26 November 2013

Food for Thought // #02

Personal Photo - Night experiments

As you seem to have liked this post concept, here is the second round of "food for thoughts" posts - links to interesting articles and newly discovered sites I find "share-worthy". I hope you enjoy the read! On a side note, as a beginner photographer, I have decided to use these posts to present my level 1 photographer work.


On Becoming Minimalist - Strategies to Create Space
Our brains need down time. As I have noticed it myself, I ask myself more questions, realize more things about my life, and take more actions when I am less busy in general, when I am on holidays in particular. In this post, Joshua Becker give 12 tips for creating down time, not on vacation, but within our everyday life.

New Site - Go Book Yourself
"Book recommendations by humans, because algorithms are so 1984". This catch phrase caught me right from the start. This tumblr shares short and efficient posts based on one book, delivering 2 to 4 book recommendations for those who liked that first book, with a short sentence explaining why they might like them. My to-read list is severely longer sine I discovered this gem.

On Recovering Shopaholic - Shopping Accountability Update
Every month, Debbie updates her readers with new purchases and editing, the status of her shopping habits and objectives. I especially like her introduction in this October post, where she explains the importance of both having a regular check up on objectives to help stay in line, and be held accountable for our own actions.

On it starts with - Minimalist Enough
This article is spot on with the questioning I have been having lately - with the yearly round-ups around the corner, I started wondering if I was minimalist enough. Didn't I buy too much? Am I living up to my values and standards? While these questions are useful to keep progressing, this article reminded me that there is no need to try and be "minimalist enough". Incidentally, I learned that there is a proper English word for my clumsily translated "False Abundance". It is called a "World of Scarcity".


Kali's featured TED talk - How to make Stress your Friend? 
This talk shows how, surprisingly, the beliefs of mind can have an actual influence on body responses. Kelly McGonigal explains how understanding the positive effects of stress makes it much better for health. Captivating and surprising!


Photo:  City of Grenoble by night. Photos by night are the most difficult, and rewarding, when using a proper camera (versus iPhone). This one was an attempt at capturing the contrast between the blazing city lights and the purple night sky.

12 comments:

  1. Thanks for the Go Book Yourself! Love sites like that :)

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  2. Love the photo of Grenoble! Are you shooting in RAW and post-processing? Night shots are tough to meter but you got a nice balance between the sky and city lights.

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    1. Thanks! I do shoot the pictures in a "RAW+JPG format" so I can have both and make changes as necessary, but I haven't quite reached the level where I manipulate RAW files yet. This one above is the JPG version of the picture.It's my first "studied" night pictures so I'm really glad you like it.

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  3. Thanks for sharing the links. I’ve just read Minimalist Enough and found it really interesting, especially in relation to your own article on the matter. I was first attracted to minimalism as a mean of intellectual self-defense, but the lack of balance found on some blogs (“I own 2 mugs and feel so bad about it”), sometimes coupled with the search for ultra-perfect-perfection, often bothered me because at the end of the day, being obsessed with owning always more, or always less, or perfecter, is really just that: being obsessed.
    Lovely picture, by the way!

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    1. I have been feeling the same way toward some forms of minimalism, which I found as extreme as consumerism, or too obsessed about owning less. In the end, it seems their focus is still on material items, whereas I think minimalism is about shifting our thoughts and energy away from material things to focus on human growth and social links.
      Thanks for the comment on the picture :)

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  4. that foto looks lovely!

    i enjoyed the shopping accountability post. i just culled a few more items myself and wrote about it on my blog. like debbie i thought about why they had to go. but i also wrote down why i kept them for so long. this was really helpful to figure out some details. most of them were made out of lovely, soft fabric for example. others had sentimental value or i liked the overall idea of that item, but the details were just a bit off.

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    1. Yes, I also find these detailed analysis useful, because it helps understanding past purchase mistakes, the emotional link we have to objects etc. It is the best way to learn from past mistakes and figure out what works for the future.

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  5. night shots are super tricky, but that turned out really well!!!

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  6. j'adore le concept de Go Book Yourself ! Direct dans mon feedly pour la peine... ^^
    Et je garde la conf' TED sous le coude, j'aime beaucoup ce qu'il y a ce site de façon général.
    Et pour les photos en RAW, faut surtout pas de prendre la tête ou s'imaginer une difficulté plus grande qu'elle ne l'est. Y'a quelques paramétrages de base (la courbe d'exposition, l'exposition et le contraste notamment) avec lesquels on peut jouer, le but n'étant pas non plus d'y passer une éternité... un chouette exemple par ici :
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSNlplqlWrY ! :)

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    1. Ah oui le Go Book Yourself est ma trouvaille du mois! A chaque fois que j'y vais je rajoute tout un tas de livres à ma to-read :)
      Pour les fichiers RAW, c'est juste que je ne me suis pas encore penchée sur la question. J'imagine que les modifications sont du même ordre que les altérations photoshop, mais je n'ai pas encore cherché de logiciel à même d'éditer les RAW en fait. Je n'ai même pas regarder si photoshop les prenait en charge, j'ai décidé de me pencher dessus pendant les vacances de Noël. Du coup je regarderai ta vidéo, j'aurai bien besoin de quelques idées pour me lancer.

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