (which is what I usually take photos of). And yes, it’s more difficult … but not in the way I thought. After watching a few videos on YouTube I expected that the speed in the attacks would be the difficult part, but after a first look at my photos it turned out that the problem was to make the photos interesting.

I looked at some Kendo photos on Flickr and my photos are not much different than what I can find there. So, my guess is that I either don’t know enough about Kendo to make the photos interesting or that I need to find another angle (literally), probably a combination.

Anyway, it was my first attempt so I didn’t really expect to get any good photos but there are a few that suggests that I should take a different approach than I do with jutsu. More specifically, I think I should use a wide angle lens instead of a tele (depending on what happens in jutsu using a wide angle could be bad for the health of you, the camera and the practitioners … but it could work in Kendo … perhaps). I need to try again.

May 4, 2019

Fler bilder från Påsklägret i Linköping finns på mfoto.se