Have I told you...

...how much I hate tech? Let's say that a lot of us have a shot at 70 years on this space-traveling rock. To be alive in 2021, how many moments of our lives are spent trying to get these cursed machines to work? (I know what you're thinking, and you're right - this is a trivial rant in the big scheme of things. But writing is an outlet.)

In my heart I'm a Luddite. I'm using that term in the general sense of a technopho...technohater. I don't know the history behind the term. If it's got sinister connotations, I offer up a sincere mea culpa.

I say in my heart because my brain knows I have to find some co-existence with tech. I can romanticize a return to the land and the wilderness with the best of 'em, but I'd only last a few days. Maybe a few weeks if I loaded the Subaru with MREs and water before planting the crops. And by planting the crops I mean spilling out those green packages of seeds you can buy at Lowe's. Anyone looking for me would fine CROATOAN carved into a tree.

I recently had a battery problem with my aging Mac. Turns out I incorrectly (maaaayybe) blamed it on Apple's Big Sur update. Apple fixed the battery, but since then, everything has been I think it's working, maybe?

Here's an example. Are you familiar with Adobe's Lightroom? It is capable of taking care of anything I want to work with in a photo. But there are things that Photoshop does better or makes easier. Before my battery fail, I'd choose Edit In -> Photoshop, make some edits, and hit save. There'd then be a .TIFF file sitting in Lightroom with the Photoshop edits.

I clicked on Save tonight and got a disk full error. The disk is not full. I ended up saving a JPG somewhere else, closing out of Photoshop, and responding to a different save prompt that now put a .PSD (no idea what that stands for) in my Lightroom catalog.

I know in theory that digital vs film is more flexible and secure. In practice, digital seems like a deceptively expensive endeavor, an effort in redundancy that will ultimately fail. I can see why some people just take their chances with film. There should be two dedicated buttons on a computer: 1) Fix my computer, 2) I want it to work the same way it did before, you know, when it worked.

Eyes half-closed, stopping here for the night. Afraid to re-read the above. If you're following along, go do something else for six hours and then come back.

Whoa, that was way more than 6 hours. I hope you haven't just been staring at your screen this whole time.

Now that I'm back, I'm not sure where I was going with the above. With luck, someone who can solve my Lightroom problem will stumble on page 123 of their Google search results and send me a solution.

I think I intended to post some photos of a 2017 photoshoot I worked on with my friend Tony and Seattle musician Devin Sinha. Tony and I started a not well-defined music site called Rain City Collective a few years ago. We shot a lot of live music and wrote about it. Tony did the heavy lifting across the board. Incredible photographer, and he was also, in a previous life, a musician, so he was able to write about music. I took a lot of photos, and I assisted on some shoots. Assisted - it's a little murky. I was there, and I was easily distracted by passing dogs. Hashtag team player.

Here's Tony doing his thing.

Tony, Seattle, 2017.

Devin, Seattle, 2017. I was supposed to be assisting, but I took a lot of Over Tony's Shoulder BTS shots. I need to dig up Tony's shots from that day - really good. I haven't checked in on what Devin is up to these days. Wonderfully talented singer-songwriter who has a demanding day job and also found time to show up for other people's shows. Some people clearly have more than 24 hours in a day, right? Right?

Just over here taking care of more vital photo assistant duties. Seattle, 2017. Seattle, you are real pretty.

Still here? I talked to Tony the other night. If you've read the blog, you know I'm (oddly) fascinated with finding home. Regular readers are tired of what's coming next, so I'll try to keep it short. Wherever you go, there you are. It's that endless discussion about the importance of place vs. the tempting promises of running away, life on the go.

That was my tangent, only partly related to my talk with Tony. He left Seattle for Los Angeles in mid-2020 to be closer to family. It wasn't a Scott-like existential moment. Doesn't matter. I'm still fascinated by moves and migration, and by people who say eureka, this is it, this is home, I can't imagine being anywhere else. So I want to ask him some questions about what it was like to move to Los Angeles during the great pandemic. He said he'd answer them. Stay tuned.