Work(ing Title)

has been brewing in my world for some time now, and with this most recent batch of photos staring back at me, I believe it’s time to describe the problem ‘out loud’ in hopes that some clarity will develop.

Speaking in extremely rough estimates, each time I pick up my camera I come back with around 100 RAW images (sometimes I don’t feel so inspired and I end up with 20-50, while other times I’m in the zone and I end up with 200 or more). Each of these events creates a multi-stage processing commitment of 1-2 hours: an initial review to delete failed images, anywhere between one and three rounds of curating in order to ‘tell the story’ of that event effectively, the Photoshop work to make them all beautiful, renaming and tagging of the finished collection, and finally determining which photos are suitable for publication (not everything I shoot gets out to Flickr).

Given how inordinately easy it is to capture an event, when compared with the time and attention necessary to produce a finished product that satisfies me, I find myself with a perpetual backlog of photos. Paraphrased below are the great many conversations I have which speak to this backlog:

Them: Hey, when the fuck am I going to see the photos you shot?!

Us: It’s slightly more complicated than that dickweed.

Then, once I finally get through my process:

Them: Wow thank you! You made me look like a god-damned supermodel.

Us: You’re welcome cunt.

I’m thrilled and flattered to get the sort of response I do from my friends and family, whether it comes in the form of emails, comments in my photostream, or noticing my work in new social profile portraits; I just wish there was a way to minimize the frequency of those first conversations. However, a significant motivation for me to photograph anything in the first place is the selfish desire to document my own life. There are few things I find as enjoyable than looking back at old photos–they’re a fantastic memory accelerator.

One of the difficult philosophical issues here is how do I view photos as a medium? They occupy space both in art and journalism. I’ve always recommended to the less-nerdy of my friends that big cameras are worth lugging around if your goal is to create beautiful imagery, while tiny (read: phone) cameras are perfect for recording moments in time. However the fact is that these two goals are rarely disconnected; the most exquisite photograph often has a story to tell, and the frozen piece of a story can also be art. Journalism should be prompt, whereas art is (relatively speaking) timeless.

Fundamentally I think the only solution here is to make processing my photos a higher priority when I sit down at my desk, but that’s just a fancy way of saying I should procrastinate less (and we all know how easy that is to resolve).

Postscript - Still feel relatively fucked in how to deal with this, but somewhat more motivated.

Steve Caravaial points out the existence of a sweet and free little add-on for Outlook that enables Live Mail accounts to be managed within your big, burly enterprise mail client:

For those that want to manage their Hotmail account (now known as Windows Live Hotmail) from Outlook 2003 or 2007, you can download the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector free of charge. You can also view your Windows Live Hotmail contacts in Outlook with the connector. So go check out all the benefits. I just installed it and it works great.

If the launch of Office 2007 was a new day at the office, is today only your second day on the job?

Here’s the official blurb…

“Wehave managed to complete the engineering work slightly earlier than we anticipated and are making the download available from OfficeOnline.

What can you expect in Service Pack 1?

SP1 focuses on the issues that matter most to our customers based on direct customer feedback and error reporting tools. You can expect:

• Stability.Using data from the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system, we’ve fixed the top software issues for each application in the 2007 Office system. The 2007 Office system SP1 also improves the stability of server components in the 2007 Office system and delivers compatibility with Windows Server® 2008, so you can confidently plan for future upgrades.
• Performance. The 2007 Office system SP1 improves performance in applications and servers. Performance improvements can be found in Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007.
• Security. By incorporating incremental advances in security and results from application testing, the 2007 Office system SP1 offers home and office users better protection against malicious software and potential threats to privacy.

Fora full list of improvements in SP1, download the Service Pack 1 whitepaper.

What does SP1 mean for you?

Service Pack 1 eliminates distractions and performance issues that disrupt workflow, allowing employees to be more productive in the work that they do. SP1 is also an important milestone for deploying the 2007 Office system, making it easy to deploy the most secure and reliable version of Office to date.

How do you get it?

Initially, SP1 will be available as a free download from OfficeOnline. SP1 will be made available via Automatic Update in the next 3-6 months, and we’ll issue 30 day advance notice prior to delivering SP1 via automatic update.”

(Mark Bower)

The modern productivity worker isn’t quite as location-monogamous any longer. People are working from their desks, beds, and gazebos. Office Live Workspace is the beginning of Microsoft’s facilitation of this roaming work style. With the service, documents can be posted online directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to be edited from just about any browser. The days of saving a file to your local machine and using a disjointed browser interface to move it online are coming to a close.

Eric Schonfeld’s initial review of Live Workspace for Techcrunch points out a few of the limitations at present. Most file types are only viewable online and cannot be modified. The only editable documents are those created in Microsoft Word, and those cannot be saved to the desktop from the Web Notes online word processor. Also, the ability to sync documents online is currently restricted to those running Windows with Office XP or later.

While the demand for Microsoft to release feature parity with the current crop of online productivity tools, there’s no great motivation to follow suit. As Joe Wilcox pointed out last month at eWeek, current sales are double the previous release, with Office 2007 volume responsible for 17.4 percent of all software that runs on Windows.

With that sort of growth in Microsoft’s traditional software business, there is a reasonable counterpoint to the Web 2.0 communities death knell for software sold in boxes.