Create: For What It’s Worth Episode 013

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I’m giving myself a “C” on this one, but it’s done so there’s that. A lot going on right now so plenty to discuss. We discuss a new hero, two actually. We talk revisionist history, amateur vs professional photography, a sports story that’s not about sports and a recent, religious scandal. What’s not to like?

Comments 14

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    Great talk Dan, lots of interesting points there. I see the sports and social media thing happening in my soccer team too. My team is Manchester United and they, up until about 6 years ago were the top of the game and in the past 6 years they have been slowly declining and right now its the worst its ever been. And I believe half of the problem is all the players are on social media and seem to spend more and more time there and it affects their abilities on the pitch. They loose to teams they shouldn’t be loosing to and moments after the game they are all happy singing and dancing on their instagram stories etc.
    Such a shame!

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      Kurt,
      I’ve heard HINTS about this being a major issue, and some players are just not capable of making good decisions with social but I think it’s more destructive than we imagine.

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    Your ideas about archiving are interesting. Have you talked to the Magnum folks? If anyone has an archiving solution they would.

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      Jim,
      Nope, haven’t had this conversation with anyone at Magnum but have had it with plenty of others are archive, at least in part, for a living. There is no consensus really but there are some smart ideas.

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      Jim,
      Taxonomy wasn’t something I even considered until I went to something called Metadata Camp. It was incredible, and sobering.

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    Definitely better than a C. I’ll give it a B+. I’m glad you brought up the archiving conundrum. I can’t get my head around it big picture. Photographer friends of mine always make it sound so easy. Right now, I could just about any photo I’ve taken since returning to photography seriously. Lightroom catalog, decently key-worded, redundant drives. If/when those drives fail, get lost, broken, whatever, I’m up a creek.

    I need to go through it, identify the photos that I want in my portfolio, and make sure they are 1) in a dedicated hard drive and 2) on smugmug or some cloud option. But I still get confused even after deciding that. I want to have the highest quality completed image backed up. I’d also like to make sure I have a safe copy that understands the LR and PS edits I’ve made to an image in case my LR catalog suffers some sort of catastrophic fail.

    I’m not there. I haven’t had a ton of paid work, so for the work I have done, I’ve already sent the images. I don’t shoot weddings, so there’s no risk of of a couple coming to me years later asking for a photo. So I can be a little stoic about things in the event of a loss.

    I asked my friend Danny Ngan a while back for his workflow/archive system. I meant to post that on my blog, but I haven’t. He’s ruthlessly methodical and automated – multiple hard drives (labeled), portfolio shots online at Photoshelter, and automated Carbon Copy cloud backup. Will any of us be able to read these hard drives in 10 years? I hope museums and galleries are also simultaneously archiving current tech machines.

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      Scott,
      Drives are always a short term solution. They are just holding pens for recent work or ongoing projects. But drives are like your car and will eventually wear out and fail, all of them. And some will fail FAR earlier than they should. So, online, at least in my mind, is probably the best solution, but when you are like me and have 50+ terabytes of data it gets costly. I have no real solution.

  6. Reply

    Great post as usual.
    However, it needs a little correction regarding calories and energy consumption from thinking. Hard mental tasks do burn more energy, but it is really tiny amounts above steady state consumption.

    One reason there is little change is probably because our brain is never really quiet, it is also an extremely chatty thinking machine. Try to sit in a chair and focus on your breath for two minutes and notice how quickly you are lost in thought ideas and discussions with yourself just pops up out of nowhere. In addition it processes all sorts of information continuosly just to keep us going.

    The other think is that it would overheat very quickly. 1 (one) calorie is the amount of energy need to heat one liter (one kilo) of water one degree Celsius. The brain weigh 1.2-1,3 kilos. So burning a bit more than one calory extra would heat it by one degree celcius – you would have a fever or break out in a sever sweat if this happend quickly.

    You example with chess and Magnus Carlsen cannot be correct, can be broken down as follows.
    His brain burns 6000 calories extra for a chess match. If we assume a very long one match lasting ten hours this would give a consumption of 600 calories per hour, which again down to 10 calories per minute. The result would be heating his brain from a normal 37,5 C (99,5 F) to roughly 44 C (111 F) in one minute, he would be dead after 45 seconds or so when he hit 42,5 C (108 F) – either that or he would instantly soaked in sweat trying to get rid of the energy.

    As a comparison a high pace squash game burns roughly 700 calories per hour, a moderate pace cycling trip burns roughly 600 calories and high level racing can burn in excess of a 1000 calories per hour.

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    2. Thanks for the link the article is brilliant.
      About Magnus – “… He has even managed to optimize … sitting”

      Have a look at Marc Marquez riding a Motorcycle race in this video from 2012 – his heart rate goes from 145 to 195 in four seconds as the race starts, and peaks at 207 after 7 seconds. It then bounces up and down for the next few seconds depending on whats happening around him. The physical effort isnt all that high at the start of the race, its the mental effort that drives the pulse up.

      PS: sorry for my late reply.

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      Jarle,
      I love Marc Marquez. Heck, I love Moto GP in general. I’m going to try to hit a race here in the US in the next year or so.

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