It’s the same problem all of us run up against when we try to proof-read a text, especially if we were the ones who wrote it. We see what we know the text means, rather than what is actually printed on the page. It is hard to make the text sufficiently different from what we assume it is, “strange” enough so that it can be really seen.

Pat Dryburgh On shutting down Simple Desks.

But, it was bullshit. It was such bullshit. We were creating this completely unrealistic ideal that no one should have to live up to.

Who has the most minimal desk setup?

The real question is, who gives a fuck?

Do you feel a change in the air? Has minimalism pendulum reached the end of its arc and begun falling? Honestly, I enjoyed the Simple Desks site. But he’s right that it’s really just more productivity porn. Much like real porn, too much of it tends to make one’s expectations diverge significantly from reality. I’d see a desk setup on his site and would suddenly hate my entire house or office. It also made me want to buy more things so I could appear to have less of them. That’s just weird.

Here’s a shot of my home office desk as it looked 10 minutes ago…

Close enough.

The Nikon D700 creates images as perfect as can be, which is why I’m selling mine.

I love the way the D700 focuses lightning fast, all the time, in any conditions. I love how the images are noise-free way up to ISO 6400 and beyond. I love that I can strap a flash on it and get perfectly lit shots every time. It’s all so perfect. If an image isn’t perfect, I can twiddle a few dials in Capture One and make it perfect.

It’s kind of boring.

I get caught up in the quest for image quality all the time. By that I mean technical quality. The internet makes this easy. Just visit any online forum and you’ll find an endless stream of people comparing 100% crops. “By god that lens is so sharp all the way to the corners!” “I prefer the higher contrast and bokeh of the 3rd version.” Then I’m all I GOTTA HAVE IT! It gets to the point that any photo that isn’t technically perfect is crap.

Chuck Norris, who must use a D700 or something close to it, (probably) once said, “If your camera takes a photo of a coffee mug and my camera takes a photo of a coffee mug, my photo is better than yours.” Of course he misses the point that it’s still just a photo of a coffee mug. Unless you’re doing brochure shots for a local coffee house, who cares?

For non-professionals, the quest for technical perfection in photography is a distraction.

Avoiding the technical quality rat-race is one reason I enjoy shooting film. Film cameras are never going to be any better than they were 10 years ago. Film and film processing are not going to change much either. What we’re left with is working with what we’ve got. I sometimes forget how helpful that can be, creatively. Constraints and all that. I sometimes appear to be trying to getting around that loophole by buying all kinds of different cameras. However, I don’t do that in a search for better image quality, but rather for handling or specific interesting features.

Shooting a 36-exposure roll of film usually yields 3 or 4 decent shots for me. Even the best of them still show some signs of grain. in other words, none of them are perfect. I love those shots, imperfect as they may be. Shooting with the D700 I’ll bring home a card with 400 or 500 shots on it, 300 of which are technically pretty close to perfect. Who wants to sort through all those and keep track of them forever? I’m ultimately happier with my 3 or 4 crappy film shots.

You’re going to hate this so much.

I recently started typing my tweets on index cards! Can you think of anything more hipster-silly-retro? I love the idea. If I stick with it I’ll end up with a really fun box of memories that I can actually play with.

I could force my life to become entirely paperless, but I choose not to. Between my workflow and my attachment to forgotten tools, I generate a lot of paper. I write in notebooks. I type journal entries and blog posts. I write notes to myself on index cards. Keeping track of it all is surprisingly easy, and I thought I’d share briefly how I do that.

Index cards are great for keeping miscellaneous to-dos and notes. I keep a stack of them near me at all times; on every desk, in my kitchen, and next to my bed. There’s no easier way to quickly jot something down I need to deal with later. I can then spread them around my desk or wherever and they are easy to spot and rearrange as necessary.

For filing I use a 43 Folder filing folder from Staples. Literally, 43 folders.

Filing something that I know I needn’t deal with until later is as easy as tossing an index card into some later date’s folder. I can then forget about it. All I need to remember is to check the day’s folder each morning. Not a “context” in sight.

I love using my old typewriters. I’m writing this post using one right now. For blog posts, I quickly type out the gist of whatever it is I’m writing about then edit and make notes using a pen.

Once I’m happy with the edits, I retype the final version into MarsEdit and publish. Not being terribly fussy about my writing, this helps by forcing me to review things at least once before unleashing it on you folks. More often than not, posts never get past the typewritten stage. Feel free to thank me for that. Speaking of stacks of papers, I then scan whatever I’ve written into DEVONthink using the Fujitsu ScanSnap, punch and file the pages into a Levenger Circa notebook, like so…

This all works quite well for me. I get the immediacy and tactile benefits of a paper workflow, digital versions of things I want to share, and a physical archive of lovely handwritten or typed documents.

This wasn’t supposed to be my new camera. I had written off the Fuji X100 for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that they’ve been so hard to come by since being first released last March. I still wanted one, but there were so many complaints being made by people who did manage to get their hands on one that I sort of lost the urge.

Instead, I bought an Olympus E-P3 with the add-on EVF and have been fairly happy. I had nearly forgotten about the little Fuji when one day last week I got an email from B&H; letting me know they had a few X100s in stock. About 30 seconds later I was staring at an order receipt email.

So what’s it like? After only a couple of days with the camera it’ too early to tell, but I’m inclined to think the X100 and I will get along just fine. Much of the chatter online about the camera’s idiosyncrasies is turning out to be accurate - both good and bad.

The Good

• Just look at it! Beautiful design based on such all-time classic cameras as the Canonet - my first rangefinder - makes me want to pick it up and take pictures.
• The unique hybrid OVF/EVF viewfinder is amazing. Used on Optical mode, it’s not far off from my M6’s viewfinder quality.
• High quality construction makes the camera feel great in hand.
• Image quality at higher ISOs is amazing. At ISO 3200 it’s not that far off from the D700, which is quite surprising.
• The “analog” controls for Shutter speed, Aperture, and Exposure compensation are top-notch and a real pleasure to use.

The Bad

• All the digital parts of the camera controls are a disappointment. Small, fidgety, and cheap feeling. Such a disappointment compared to the metal, precise, top-of-camera controls.
• Manual focusing using the fly-by-wire ring on the lens is futile. Unusable to the point of not even being a feature.
• The menu system is awful and needs a complete redesign in my opinion
• The contrast detect autofocus system is pretty bad in very low light. This is too bad, since with such great high ISO performance it should be the perfect low-light shooter.

How does all this leave me feeling about the camera? I’d say we’re getting along splendidly so far. Now that I’ve gotten things configured to my liking, there are few situations that require using the crappy parts of the camera. For just shooting, it’s a complete joy to use.

See DPReview’s ridiculously detailed review for all the nitty gritty. Also, it was Zack Arias’ X100 review that got me fired up about the camera originally, and it’s a good read from someone who simply uses the camera his way and loves it.

I recently missed an important task I had given myself. It had been appropriately entered into OmniFocus, but I’d assigned it the wrong context or whatever and it just sort of disappeared into the pile. While trying to figure out what had gone wrong – why my trusted system failed – it occurred to me that the overall sameness of things on my screen was part of the problem.

Many of the apps I use have the same 2 or 3-pane layout, with a list of collections of things on the left and some form of detail on the right. Everything has the same blue-gray panels, similar fonts, list of attributes, and so on. Apple’s OS X 10.7 release makes things worse by promoting the use of same-color icons everywhere. It’s no wonder I can’t tell a song in iTunes from an email in Mail to a PDF in DEVONthink from a text file in Finder. And of course everything uses a similar blue application icon.

Putting all of my to-dos into OmniFocus is an easy, efficient way to make sure everything is recorded somewhere, but I’m not sure it’s the best way for me to spot and prioritize those things. The washed out sameness of items within our 3.5” or 11” (or 13” or 27”) glowing rectangles makes it difficult for me to spot things that are important. Forget about any sort of serendipity. My perfectly organized and vitally important to-do list looks much like my completely unnecessary iTunes playlists. It takes too much work to decide what I should be looking at on the screen.

Consistency is great, until it homogenizes everything to the point of important things becoming indistinguishable from what should be background noise.

One way I break away from this is by using software that looks different. Something like Tinderbox looks nothing like the other software I use. Tinderbox uses all sorts of helpful visual tricks to help me not only organize information, but to recognize the important things later – at a glance.

The ease of organization in software isn’t always helpful, especially when the result doesn’t look any different. In fact, moving things around in software as an attempt to “organize” them can make things worse, turning the whole process into a sort of cup and ball trick.

Visual distinction is one advantage of writing things on paper. I can visually scan a hand-written list of to-dos and spot things simply based on the shape and position of each item. That happens automatically by virtue of the way writing on paper works. Plus, physically moving paper around a desk or on a bulletin board helps with later recognition and processing. I read somewhere that “When the hand moves, the mind moves.” Similarly, things that look the same end up being the same, and finding ways to differentiate the important is something I’m working on.

I wouldn’t call it a “problem,” exactly. “Condition” might be a better word for my interest in bags. It’s not that I love bags so much as I love trying to find one that’s perfect. Of course there is no such thing, which is why I’ve ended up with so many. The photo above shows a few of them that happened to end up in my kitchen.

Clockwise from left:

• Some generic Lowepro camera backpack. Good for hiking, which I never do.
• Jack Spade tote. Nice, general carry-all.
• Domke camera bag. I forget the model. Never grew to like this one. Odd size and shape never really fit with me.
• Pelican hard case. It’s ancient and still tough as nails. My Hasselblad kit lives in here - safely.
• Ari Marcopoulos Camera Bag. This is a newcomer and it’s very promising. I’ll post something later about it, maybe.
• Maxwell Scott briefcase. This is what I bring to the office every day. Fits the Macbook Air and iPad, a notebook with a few pens and such. Very high quality leather and construction costs more, but the fit, finish, and feel of this bag is fantastic. It even smells great.
• Domke F-803 Satchel. Really great bag. Nearly perfect. This has been my most-carried camera bag for years. A couple of rangefinders and some film fit perfectly. It’s small, well-made bag, and works great for walking about with a small kit. Only thing I’d change is that it uses velcro pocket closures. Noisy and blech.

I don’t remember taking this photo. Old roll, recently processed. Not even sure where it was taken until I realized that is a record I’m carrying. I must have been walking down Division Ave. after hitting the vinyl shop. Another example of fun caused by the delayed gratification of shooting film.

One of the things I like about shooting film is the delay between taking a photo and seeing that photo. I recently finished a roll in my little Stylus Epic that had been sitting on a shelf since spring. On the roll were some fun shots that I barely remember taking. The self-portrait below, for example.