A couple of summers ago I had my hard drive fail. I had over 10,000 pictures on it and they were all lost. Needless to say I was devastated. I got angry. Then I got smart. I didn’t ever want to lose another photo. I began asking around about how people stored their images after a days shoot. I got a different answer from every person. Most did say to store them for sure, as you never knew, what could happen. I began with keeping the flash drives. I found out how unstable the data is on a flash drive. One day a seemingly reliable flash drive just stopped working. I was able to retrieve the images, but I no longer wanted to count on a flash drive to hold on to pictures I worked hard to take.
After a careful search I decided on a portable hard drive. This way I could load photos on to the hard drive while I was out and about, but still be able to move the images to the terabyte storage drive once home. There are many different portable drives. I knew I never wanted to do business with Seagate ever again. It was the hard drive that failed and they offered no help upon the drives failure even though it was out of warranty by 1 day. So they were off my list.
I went to a photography forum and poked around to see what the professionals were using when they needed a portable solution and kept seeing reference to the Nexto drives. I had never heard of them. After stopping by a few photo places, , , Crunchgear I determined that the Nexto was the choice I needed to make.
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Flourless Chocolate Cake 2 ways, Wordless Wednesday
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San Diego coastline
We recently went driving along the Pacific Coast Highway down to San Diego from San Juan Capistrano. The day was cool and foggy. Just perfect to beat the heat in our town. Along the way we stopped to enjoy the view and the ocean air. I don’t know about you but the aroma of salty briny sea air is such a stress reliever. Forget pharmaceuticals, just figure out how to bottle that smell ala Kramer’s Ocean perfume, and the world wouldbe a whole lot calmer.
I always carry my camera with me so I can snap pictures of interesting stuff I find. I love shooting at the beach as you can get some pretty monochromatic shots without too much work. The study of beach colors is beautiful in this shot of a cairn. Every drive brings new ones along the shore. The rocks get piled up by someone and then someone else comes along and adds another. It really is one of my favorite things to see while driving. The colors don’t have any blue, green, or aqua yet the speak to that beach palette we all love.
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The Essential Photography Tool
Hummingbird, shadow
Recently I attend a conference for bloggers. One section was on improving your photography for your blog. Of course, everyone wanted to know which was the best camera to use? Was a point and shoot camera worth using? Is it necessary to have a DSLR? Is Canon or Nikon better? Do I need to buy a fancy lighting kit? How about back drops and light boards? We all want to know how to take the perfect picture. We’re looking for the sweet spot, the correct ISO, and depth of field. You know, so we’re accepted and applauded by FoodGawker and Tastespotting. There is nothing worse than being rejected, especially when you’ve tried your best to get it right.
The interesting answer to these questions was any of the above. And none of the above. You see, photography is all about knowing your camera, but even still it is about understanding light. Once you have mastered the skill of “light” the rest is pretty simple. The digital age has seemingly made photography more simple. It’s an illusion. Photography is an art form. Anyone can take an okay photo and dump it into a graphics editing program like Photoshop and turn it into a somewhat acceptable picture. However, you want your photos to be near perfect straight out of the camera.
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