I remember when I bought my first laptop in 2003. I think it was a Dell Latitude– a nice big boat of a 15″ laptop, huge by today’s standards. But it had a sweet 1920 x 1200 display (all my icons were tiny and I had so much real estate to work with).
What was I really excited about? Well, a couple years earlier I’d caught this bug for a thing called “photo blogging”. Do kids today even know what blogs are? Holy cow. Anyhow, this meant toting a digital camera around and documenting anything of even minor visual interest– or even just documenting the day to day, with the intent to share on a blog later. I just loved the idea. There were no iPhones or Android phones or any kind of ultra portable device for accessing the web in such a way that would allow blogging. No social networks to allow people to share thoughts and photos instantly… The Laptop was as portable as it got.
So again, why was I excited? I’ve never been a prolific traveler. But I’ve always been a pretty big geek. I was headed to Las Vegas shortly with work for our annual convention. I was going to be able to update my blog DAILY while ON THE ROAD. Heck yes.
And I did, and it was glorious. Happy in my own little corner of the internet with only other geeks and some family ever seeing my content. Comments were appreciated but not obsessed over, there was no such thing as likes, etc. Back before selfies were so cliché (even if still nerdy), hah.
So what’s the point of this little trip down memory lane?
Well first, I kinda want to get back into blogging. It’s been a few years since I posted– a massive gap. All those things that didn’t exist then that exist now have kind of sucked the life out of the internet for me just a tad. There was a time when I lost interest in taking photos because “lots of people have already shot that and their photos are great, why do I need to?”. It was a cop-out, sure. But yeah. I want to get back to creating just for me. Writing long nerdy posts like this that I can’t imagine anyone else taking the time to read in today’s information overloaded world. Posting photos that aren’t necessarily works of art or “like-worthy”– just the mundane. I used to love that. Didn’t matter how good the photos were– maybe I didn’t even know how bad they were, hah.
Secondly, I’m writing this post as a proof of concept… in order to test the waters and see just how far technology has come. I’m writing / posting this on an iPad Pro. It’s bonkers. iPads have now become powerful enough to do legit photo editing / processing (even if there are some weak points such as photo library management). I’m just in a browser, and WordPress is auto-saving drafts of this post as I type it out (yes, with a keyboard accessory– not typing directly on the screen), and uploading a photo was a snap– clearly these non-PC devices have come a long way and have a lot of support.
But why? Relatively powerful, ultra-portable laptops are abundant these days. Well, partly, because I can. And partly because I’m hoping that a new workflow will help me begin again to actually do something with the photos I take. I take far fewer lately, and rarely on a real camera (i.e. one that isn’t my phone), but I’d like to change that too.
I’ll have an SD card reader for the iPad in the next few days and I’ll be able to quickly move through what I’ve shot and choose some shots to work on and post from the iPad. I suppose there’s no reason I couldn’t do that on a PC… maybe I’m hoping the novelty will help get the ball rolling again? Maybe its because I find myself reaching for the iPad a lot more often than the laptop when I’m just at home? Perhaps because all my iPhone photos will also be easily accessible here?
Sometimes the only reason I need is because it’s different and new and geeky. So I’m trying it out– let’s see how it is. I’ve always meant to test the image editing waters on the iPad, given the quality of the screens and the addition of the Apple Pencil for more precise and natural editing (better than a Wacom, mouse or trackpad).
I’ve got some energy and momentum now, let’s try it. (I did part of the post processing on that photo above on the iPad, though admitted I did use photoshop for one thing– I just haven’t dug into the big iPad photo apps yet to see if I could accomplish the same on the iPad.)
Cheers to the “old” school– blogging– with the new school toys. #grandpa #kidsthesedays