w/e 2021-10-17

Quite a frustrating week, which I somehow managed to fill with an un-finishable series of tasks – administrative, technological, and physical – that weren’t satisfying to complete. Or even, for the most part, apparently memorable.

I probably let them all take more time than they should have, given the lack of other things demanding my time, and so I expect only rolling eyes and the scrape of tiny violins from anyone with a full-time job and/or other humans to look after.

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§ The week before this one I imported some photos into the Apple Photos app from my Lightroom library to see how my idea of moving over felt. I still enjoyed the casualness and simplicity of Photos over the complex I Am A Serious Tool For Serious Photographers vibes of Lightroom but I think I’ll probably have to stay put.

I liked Colin Devroe’s method of using Photos, purely as a way to browse a library of image files that live in a visible directory structure on the drive. I like that the original images are always accessible, and not at all dependent on Photos but for my purposes there’s one crucial flaw… once an image is imported into Photos any subsequent changes made to its Exif (etc.) data in the app isn’t saved into the original files. Similarly, but less importantly for me, any changes to data in the original files isn’t picked up by Photos.

Lightroom can at least write data to the original files, which I like. The most obvious alternative, Capture One, costs £19/month or a one-off £199 for the Fujifilm version. Which, given I get Lightroom and Photoshop (which I rarely use) for £10/month, doesn’t seem like a bargain. Especially as Capture One doesn’t have a map display, which I use a lot in Lightroom.

See, this kind of nonsense takes up an inordinate amount of my brain cycles at the moment purely, probably, because of actually urgent issues. 🙄 🎻

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§ [record-scratch change of tone…]

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§ Two weeks ago my friend Rachel passed away.

I hadn’t seen them for twenty years and we hadn’t been in touch for ages, and it’s hard to believe. For a few years at the end of the nineties we were good friends and did a lot together. They were excited and interested, fun and chatty, and a joy to hang out with. They were encouraging, inspiring, patient and helpful, but had no time for the bullshit that was common in the “new media industry” as it was then called.

The last time I saw them was in New York shortly after they moved to America, something they’d wanted to do for some time. They were happy and seemed so at home. It suited them. Although we fell gradually out of touch I always assumed that one day we’d reminisce together about all those movies and gigs, the dinners in Soho, the gallery visits, and the excellent holidays.

Even from this distance in time and space their passing leaves a big hole, and I can’t imagine how much everyone closer to them are feeling with this Rachel-shaped gap in their lives.