Two Books

Firstly, I just bought myself a birthday present of a new iPad. I was intending to get the iPad Mini, I'd waited this long before purchasing just to get the smaller beast. When I compared the two - the mini and the full size - it was a no brainer. The retina display is quite startling. My only reservation about getting the big boy was that I thought it was in mid-cycle, and I didn't want to get just six months out of something that would be replaced so quickly. But Apple quietly slipped a new processor into the iPad 3  to make it into the iPad 4 so I jumped on it.

My primary motivation for the purchase was to have a way to view my photos and do basic catalog work on them while I did any traveling. At the Photo Expo show a few weeks ago I found a book entitled The iPad for Photographers which covers in detail all the various apps available for photo processing and a lot more. I needed to find apps that would integrate with my Lightroom workflow seamlessly. More on this stuff in later posts, as I work with the new software.

The second of the two books referred to in the title is Art & Fear. I had read a brief quote from the book and looked it up on Amazon. The intro to the book is available for preview, and as I read through, I was intrigued by the presentation. I'm often drawn to books about the creative process, only to be disappointed, so I rarely spend my hard earned money on them. I just get them from the library, read a few pages or chapters, and disappointedly return the book. This one wasn't available from the library. I had an epiphany. Interesting book/new iPad - download from iTunes and read on my new toy whenever I have a few free moments. What a concept!

More on this later. No photos for now, Sandy has made ingress to New York a chore, and it's not worth the 2-3 hours of travel each way. It's taken me 70 years to learn patience. Oh yeah, and I have a new toy to play with.

Not my usual

A few months ago some friends asked me to take photos of their family in their home before their second child was born. Studio setups are not my usual way of working, so I usually eschew that type of work. I've never taken photos of a pregnant woman, so I wasn't sure how comfortable I'd be, or how comfortable I'd be able to make the expectant mother. As it turned out, my misgivings were unnecessary. The session gave me an opportunity to reacquaint myself with my power pack and strobes, and a chance to play with some new toys. It was this same family that generously opened their home to me during the terrible storm that blew through here this past week. 

Sebastio Salgado once said 'If you take a picture of a human that does not make him (her) noble, there's no reason to take this picture.' I can't think of anything more noble for a woman than to be pregnant. This is my homage to Ella and her wonderful family. 

No photos today

I'm recovering from hurricane Sandy. I took photos of my local town, but they could be pictures of any one of hundreds of other towns in the storm's path. What strikes me profoundly about this storm is that five years ago predictions were made  for what the consequences would be if a category 3 hurricane hit the New York area directly. Sandy was a category 1 storm, and the results met the expectations for a category 3 storm. Th storm and tide surge boundaries for the most part defined the land's end boundaries of lower Manhattan before all the land fill and new development. I think Mother Nature is trying to tell us something here.

I was without electrical power for nearly six days. My home has electric heat and an electric stove. So, no showers and no cooking. And there is still a limited supply of gasoline. The upside to the whole experience is that I became part of a small community of warm generous people who included me in their family group. It was a joy to experience and to contribute.

(Just a quick note apropos of nothing: To my anonymous reader who feels the imperative to post comments to me about my grammar and spelling: if it's good enough for Google's spell checker, it's good enough for me.)