Lounge Ruminator

This post was originally written in August 2021 for Hemispheric News; subscribe at the Patreon site One Prime Plus to receive this monthly newsletter and other benefits that are linked to the Hemispheric Views podcast.

My poor wife Natasha often has to deal with my extended monologues at home, whether they’re about technology, social observations or stories from the past. One of the most recent things that I ranted about was met with this succinct (and probably correct) response:

Martin, that’s a ‘non-problem’.

My rant was all about how iOS has affected the maintenance of my photo library over the years. As I presume to be addressing a somewhat nerdy audience here, let’s see if you agree with what I have to say.

On the one hand, iOS and now more recently, iPadOS, have both revolutionised the way that we take photos. Where we once had to carry dedicated point-to-shoot cameras, we now have smart devices with amazing capabilities in computational photography, the possibility to share instantly with friends and family and the benefit of beautiful, large displays for enjoying thousands of locally- or cloud-accessible images on-the-go. I love that I can take crisp low-light images, cool HDR shots, amazing panoramas and smooth 4K video all with the iPhone in my pocket.

On the other hand, this new world of possibility has also brought the power to pollute our photo libraries. While more limited, the earlier time of dedicated film and digital cameras was arguably more focused and deliberate. The issue to which I refer nowadays with iOS devices is the longstanding ability to save Web images and take screenshots.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love that I can save images and take screenshots easily on my iPhone and iPad. I use these features regularly to keep memories, mark up items for sharing or embed images in my own writing (as you’ll see in this very article). What has happened over time, however, is my Photos library—carrying over from the earlier iPhoto—has become littered with myriad images that can best be described as useless ephemera. They were important or made sense at the time, but they now serve no purpose other than to distract from the otherwise engaging photo narrative of my life, which the Photos app is meant to facilitate. Eventually, Apple introduced a Screenshots album in Photos across its platforms, in an attempt to offer some way of organising these images, but I find that it was too late and that it also doesn’t deal with the fact that these images persist in your own main library view. If taking a screenshot with iOS and iPadOS now, I try to make a point of ‘Saving to Files’ instead.

I’ve never saved as many of these images as I’ve seen done by others in my circle of family and friends, but it still annoys me. Over the last few months, I’ve set occasional pockets of time aside to review the earlier screenshot crap in my library and decide whether or not they serve a purpose or represent a valuable memory.

Consider the following examples that I screenshot recently (on my Mac) for this article.

In this screenshot, you can see screenshots of a purchase confirmation, a map and some earlier views of the Home screen and Twitter and ABC News app interfaces on iOS. These were kept so that I wouldn’t lose proof of an order and perhaps to remember what earlier interfaces looked like, but are they worthy of sitting alongside my family photos? Easy to delete!

In this example, you can see screenshots that I saved of an old Instagram account that I used to run, called The Martin Feld Retail Photo Collection (or @martinfeldretail). Essentially, I used to take photos of myself in bizarre retail situations for a laugh, and various friends loved it. I later grew tired of and unimpressed with Instagram, so I deleted the account but also took screenshots of the very uploaded images for posterity. These are easy to delete but first need to be moved to an iCloud Drive folder.

The more problematic images that I’ve encountered fall into the category of screenshots of photos and moments from messaging apps. When I used to enjoy Snapchat with friends and family, for instance, I would screenshot funny moments that now reside amongst my other family photos. Do these old Snapchat screenshots also rank as family photos, or should they be stored in a separate folder in iCloud Drive, as they are of lower quality and represent a different type of memory and/or communication?

I know that what I am arguing for is perhaps a very lofty, old-hat view of Apple’s earlier ‘digital hub’ strategy, where every photo fits the idea of a crisp marketing shot, however I do feel removed from the narrative when I stumble upon such images in my library. They either contain text or are saved in a noticeably lower resolution than my other photos.

You may disagree, and if you do, I’d love to hear what you think or how you approach this issue. Get in touch through one of our channels!

Until then, if you do think that this is a non-issue, I’ll leave you with this concluding thought about screenshot- and Web-image-saving behaviour:

While you may happily take screenshots and save images directly to your Photos library on your iPhone without much hesitation, would you ever willingly do the same thing on your Mac, or do they land on the desktop or in another destination folder?

For some reason, we have come to tolerate a photo-saving behaviour on our mobile devices that would seem downright wrong on the Mac.

This post was originally written in July 2021 for Hemispheric News; subscribe at the Patreon site One Prime Plus to receive this monthly newsletter and other benefits that are linked to the Hemispheric Views podcast.

Then something changed: I stopped handwriting.

Why is that? (You may ask…) I went to university.

I had been using computers throughout my time at primary and high school, however this occurred when I was either in a computer lab or at home completing longer assignments. Everything in general class-time was otherwise written with a pen.

At university, no one instructed me to use a pen, so I was free to use my MacBook or iPad to take notes during lectures and annotate slides and PDFs. As I had already learnt to touch-type in primary school, it felt much faster and more natural to apply my ideas onto a digital page, while keeping up with a presenter or racing to meet a deadline for an essay. As much as I enjoy handwriting, the thrill of hitting keys quickly is fantastic. Sometimes it feels as smooth as thinking the thoughts themselves.

This trend continued as I entered the working world—a world full of computers. When in the office, I often see people writing notes by hand, whether on post-it notes or larger pads or notebooks during meetings. I never do this. All of my writing is on a keyboard and quite often, over time, I’ve attracted funny looks during meetings when I’ve entered without a pen and paper. Rather than take notes during meetings or even sit behind a laptop, I speak and listen, then summarise the key points from my head digitally afterwards.

One thing that has appealed to me about handwriting more again, however, is using my Apple Pencil. I bought it with the intention to write more by hand, but instead have used it mainly for audio editing in Ferrite Recording Studio, including Hemispheric Views. It’s an excellent experience.

Now that so much of my work and my thinking is typed and filed neatly, to write by hand seems disruptive, as if it will break the system or slow me down. It feels fun, but it’s never as efficient or orderly.

All of this being said, even in an age when so much of our time is dominated by computers, I believe that handwriting is still a crucial skill. It’s important (at least sometimes) to express yourself in a way that is slower, more focused and more tactile. Imagine a visual society, such as ours, that were to lose the ability to make the shapes of its own language on a page. It’s a frightening possibility.

When my son, Mac, gets a bit older and goes to school, I would like him to enjoy handwriting and see the value in it as well. The concern is, however, how will he ever develop such a skill if his parents (or at least one of them) isn’t doing it actively in front of him every day? Why would he pick up a pen and write slowly on paper, when he only ever sees his dad typing on a keyboard? Could he be one of those future humans who knows his language only through the tapping of a keyboard?

Somehow, with the very little time that I make for myself already, I’m going to have to find a way to bring more handwriting back into my life.

This post was originally written in June 2021 for Hemispheric News; subscribe at the Patreon site One Prime Plus to receive this monthly newsletter and other benefits that are linked to the Hemispheric Views podcast.

After I finished high school in 2009, I was fortunate to receive a very generous gift from my parents: a Canon 500D. I didn’t have any experience with DSLRs at the time, but I was grateful to have received it and relished the chance to experiment with taking different shots. My mum and dad knew that I liked taking photos and maintaining my iPhoto library, so this seemed like a worthwhile upgrade to my earlier digital camera. The 500D came with an 18-200mm lens, which my parents chose because of its versatility for general use and decent zooming. It was the right decision.

Over the years, I’ve taken this camera everywhere, including on holiday to Japan, travelling throughout Europe and on our honeymoon to Tasmania. It isn’t the most expensive or capable DSLR, but I’ve always been impressed at the photos that it takes and have been thrilled to have something so decent to take on trips.

Still, that time was an interesting one to receive a DSLR as a gift, as it was the dawn of the smartphone era that we now take for granted. iPhones, certainly the 3G that I had back then, had nowhere near the capability of iPhones today when it comes to photography, let alone a DSLR.

As they say, though, the best camera is the one that you have with you. Like many others, while I had a much better camera, I’ve relied on the iPhone and successive models to build my photo library. The Canon has never been my main day-to-day camera; it’s the one for special occasions. It has been too heavy and certainly when I was younger and a student, I never had the money or inclination to build a collection of lenses.

Each iPhone model has included a more impressive camera (or *cameras*, nowadays), with amazing inclusions like image stabilisation and 4K HDR video. Using my DSLR became even less attractive.

Then something happened: my wife Natasha and I had our son, Mac, in April of this year.

I’m currently using an iPhone 12 mini and LOVE the cameras on it. You can bet that I’ve taken many photos and videos of Mac already. Something lingered in the back of my mind though, as I had heard other tech podcasters lament the quality of some of the photos of their kids from years ago. I looked at my iPhone and thought, Even though this device takes excellent photos, should I be using another device like a larger, dedicated camera even more, just to be safe?

I considered using my Canon more again, but it still felt too heavy—not at all convenient for whipping out to capture spontaneous family moments. I started to investigate other cameras online from different brands and of various sizes, whether compact, mirrorless or otherwise, but they all were too expensive to justify the purchase. Why pay stacks of money for a dedicated camera that doesn’t even include 4K video, like my iPhone has?

Then I asked myself, Why don’t I just look for a new lens? I began the search.

As I had expected, other than macros, many of the lenses seemed equally bulky and just too pricy, until I stumbled upon an absolute bargain: this 50mm Canon portrait lens, reduced from AU$199 to AU$144. I snapped it up and am now astounded at how it has transformed my camera.

My 500D, which was once a heavy inconvenience, has transformed into a convenient device that I can keep nearby in a drawer for those spontaneous family moments.

As obvious as it may sound to buy a new lens (to any photography enthusiasts reading this), I just didn’t have the inclination before. Again, I was a young person without much money or experience in photography, who built a personal library in the time of iPhone. It’s amazing how you start to view things differently when a constantly peeing, crapping and vomiting newborn enters your life.

Much like my repurposing of the iPod Hi-Fi in volume one of Hemispheric News, this rebirth of a now 11-year-old product feels great. I avoided wasting time, money and resources in buying a new device, and get to tell my parents about how the gift they got me over a decade ago is being used to record the life of their grandson.

Anyway, I’m thrilled the results and now have something even more versatile to obsessively capture our little Mac.

Is there any kind of first-world problem in your life that has such an obvious solution? Let us know at Hemispheric Views by email or on Discord, Twitter or Micro.blog.