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Log

2443W

what i’m missing is the decisive moment. out of habit or fear of the camera being slow and missing the shot i wait for held gestures, but held geatures aren’t alive, they are statue-like, still, dead.

the few really good shots i have are alive moments, really split seconds in time. in these the gesture is moving, ongoing, isn’t held for a beat, i just catch it at the right point in its arch.

that’s the decisive moment.


2442S

Turns out the solution is simple routine. So the workflow I came up with:

Import photos into “source folders” - these are the dated, event/shoot/week based folders I’ve already been using. Once they are imported (or at the end of the week for the personal “Journal” folders), I create a Lightroom collection that I sync to LR cloud. I then cull/rate the photos (this can happen on any device, since the collection is synced) and edit the selects.

Here’s the new stuff: after editing, I add the top selects to yearly area/topic based portfolio collections (eg. street, trips, personal, reportage, etc.) and to any relevant projects, like my ongoing, overarching project about Hungarian identity. I then export anything above a three star rating to a disk I only keep final JPEGs on, in the same folder structure that the RAWs are in. Once I’ve done the export, I unsync and remove the source collection.

I also set a monthly reminder for the first Sunday of every month to go through the project and portfolio collections and do exports from there as well, to dedicated project and portfolio folders on the JPEG disc. This means that I have the top images in duplicate, once in the source folder and once in the project or portfolio folder. As these are rolling folders (meaning I keep adding to them), I can just check the file count against the count in the collections to quickly see if I have any new images in the collection I need to export. I also plan to mirror the folder structure and exports from the JPEG disk to SmugMug, just to make sure I have my “positives” there as well.

Is this a bit complicated? Sure. Is this absolutely future proof? Hell yes. Whatever computer I’m on in the future, whether I still use Lightroom or whether Adobe as a company even exists, I’m ultimately only dealing with files in folders. I assume if I have no way to view JPEGs in folders on a disk, I have bigger problems than my photo archive.

So this was today’s project, and I am pretty pleased with where I ended up.

Well, anyway.


2442F

Yesterday was a messy day. It started out great but devolved into ADHD fuelled chaos and unintended mobile gaming as the day progressed. It’s hard not hating yourself when you feel like you messed things up for your self. But today is a new day.

Working through the Svelte tutorial, so I’ll make some notes on new JS concepcts I’m learning.

   

ARROW FUNCTIONS - Intended as a simpler/shorter way to declare small functions.

Syntax:

const varname = () => statement;
//vs
const varname = function() { statement };

const varname = (a, b) => a + b;
//vs
const varname = function(a, b) { return a + b };

Features:

  • implicit return - if only a single statement, it automatically returns it’s result
  • no this

In Svelte it’s customary to use these, so better get used to it.

   

REACTIVITY ON ASSIGNMENT - Reactive DOM changes are triggered on value assignment.

Using JS methods like .push doesn’t trigger it, so needs sg like a self assignment after.

let numbers = [1, 2, 3];
numbers.push(4); //this didn't trigger reactive DOM update!
numbers = numbers; //thid did

   

KEYED EACH - use a unique id for each object in an array of object, use that in each block ALWAYS

Not super clear on underlying issue, something about the underlying Map Svelte manipulates for the each block. Either way, the safe way to do an each is:)

let things = [
	{id: 1, name: "apple"}
];

//then in DOM rendering:
{#each things as thing (thing.id)}

(The things objects need to each have a unique id)

   

TWO-WAY BINDING - let changes in value from child element/component update value in parent

Normally <input value={name} /> means editing the input’s value doesn’t update name. However <input bind:value={name} /> makes it two-way, so editing value in the input changes name.

This should work for components, too, so I can share a value between the parent and child and both can modify it.

   

CONDITIONAL OPERATOR - a ? to act as a shortened if for assignments

for simple if statemens:

let result = condition ? valueIfTruthy : valueIfNotTruthy;

   

 

A different topic from today:

HOW TO STRUCTURE MY PHOTO ARCHIVE?

My basic folder structure is pretty clear, I have yearly folders, within those I have folders by area/topic and within those I usually have dated folders for “sessions”.

It looks kinda like this:

2024
	Trips 2024
		2024-04-10_15 Lisbon
		...
	Journal 2024
		w01 2024-01-01_06
		w02 2024-01-06_12
		...
	Projects 2024
		Climate garden 2024
			2024-09-10 compost workshop
			...
	Street 2024
		2024-03-11 street session Budapest downtown
		...

This works pretty well for sessions, trips, etc., things that are clearly defined (ie. I went out to shoot for a specific project or had a well defined personal event). For anything that’s not a clear “session” I use the Journal. Here I have weekly folders, and all the personal, home life, random, etc. pictures from that week live there.

It’s important for me to have a folder based structure. I use Lightroom currently, but I want to make sure that my organization system stays usable even if I want to switch to a different software down the road. I also want to make sure that my structure stays intact for many years in case I need to manage my archive without any proprietary software at some point.

My current problem is this: I have a few projects that I don’t explicitely shoot for. Rather, they are overarching projects that I build from street photography as well as shots from my daily life, other projects, etc.

So I need to find a way to have all the photos I take still stay in their “source” folders, but also have some structure for collecting some of them under these “collection” type projects.

Another issue I have is that while I’m pretty structured about the RAW files, I don’t have a good system for culling, rating, editing them and I don’t have a system for storing edited “positives” (ie. exported JPEGs) in a similarly structured way. (the same problem of the collection projects applies to the JPEGs as well)

So I need to think about two things:

  • what routine/system to set up for methodically processing my photos after they are in my archive? including doing exports of every folder’s top selects and storing those in a structured way
  • how to manage collections of selected photos (either for a project or just as portfolio/best of collections)? both RAWs in Lightroom and exported “positive” JPEGs that are the final output for me

This needs some further thought, but the trick is to not overthink it, which I tend to do. I feel there must be a straightforward answer to both questions, I just haven’t found it yet.