Ah. The joys of acquiring a new computer. Especially one which comes complete with a xxxxxxx.

this is my former assistant, Renae. We were working on an

annual report for a company called, Concero. We had finished

our projects for the day and were just goofing around. 

If you regularly read the blog you know I bought everyone's favorite photographic accessory this week; a new laptop computer. A machine for event work, writing books at coffee shops, reading the Wall Street Journal over breakfast and... especially for writing impromptu blog posts. Like this one. 

I tend to do my "real" work on a 27 inch iMacPro. The rich set of ports allows me to connect five or six 12. Terabyte HDs or other fun peripherals. The big Retina screen makes fine editing on photos fun and easy. So, why do I always have a laptop?

Let's count the ways: 

1. An up-to-date laptop makes a good back-up computer should anything happen to the big, desk bound studio system. It's easy as pie to pull one or two of the big SSD drives from the main machine, put them onto the laptop desktop and continue working on projects. Both computers are running the same Adobe Photo Bundles. You can have two machines with the software at one time. ( A menu pops up if you have it loaded on two machines and try to open one of the programs on a third machine. You get to decide on which two machines your license allows). 

2. In the early days of online galleries and services everything ran faster with desktop computers. Laptops tended to be underpowered and slower. The internet (at least in most hotel rooms) was much slower and much less reliable. So, if you were covering a big, multi-day event and wanted to back up a days work to an online service you could pretty much count on spending a huge part of your evening nursing the connection instead of sleeping soundly. Now the laptop on my writing desk in front of me is multiple times faster than the top of the line desktop machine I bought back in 2018. I can take it to most major hotels, get on line quickly and send files in a short amount of time. So, the speed and portability are major pluses. 

3. A fourteen inch, Retina quality screen is big enough for any kind of writing I want to do and this means I can continue with my practice of writing books at coffee shops. The first five photo books I wrote were written, mostly, at the neighborhood Starbucks or Medici Café. I thrive in busy environments and have little patience for quiet and solitude. Laptop to the rescue. 

4. Power independence. I was working an event job at a big hotel and I was working under a crazy short deadline. There was a lightning storm. The power went out across the property. Not so for my laptop. I finished the job, created a hotspot with my phone (cellular service) and uploaded all my work to my client with no delays. During the big freeze back in 2021 we lost power at the house and studio for about eight hours. Ben and I worked through the event on our laptops. Since I was a Boy Scout my laptop was fully charged when the power stopped. Ben was not so lucky. But, of course, I had an Anker battery pack and was able to give his 13" MacBook Pro a full charge --- with plenty of power left over. We both completed our work for the day without further stress.

5. The nature of the appliance, with all the necessary equipment built in, including a very nice and well thought out keyboard, means no more "research", foot dragging, or excuses for efficient workflow. So easy and straightforward even a small child can figure them out.

6. Look like a hero. Pass down your replaced laptop to a struggling niece or nephew, if you have one. They'll likely appreciate your full spec'd out previous machine. Especially if you've recently replaced the internal battery. 

7. It's always great to have the laptop around at breakfast. You can do most of your work schedule before that second cup of coffee and have the rest of the day to play with other stuff. 

8. On photo shoots your Leica SL2 can unload files to connected storage (an assortment of Samsung T5 SSD peripherals) giving you extra back-up. You can also control your camera and do tethered shooting projects via the new USB4 ports. Nice. 

I'm sure you know all of this but I'm just settling in with the new machine and still in that stage when I marvel at how much faster everything is. 

On a different note: Prevention. I hit the dermatologist last week for my every six month total skin check. All good. Complete cleaning and dental check at my dentist's office yesterday. No mouth cancer, no cavities, no broken crowns and no gum disease. Clean bill of dental health. Blood pressure also taken in both locations. Each time about 115/70. Both practices asked if I was on BP meds. Nope. 

Hit the optometrist today and my prescription is running exactly as it was a year ago. No signs of glaucoma, macular degeneration or cataracts. Ordered a new set of high precision progressive glasses. Never hurts to have new frames and a back up pair of work glasses. Beside, insurance mostly covers it all. 

Well, that's all I've got today. Getting ready to go to a gallery opening this evening. Should be fun.

Did you guys know that there's a big Irving Penn Retrospective at the De Young Museum in San Franscisco? There I think until June 19th. I think B. and I will go at the end of April and try to miss the giant American vacation onslaught. Love Penn's work. 

More photography, less philosophizing. That's our current mantra. 

This entire post was done just as an excuse to use one of my favorite shots of Renae...