EDC

I have been following the slow rise of the EDC (Every Day Carry) movement for a few years now and always enjoy seeing what sort of interesting small gadgets people carry around them every day to get their work done. It has spurred quite a lot of new products and refined products to match the needs of the mindset which is, broadly speaking, doing as much as possible with the smallest amount of gear.

When it comes to what I carry with me every day it varies greatly because my daily needs vary quite a bit. Some days I am an audio engineer, some days I am a photographer, some days I am both, and other days I just want to relax. This leaves me with a lot of different tools to juggle and I certainly don’t need everything with me all the time. One thing never seems to change though and that’s what makes it into my pockets every single day, everywhere I go.

What you see above are the items that are constantly with me, minus my keys which have no interesting gadget to show off on them because I don’t like any junk hanging off my key ring other than keys. I figured it would be interesting to some of you to briefly talk about what you see above, sort of mini reviews of each item.

Starting on the left, the wallet is one YoungDoo bought for me in Seoul from a stationary store called MMMG. It’s a sturdy simple leather wallet with just enough for all I carry in it; ID, a couple business cards, a couple credit cards, and a bit of cash. I also have an amazing travel wallet I may review here on 50ft if I find the time.

Next up is this thing I picked up a few months ago called an iPhone. The “i” stands for internet or something and it’s kind of cool I guess. Ahem… Right, I have had an iPhone since day one with its first version which now lives in a drawer with my original iPod. I was at the MacWorld where it was first announced and first saw one slowly spinning around in a plastic tube of a display case.

I love the iPhone, its the kind of device that I would daydream of existing in some made up science fiction world growing up. Actually, I remember thinking in the future we would not buy cds or tapes but would take a little tiny device not much bigger than a headphone jack to music stores where we could buy music to fill it up. I am always amazed at technology and how far we have come. To be anything but completely amazed at the devices we take for granted every day is a crime. I have plenty I could ramble on about here but I will leave it at that. The case is super minimal and snaps on the the back glass of the phone and is flush with the metal antenna*.

Next up is my knife. Some areas of the world see carrying a knife as an act of aggression and for many that may be the case, but this is far from a weapon, its a tool that I use through out the day. I have tried a number of knives over the years but have happily settled on the Spiderco Dragonfly G-10. It has a short blade and overall length but is brilliantly designed to be held with your full hand. Your index/pointer finger safely rests at the joint of the blade and the handle giving you great control over the knife as you use it. More traditional knife designs feel strange and sloppy to use after getting used to this type of Spyderco design.

I equally love the design of the minimal wire clip which is sturdy and allows for the knife to sit nice and deep within my pocket. While there are a number of handle options I prefer the green g-10 version because its nice and grippy. Anyways, there are a lot of great knives on the market and everyone has their favorite but in my opinion Spyderco makes some of the best available today.

Next up is the Field Notes notebook plus the little pen I shove inside. I started using moleskine brand cashier books this size but the cover would fall off all the time so I gave Field Notes a try and never looked back. The quality of the paper and cover are second to none and the various editions they make available are always fun. I use these all the time during work and as a place to scribble quick notes and ideas.

The pen I keep inside is one I ordered from Jet Pens.  I have tried small pens like this in the past but none have ever had as smooth of a line as this Ohto Petit-B. I love a smooth skinny line from my pens and this is fantastic considering the size. The only downside is having to pull the pen out of itself, spin the middle around and insert it back into itself to get it to full length but I have used it so much that its second nature at this point.

Last but far from least is my flashlight. There are countless amazing lights on the market now because of a few dedicated small companies constantly improving themselves. This is a Quark 123 Tactical light from 4Stevens. After a lot of research I settled on this light because of the great combo of price versus performance. The tactile version allows me to have two separate modes to easily jump between with a simple twist of its head. I jump between a medium brightness and the full power mode. I usually use medium bright to save battery life but love the full brightness which is blinding and satisfying and comes in quite handy in certain situations. The flashlight takes a beating too, I use it constantly at work both in dark venues and while navigating my way through dark corners of a building during an install. It is not invincible though.

A few months back I dropped it while working on a lift four or five floors up on a score board. I watched as it slowly fell down, down, down. It was far enough a distance where I could sit there and watch it fall and have time to anticipate it hit the ground. After recovering it the body itself was perfectly fine outside of a dent on the base, but the circuits inside came loose and the lights head no longer worked. Thankfully, 4Sevens sells replacement heads and I was able to get it fixed up without having to buy a new light. I also bought an alternative clip that allows me to push the light deep into my pocket so it is more secure as I carry it around.

Worth noting is the fact that this version of the light is no longer available. The company has been transitioning into a new variation on their brand which can be found here. Also worth noting is they have some of the best prices on CR2 batteries anywhere. a 10 pack of them for 20 bucks is amazing.

Other common sights in my pocket are sharpie markers, a handkerchief, a smaller flashlight, and maybe a tool or two specific to the job for the day. I also carry a mini tool kit assembled to take care of as many needs as possible without the bulk of a full took kit. If there is any interest I can discuss it and its contents some other day.  So that’s that, what and why I carry what I carry from day to day, hopefully some of you found something of interest in here.

*Update: Almost immediately there were a number of people asking about the iPhone case. Of course I should have remembered that my audience here consists of a lot of iPhone users! I bought the case in Seoul while traveling in Korea. It is made by a local brand that, as far as I have been able to find, only sells their product within Korea. It’s been a great case with a nice matte finish making the phone easier to hold without adding any bulk to the device at all. It would never protect the phone from a real fall but keeps the back of the phone nice and clean. It snaps on with an optional double sided tape which uses a very light adhesive to make sure it stays on the back of the phone. You can see the companies page on the case here. It’s also available from 10×10, a great Korean online shop but I don’t know if they ship anywhere outside of Korea. I daydream of importing great Korean products like this and selling them on 50ft.

Another small update while I’m here, I also now wear a wristwatch everywhere I go which is a watch YoungDoo and I bought for each other to celebrate our wedding. It is a Uniform Wares 200 Series watch which I am madly in love with, its such a beautiful watch.

Bloom

I realize spring has come and gone, or at least the peak of spring, but while summer settles in I thought these would still make for nice, light desktop imagery. These cherry blossoms were everywhere as YoungDoo and I arrived back in Seoul after our time in Bali. I always thought it was mostly hype as far as the beauty of these trees are concerned but they really are quite nice as they line streets and cast everything around them in a nice diffused light. The best moments though are the times when wind blows across them and hundreds of tiny white petals fall gently to the ground, I love that. So while these may be somewhat generic lovely flower photos I hope you guys enjoy them, a little something fresh for the oncoming heat of the summer.

Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop

I have been reading a lot of talk about iPads and their growing capabilities as creative tools. Most of you reading this know of the “my ipad is my laptop now!” hype. Problem is, I come up empty handed whenever I try to figure out why there seems to be such a need to validate the ipad as a  personal computer, of course its a PC! What is there to even debate or dwell on? The input device of choice doesn’t define what a computer is, and neither does the operating system, its as simple as that. A touch screen device like an iPad is a perfectly natural evolution of personal computing. The part of this whole thing that interests me, however, is the software.

I would say a good 90 percent of the debate on the iPads usefulness as a computer is coming from writers and casual users and this is where I find the debate getting a little one sided. Of course a writer would like the ipad. The tools most needed to get their work done are right there for the taking, you can hunt and gather all day long and it does make a fantastic, distraction free space to write in. I can wholeheartedly agree that the iPad is an increasingly great tool to gather ideas, write stories/articles, and stay in touch but for the time being this is where the road unfortunately ends. For many, including myself, the iPad is still not much more than a high tech note pad.

When it comes to many jobs within the professional creative community the iPad is still more or less incapable of handling any honest workload. At least as far as things stand at this point in time. There are no designers that I am aware of using it to create much outside of concepts. There are niceish vector, sketching, and image editing apps available but nothing with the horsepower or precision that it takes to complete a finished product. The same goes for web design, coding, print design, industrial design, etc. Writers can sing praises all day long about how nice it is not to use a laptop to write and how easy it is to focus with one but its still far from useful within many areas including the creative field I am closest to, photography. It seems to me that most photographers today trying to use the iPad as an honest tool are doing it for the novelty. The simple fact of the matter is that it’s still kind of a pain in the ass to manage photos. There is still no easy way to manage files outside of iCloud/Dropbox integration or the clever but usually awkward attempts at using a LAN network to transfer files back and forth. Apples weird little iTunes app file window is sadly obscure and tedious.

I’ll admit there are a few nice photo editing apps available but you still always hit the same dead end. Cloud services can only get you so far, especially when dealing with full resolution RAW files. I can not dump 8Gb of RAW images onto my iPad and expect to get any real work done on them. For most professional photographers, a couple days of shooting equals large amounts of big files which takes forever to import and export, even with access to cloud storage which is not nearly as fun when you are dealing with anything other than small files. There is an obvious bottleneck that has no current solution for a larger quantity of high resolution image files.

For instance, while traveling you would think the iPad would be a great tool for the job, small, light, an endless battery, but as a photographer who has tried this a few times I can say that it is woefully inadequate for my needs. In my times trying to use the iPad as a point in the food chain of shooting while traveling I come across the data bottleneck get lost. RAW images saved to the iPad with the camera connector feel trapped. Getting them on and off is a buggy and frustrating endeavor that takes much longer than it should. In my experience it takes multiple attempts to pull off all of my photos and laves me frustrated and nervous about loosing images.

There was one instance where I thought it would be a wonderful tool while out on a shoot at a company campus. I had appointments with individual employees within a department and between each shoot I moved the images from my 5D to the iPad so I could show them the results afterward with a bit of flare and ease. The process ended up so slow that I had to juggle between cards to make it work and later nearly loose the images to the transfer process. While conceptually it was a nice idea, it was far too unstable for me to try again as things are.

I have tried using the iPad as a photography tool more times than I care to admit, that is, until I finally gave up on the idea and now take my laptop with me whenever I know I will be shooting a lot. I would be curious to hear what others experiences are that may have tried similar things.

For such a supposedly simple to use device the iPad it sure makes it complicated to move files around. In this case, Apple is entirely responsible with their rebellious idea to avoid traditional file structures. I can not fathom why it would be so difficult to have a system level file management area that is as convenient to use as the notification system they have so diligently been working on. Something which is not so flawed and cumbersome as the hidden data that lives within each app.

iCloud’s photo stream is clever but simply mirroring your photos doesn’t really do a whole lot of good for someone like me, especially with the current limits in place. In my opinion things either need to go full cloud or stay local, and full cloud is simply not possible yet. Network data and staying connected to the net at all times is simply not affordable or widespread enough.

Outside of data management failure, software is only really halfway capable. If I were a casual photographer shooting JPEG images I may be able to get by sometimes but as it stands I can’t honestly use any current app to edit photos. In fact, I can’t even come close to my normal work flow for creating content for fiftyfootshadows. I cannot accurately crop images or re size them for posts, more or less add my watermark, zip files up with my terms of use, and upload them to my server. So for a process so simple on the surface (edit, crop, compress, share) it involves details in the process that iOS can not handle as it is. Everyone seems to sort of tip toe around the topic as though they are afraid to admit that it really is not all that well suited for a number of things. Sure, you could mow your lawn with a pair of scissors, but do you really want to go through all the extra effort?

Then there is iPhoto on iOS, something I was looking forward to since the first iPad and its hugely lacking photo viewing app. I know people have been ragging on the interface since its release but that’s not all it fails at. iPhoto is a black hole within a hole where edited photos from your “camera roll” somehow end up in limbo within the app and you have to send edited versions back to the photo roll to do anything else with them other than making a journal. Talk about a mess. Your edited photos then end up piling up on top of duplicate versions of the unedited ones. It’s obvious they tried to do something interesting and capable but their own horrible file system keeps biting the hand that feeds it. Please, correct me if im wrong here but the whole process feels very un-Apple. Also, have you tried “beaming” photos back and forth from the iPhone to the iPad? Every time I have tried  to accomplish this seemingly simple task it has taken multiple attempts to the point where I simply let myself forget that it was even possible.

As it stands, the iPad is amazing. I use it every single day for writing, browsing the news, sketching ideas, and reading though email or tech riders and I love every minute of it. It f complements my daily life and on days when I don’t need to get any real work done, I leave my laptop at home. But when it comes to honest creative work I can not help but find the iPad as little more than a sidekick. I can say with certainty though, that this is far from the last word on this. I can clearly see a future where touch screen devices such as the iPad become more and more viable for the kind of things I have discussed here today. It is still new territory being explored and I for one can not wait to see where it takes us.

Cast Off

Here on the border of day and night things grow fuzzy, less defined, quiet. Colors shift quickly and dramatically and everything around becomes less of a landscape and more of a sketch of what was a few moments before. I love this time of night but it certainly can be tricky to capture depending on the circumstances. In this case these children were out fishing at the end of a hot day in Bali and YoungDoo and I were out photographing the last sunset we would have to enjoy on the island. A perfect recipe for a few nice silhouettes. They all but ignored us and we tinkered with out cameras and enjoyed the view.

While this shot ended up a bit hazy and out of focus I still love it for the movement captured. As soon as the one child leaned back to point at the other side of the pier I knew I had the shot I was waiting for, where the three of them were well defined against the dim light of the coming night so one click was all I had. Still though, despite its technical shortcomings, I knew I had a nice shot because I had finally caught the scene in the way I envisioned it in my mind. Which leaves us with the question, does a photograph need to be technically perfect to be an effective image? This is entirely subjective to the person who created the image.

If your image is able to achieve a successful emotional connection with the viewer then you have done your job. Sometimes this means ignoring the nagging voice in the back of your mind that this exposure may end up a bit dark, blurry, etc. Every aspect involving the art of photography, even intentionally fudging the technical details here and there, is fair game. A technically perfect image is a wonderful thing and is worthy of being proud of, but one which is able to transfer an emotional value can be infinitely more satisfying.

Not only this but it is much easier to discover your voice as a photographer if you let yourself make mistakes. One of the most influential things that guided my style over the years has been the images I really wanted to love but didn’t work out because of a shortcoming in my approach leaving me to refine the idea and try again. At any rate, I hope you enjoy the new desktop. I will do my best to start pushing them out faster.

None At All

While out on a walk at my favorite nearby lake I decided to pack light and set off with a thermos of coffee, an old film camera (in this case my Canonet), and my iPhone. I came out to have a little peace after a month and a half abroad in a mild attempt to reset my mind and get some fresh air. Thankfully, it just so happened to be an absolutely perfect day, a cool, slightly cloudy spring day with a touch of wind to give the lake gentle waves and the trees a beautiful white noise as it blew among the leaves.

As I walked along stopping by a few of my favorite spots along the way I could not help but take a number of photos with my trusty Canonet. I eventually arrived at one of my favorite places on the trail, a small boardwalk. I pulled the camera to my face and slowly started to swing back the film advance and to my horror found I could only wind it half way back meaning I had run out of film.

After a moment of disappointment I simply wound the film back into the canister, slipped the camera into my jacket pocket and pulled out my iPhone to take a few so-so photos of the scene to mess around with later. Disappointed with the results, I had a moment where I felt stupid for not bringing along more film. It was a weight that made me feel like I had wasted the walk out there. A few seconds later I realized it was not at all worth the worry. Why burden myself with such thoughts? This in mind I simply lifted the weight of the loss off of my shoulders, took a deep breath, and continued to enjoy my time in the forest without the need to photograph it.

I decided to take my time walking back and wandered off the trail, forging my own path. A few minutes later I discovered two trees that had fallen across the shore of the lake and rested at peace over the water. Vines with green leaves had started to grow outward from the forest and onto the sunny trunk of the fallen tree. I picked up a weathered old 2×6 piece of wood found nearby then slowly walked out onto one of the trees.  After placing the wood across the two trunks I had a nice makeshift bench to sit on. I let my phone sit in my pocket, took a few sips of coffee and enjoyed my time without feeling the need to photograph the beautiful lake aorund me. It was perfect, legs dangling down above the surface of the lake, wind was creating deeper waves at this point and I was lost in the beauty of it all.

Many people talk about the iPhone being a great camera or go on and on about the benefits of digital cameras and their seemingly unlimited capacities, but this day decided to evolve a bit differently than others and left me with a fresh, welcome perspective. This day left my mind at rest among the trees, water, and sounds of a perfect afternoon. Then I got to thinking and the now common phrase, “the best camera is the one you have with you” came to mind and I thought to myself, sometimes the best one is an ellaborate DSLR, sometimes it is a simple old film camera, and sometimes it is the one built into your phone, but today, on this perfect afternoon with a cool breeze on my face, the best camera was none at all.