Your Mission …
… whether or not you decide to accept it, Mr. Phelps, is to keep moving, keep creating, keep making things happen.
Here’s how to tell if you’ve achieved all your creative life goals:
- Hold a mirror under your nose – if it fogs up, you’re not finished yet.
- Have a someone take your pulse for you – if you have one, keep going.
- If you wake up tomorrow morning, you still have work to do.
Life grades on the curve, and no one gets out with a passing grade. You have everything you need. Do it now.
We Want to Hold Your Hand
Digital Imaging Personal Training
There seems to be no end of Photoshop seminars these days. Most of them offer very useful information from power users at binoculars distance. If you’d rather get your information up close, custom-tailored to your needs, your equipment and your workflow, Budzilla Heavy Industries can connect you with your own personal imaging expert to help you learn any facet of digital imaging – from software basics and calibration to file management and even studio or location photography essentials for any experience level. Call us, we’ll hold your hand. (816) 427-1283
Breathe, man
I get mail from photographers at all levels of expertise and experience, and their messages often start with, “What’s the best …” and then they go on to ask whether a particular lens, computer, bit of software or plugin is going to make their lives more productive, their images snappier or their hair shiny and easy to manage. They are holding their breath waiting for the answer. The answer is almost always, “How should I know? Buy the best you can afford, based on a real need, and don’t look back.”
Kids, there is no Holy Grail, and I’d rather you produce works of great art on an iPhone than stew over Modulation Transfer Function and chromatic aberration. The best camera you can use is the one you’ll carry with you, right? Chances are, if you really need a 600mm f/4 telephoto, you already know it. If you can’t borrow it or rent it to be sure, jump. Otherwise, the best lens you can buy is the one that can do what you want to do and can do it for the most reasonable outlay of cash. If there is no real need, no pressing assignment or job requirement that makes a purchase necessary, use what you have. If you have been pining over a 70-200mm zoom, and you can’t justify the four-figure lug, grab your 105 f2.8 and walk back and forth instead of spinning a zoom barrel. Is it the same? No. Your image perspective will be quite different, but you can squander the saved loot on frivolous things like groceries or a couple of bottles of really good scotch for you favorite photo mentor. (Drop me a line, and I’ll tell you which ones I like.)
Equipment won’t make you a better photographer – getting out and making pictures might, if you’re willing to work at it. If you need someone to help, call me. (816) 427-1283
Thought For The Day
“Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. “
-Joyce Carol Oates
Resolved
If your New Year’s resolutions include things like “Improve Photoshop Skills” or “Upgrade the old Mac”, or even “Learn How to Train Monkeys”, there is someone at Budzilla Heavy Industries who can help you clean up your list.
Okay, I lied about the monkeys, but if you need help with nearly anything related to Macintosh systems, digital imaging or Adobe Photoshop, we can help. All you have to do is let us know. We resolve to help.
The Year That Wasn’t
I’ve had worse years, to be certain, but this one was a stray dog. Photographically, we cut back due to budget constraints, and finished the year with little to show for the austerity. This will pay off in 2012 as we regroup and look for new opportunities in photography, tech and other venues.
For now, we’ll think of 2011 as a rebuilding year, just like my long-suffering and beloved Kansas City Royals, who have been rebuilding since 1985.
The best is yet to come.
Photo Tools: Ephemeris
Why is this useful?
Coffee House Chic
4. Create another file of suitable size – the original is 2560 x 1600 – that reflects your personality or expresses your views on life, the universe and everything.
5. Save that new image with the name “DefaultDesktop.jpg” - the image must be a jpeg – and toss it back in the Core services folder. You’ll need admin privileges to do all this, and the standard disclaimer applies.
6. Start up your Mac with Automatic Login disabled, and leave the login screen running while you go get your latte. Expect oohs and aahs from the masses as they admire your exhibition of Jedi-skillz.
Next time: Using a Windows laptop to defrost your windshield.
How to Ask for Help
As a Mac tech, I get phone calls and emails asking for help for everything from cranky disk drives to printers, networks and system software. Consistently, I find that many, if not most, users have a hard time relating their problems to a tech. It doesn’t have to be that way
I will then ask you when your last backup was completed. If you say, “Never!”, I’ll urge you to panic in that direction first, and if possible, do whatever you can to preserve your Precious Personal Data.
Don’t wait. Computer issues rarely fix themselves. If something freaks out, chances are it won’t get any better before someone arrives to take a hammer to it.
Then, what symptoms prompted you to call? Here, you have to be specific. If you say that your computer’s running really slowly, I have no point of reference that can lead me to a solution, but if you say it takes an hour to start up and all you ever see is the gray screen and spinning gear, I have a better chance of figuring out what direction to take things. The less time I spend figuring out what’s wrong translates to more time actually fixing the problem.
When does the issue occur? Intermittently? Every time you launch Photoshop? Tuesdays? A printing problem that affects every application is very different from a printing problem that only affects Microsoft Word.
Show me. Macs make it easy to send screen shots. Command-Shift-3 takes a screen shot of the entire screen and Command-Shift-4 changes your cursor into a cross-hair that you can use to marquee around a dialog box or other detail. When you let up on the mouse button, you’ll hear the familiar camera sound and your screen shot will be on your desktop, named “Picture 1″ or something like that. You can send that to me, and I’ll have more ammunition for solving the problem.
Now, the hardest question for most users: What have you done to your computer since it last worked up to your expectations? Many users don’t think twice about running software updates, and many let the system software or individual applications decide when and whether to update. Often, the best answer is to ignore updates until you are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the new stuff. This solution is in the official Tech’s Survival Handbook under the chapter heading, “If It Ain’t Broke“. Some updates, regardless of their origin – Apple or otherwise – just plain break things. This is because software developers can’t know how your particular system is configured. Even small tweaks can wreak havoc.
What have you done? Man, how many times have I heard that question? I want to know what you’ve tried already. Troubleshooting is like picking the locks on an apartment where the resident has six locks on the door, but only locks three at a time. No matter what you do, you’re probably locking three of them. Tell me what you’ve tried so I know what locks you’ve been trying to pick.
