technical stuff

USB flash drives for photographers

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In case another photographer is looking for a supplier of custom USB flash drives, here’s a follow-up to a previous post about the inevitable(?) switch from optical discs to USB flash drives for delivering client photos.

After looking through many sites, I went with Flashbay (flashbay.ca or flashbay.com). The account manager I dealt with was very helpful. The only hard part was deciding on a style of drive. I chose 4-GB “Kinetic” drives with medium-sized magnetic boxes. There are much fancier boxes but I’m assuming that most of my clients will throw out the box anyway.

The Kinetic drive works like a ballpoint pen: click on the end and the USB connector pops out; click again and it retracts. Pulling the drive out of a USB port automatically retracts the connector.

The medium-sized, clear plastic box, about the size of a deck of playing cards, is big enough that I can insert a business card (or maybe I can create a small thank-you card?). A smaller-sized box would make the overall presentation look too small. The little magnetic snap on the box is surprisingly effective.

Another option, although not as good from a marketing point of view, is that stores like Staples and Best Buy sell various branded and unbranded USB flash drives. Staples also sells tiny plastic boxes (meant to hold paperclips?) that can hold a USB flash drive or two.

 

Fast, cheap and good

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A common saying is “Fast, cheap, good. Pick any two.” Here are some exceptions to that rule where you do get all three:

Photographers often have to resize pictures smaller or create thumbnail-sized images for their web site. For Mac users, there’s a free application called ThumbsUp, from DEVONtechnologies, which makes this resizing process fast and easy.

Also free from DEVONtechnologies: (i) EasyFind searches your hard drive better than Apple’s Spotlight because it doesn’t have the restrictions that are built into Spotlight; and (ii) WordService is an indispensable tool when working with any text in any application.

Another tool that photographers may find very handy, especially when designing web sites, is this wonderful free ruler for Mac.

Photographers who want to create a favicon for their web site or perhaps some custom desktop icons should consider the free ICOformat.plugin for Photoshop (Mac and Windows) and the free version of Img2icns (Mac).

The ICOformat plugin accepts only 256px, or smaller, images. Img2icns can create 512px which is the current Mac standard (except for apps being submitted to Apple’s App Store which requires 1024px icons).

 

Flash Forward

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Over the past two months, I photographed in a few Toronto offices, from small to mid-sized. Here are a few random observations:

• Businesses seem to be much more paperless. I can recall when offices had entire walls, and even hallways, lined with filing cabinets.

• Fax machines are pretty much obsolete.

• Just over half of the offices I was in had their employees working on laptops. This may make sense in terms of cost and portability but one wonders about the health cost. Many employees’ necks and shoulders were hunched over as they were working on their laptops.

• No desktop computers meant that the office lacked the familiar sound of keyboard (and mouse) clicking. I guess this sound will disappear like that of a typewriter.
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Photographer’s web site maintenance

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Yes, a boring blog title.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been helping some photographers clean up and reorganize the “back end” of their web sites. Here are a few important things that every photographer should do with their web site (in no particular order):

• Change all usernames and passwords. A username of “admin” and a password of “1234567” are a disaster waiting to happen. Using the same combination of username and password for everything is foolish. Never, ever use the default username or password.

• Back up the web site regularly. Really. Keep a copy of the entire site on a local computer and/or on a CD/DVD. Most photographers’ web sites are not that large and can be easily backed up. Web hosts often provide a way to do site backups through cPanel (or similar). Or, just use FTP to download the site’s files.

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Best Face Forward

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The California Institute of Technology (CalTech) just published a rather silly study under the catchy title of “Perspective Distortion from Interpersonal Distance Is an Implicit Visual Cue for Social Judgments of Faces”. The study claims to show that “the distance at which facial photos are taken influences perception.” The authors of the study even say they’ve broken new ground. (Yes, every photographer is laughing at this.)

Here’s the CalTech press release and the study. Feel free to read them but the study just duplicates what every experienced photographer, model and actor have known for +90 years:

(i) If someone takes your picture with a short lens, the closer they stand to you when taking the picture, the more distorted, or unflattering, the picture will be. (It’s just well-known physics.)

(ii) An unflattering portrait tends to create unfavourable opinions in people who view that portrait. (It’s just well-known human behaviour.)

This CalTech study certainly qualifies for a Captain Obvious award.
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Spray and Pray

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On a sports photography forum, photographers were discussing the best ways to handle the thousands of pictures they each shoot during a game.

On a wedding photographers forum, one person said he usually shoots over 3,000 pictures per wedding. Another said he often does 5,000 pictures.
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Basket of eggs

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Another example to show that it’s not wise to put all your eggs in one basket (or all your digital files on one hard drive):

According to a CBC story, a lawyer in British Columbia is suing Apple Canada after his backup hard drive, an Apple Time Capsule, failed after three years of use. All of his data were lost.

The hard drive included pictures of the birth of his first child.

A sad fact of our digital lives is that all digital storage is inherently unstable. Hard drives will fail. Discs will become unreadable.

There’s a reason why most professional photographers back up their work at least in triplicate. A backup for the backup of the backup. There’s a reason why most top-end cameras allow for duplicate recording of pictures as they’re being shot.

Photographs are very valuable, especially irreplaceable family pictures. So why not spend a few cents and make extra backups? Blank CDs and DVDs are about 40¢ each and external hard drives might run 25¢ per gigabyte. It’s cheap insurance.

When, not if, your basket falls to the ground, will you lose all your eggs?

 

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