Napa Heads Is Too Allowed

Ahh Thanksgiving weekend. A time to pause and reflect upon all that we're thankful for. If you've read my blog even slightly consistently, you'll know that I'm uber thankful throughout the year so I won't bore you all with my thankfulness right now. Let's instead focus on the photos I took on our little day-trip to Napa.

First of all, let me just say it's odd to be posting my own photos. Since most of the photos I take nowadays are for clients, I don't post them up for review. I also don't post photos of friends and family in public places. So it's a rare occassion when I have photos of my own to post in a public space. With that...let's proceed...

[If you're wondering about the title, just ask me...it's a play on a hip-hop lyric. Not witty at all, just something that came to my mind when starting this post]

Markham winery isn't amazing to look at but it was close to where we were so we stopped by. They were in the process of holiday decorating so it was a bit of a mess inside. Wine was good and so was the light outside. I love taking shots with narrow depth of field. The Japanese love it so much, they even have a term for it: Bokeh

More Bokeh with this shot taken at Beringer Winery. I must say that even though Beringer is a huge winery and they say the smaller wineries are more quaint and nicer, Beringer does a nice job with their grounds.





They say we don't have seasons in California. Well here's proof that we do indeed get some color changing, season changing goodness. Of course, it's the end of November, not September and even then, the colors are sporadic. But hey, in the meantime we had an exceedingly long Indian Summer that we got to enjoy this year. One of these years, we definitely have to go to New England to experience the fall colors. Let's hope we can plan it sooner rather than later. [Taken at Beringer Winery]


The Leaning Oak of Beringer is famous. At least that's what the tour guide told us. While we enjoy wine, we're not total afficianados so we still take the touristy tours and we still learn new things that most afficianados wrinkle their noses at. In any case, this oak tree is obviously much bigger than than what you see here, but I like the junction of the main trunk with the limbs. Perhaps that's why it's so famous? The tour guide said it's 200 some years old, but that's not all that old considering the age of the sequoia & redwood trees throughout California. Well, whatever the situation, it's a nice looking tree and it has a wine label created in its honor.


Another shot specifically created for tourists: The original wine cellar at Beringer. The main reason I liked this shot and some others which I took in the cellars is the difficulty of taking good shots without a flash or tripod. Not only do you have to be verrrry steady, you've gotta know what you want out of the shot. In this case, I wanted to keep the shot looking old and dusty and as you can tell from the photo, it's exceedinly dusty, ain't it?


Merryvale Winery which we just happened along after lunch. They've got a nice dining room which would be an interesting venue at which to host an event. I loved the colors in here. You'll notice the bug zapper in the corner. I'm sure they take that away during dinners, but I think the blue color really adds to the ambience in the room. Speaking of bug zappers, Merryvale had a ton of fruit flies which wouldn't leave us alone. Again, a shot which is rather simple to take with a tripod, but without the tripod & flash, it's steady as she goes. The additional colors you get without the flash really add to the feel and are more similar to what the room actually feels like.


Ahh, Mother Nature doing her work. I'm not sure why there is such a clean break between the green & orange/brown leaves here, but I liked the juxtaposition so here it is.









This is Pasha, in San Francisco. After spending the day in Napa, we headed down to the City for dinner and a night out. The night ended rather early since we were all a bit tired, but it made for a good Saturday. Pasha's a fun, if expensive Middle Eastern restaurant. Decorations are great, just make sure you get there at a time to enjoy the entire show. We got there about 2/3 of the way through the show so we could have had much more fun if we had gotten there earlier. Regardless, the food was great and too abundant.

Trippy Trippy Trip Hop

Well, after such a long time without any commentary on music, here's a second music related post in the past week!

A friend recently recommended some great music, which I've been loving since first playing it. The rec actually came about because we were talking about good music to work to. Jazz music tends to be great. The new Digables album is also good for working to. The problem with "work" music is that sometimes it can be a little too dull to keep the energy flowing. So utilizing his massive musical memory, my friend recommended a couple of great trip hop albums

The first is DJ Shadow's latest album called The Private Press. The only thing I have by Shadow is his original Entroducing, but his DJ skills blew me away on that album as well as the Quannum show we went to a year and a half ago. Yes, I'm still listening to the Quannm crew, more than ever no considering the new Blackalicious album I got last week. Now add to this, Shadow's new album which is just amazing! I didn't even have to get through the whole album to say it's one of the best I've heard this year. Yes, I know the album is from 2002, but since I just found out about it, it's new to me!

Not only is trip-hop good to work to, I find that my mind races when listening to it so it's a great energy thing. And since I've been working on photo-editing a lot this week, it's helped me keep my creative juices flowing. Good stuff. Anyways, give it a whirl if you're into trip-hop and masterful DJ work.

The second album I cued up was the first album by Handsome Boy Modeling School called So...How's Your Girl?. Again, this isn't a new album (it came out in 1999), but it's a great listen. I think that as I listen to this one more and more, I'll also like it more and more. As my friend was saying, the album's got an all-star line-up featuring Del the Funkee Homosapien, DJ Shadow, Mike D and of course, the long lost Father Guido Sarduicci. There's quite a few other cameos on there, but the main idea is that in 1999, these names were huge and putting together a compilation like this is no small feat. What's no small feat either is having an item in my music collection that says "Handsome Boy Modeling School". Give me a few days and I'll figure out hot to explain that one to my wife :P

Again, give this one a spin if you're into great DJ work that has a little more lyricism in it.

Putting the iPod Cart before the Horse

So I spent a significant part of my weekend acquiring and setting up a new iPod. Not for myself. Not for my wife. Not for my parents. For my uncle. Who lives in India. In a small town. Without a computer.

Last week my dad called me to tell me that his brother had asked for an iPod from America. Now, it's not odd to get requests from my uncles before heading to India. In fact, my dad takes a significant gift for one of his brothers every time he goes to India. However, it's usually a really nice watch or something like that. So when my dad told me about the iPod request my first question back to him was, "Do they even have a computer?"

Well, earlier I told a white lie about them not having a computer. There is actually a computer in the house, but it's quite old and I suspect it would have a tough time running the latest version of iTunes.

Nevertheless, my dad said he still wanted to get him an iPod since he asked for one. I proceeded to remind him of the cost of a new iPod ($300), the requirements for said iPod (computer, MP3s), etc. And then finally asked (multiple times) if he was still sure he wanted to gift it to my uncle.

I'm not sure why I wanted my dad to be so hesitant about getting this iPod. It wasn't the expense of it since my dad generally gets something nice for one of his rels (although the $-to-size ratio is pretty high for an iPod). In fact, I've given one of my uncles a nice film SLR for his photography business. The hesitance also wasn't because I wanted one. In fact, even while I spent time setting up the new iPod and playing with it a bit, I didn't feel any desire to have one of my own.

I think the main reason was because getting an iPod for them was sort of like putting the cart before the horse and having a feeling that the iPod wouldn't really get used much. Referring back to the computer situation, I think my uncle will have a hard time really getting good use out of the device since he doesn't have a library of songs already ripped to MP3s. Sure, he can rip tons of songs and put them onto the iPod, but I doubt he understands how much time and effort it would take. Heck, I decided to do that with my library last year and I gave up after two dozen CDs. It just takes too much time! Forget about having a library of MP3s, regardless of how much my uncle is a gadget freak (which is definitely is), I don't think he's really comfortable with the concept of digital music.

And regardless of how easy it is to use an iPod (very easy if I may say), I think there's a certain experience you need to have before being able to get much use out of it. So there you have it. While I was happy to set up iPod for my uncle, I really don't think he's going to get a tremendous amount of use out of it. I suspect he'll go back to popping in a CD into his CD player since it's just so much easier.

Heck...remember those 5 CDs I got last week for my birfday? Well, I've got 5 jewel-cases sitting in my car and I've been switching CDs every time I want to listen to one of them. I haven't ripped them to my computer. I haven't created a single MP3 CD which could hold about a dozen CDs worth of music and which I could leave in my car stereo.

Will my uncle go through the process of ripping or acquiring a library of MP3s? I certainly hope so. He's got a shiny new iPod that he needs to use :)

It's Mah Birfday!

Yay! The Big Three-Oh!

So it's still barely my birthday, but I must say it's been a pretty good 24 hours. We caught the U2 show last night and ended up with some decent spots on the floor. We didn't get into the circle in the middle, but it was still a great show. Much better than their show earlier this year at HP Pavilion.

Then my oh so dear wife has been showering me with gifts for days on end!

I suppose it's a good thing since I rarely get anything for myself. If she doesn't get me something, there's a very slim chance that I would actually buy it myself. So it started out with a new dress shirt, then a new jacket which I've been meaning to get. Those were apparently unplanned gifts which she just found by-the-by.

The "real" gifts came today in the form of a gift for each decade of my life (ie, 3 gifts). The first gift was actually 5 items wrapped into one. CDs ranging from hip-hop to rock (thank Anish for the great recommendations). So here's what I'll be spinning for a while to come: Earth Tones by Crown City Rockers, Funeral by The Arcade Fire, Beyond the Spectrum... by Digable Planets, Demon Days by Gorillaz, and finally, The Craft by Blackalicious. Talk about a great blend of loungy, jazzy hip-hop and rock! As The Digables would say, I've got a nickel bag of funk!

What else did I get? I got some nice shoes which, again, I've been meaning to get. And finally I got a new espresso/coffee maker to replace my woeful array of caffeine machines. My last espresso maker can't make more than one shot of espresso at a time (and I like my coffee drinks strong and bitter) and the steamer is inconsistent.

Oh, and lets not forget the most time consuming gift of all...my wifey baked me a cake. From scratch! Yum!

So there you have it. Some people may have issues with entering a new decade of life, but I'm looking forward to mah dirrrty thirrrty. It's nice to start of my 30th year with so many nice things that I've been wanting for quite some time. Of course, all the time I've been spending with my wife has been great (especially since I've been so busy lately). Just think how fun it'll be spending a night out with the peoples this Friday! If you think I'm giddy right now, wait until I get some alcohol in me ;)

Saving us from ourselves?

So our idiot dog has been doing something which has been really been driving us up the walls (Despite his innocent face pictured on the left). Plus, it's kind of dangerous for him. As such we've been trying to stop him from doing it since the first time he did it.

But for some reason, today when my wife told me he'd done it again, the first thing I thought was that Junior knows something we don't and he's just trying to save us from something worse.

So what's he been doing?

He's been chewing up the eletrical wire from a plug in the game-room. And I'm talking about a single plug, not other wires or plugs in other parts of the house. There's this one plug by our front window which is behind a bench and no matter what we do, he keeps chewing up the wire & plug completely.

He's gone through 2 extension cords, two lamp wires, and one set of Christmas lights.

We've yelled and spanked him so many times now we're tired of it. But today for some reason, I'm beginning to think there's something special and worrisome about that electrical socket and that's why Junior keeps chewing up anything that's plugged into it.

Why do I think this? Well, there are many other plugs and wires all over the house which are much more easy for him to get to than the socket in question. In fact, there's a wire plugged into a socket right where his bed is, but he doesn't seem to care about that one. What gives?

I've heard about pets sensing things which humans can't sense (like earthquakes), so maybe this is one of those situations. Now, I'm not a very superstitious person, but I do firmly believe that there are a lot of things which humans are completely oblivious to. So maybe there's something about this socket that Junior can sense and he's just got this urge in him to prevent whatever he thinks is going to happen.

The only special thing I can ascertain about the socket is that it's wired to a wall switch and that it's hidden behind the bench. As far as I can tell, there's nothing else special about it!

The other thing is that this is the only thing which Junior doesn't stop doing even after we tell him not to. He's quite the obedient dog so he stops doing things after we tell him not to. But this wire, plug, and socket thing? He won't stop!

Anyone else have experiences with any strange things that pets do and they just won't stop?
 

Diwali and Sal Mubarak

Ok, so I'm several days late on this, but I just had to post a little something about this.

Happy Diwali! (Diwali Mubarak)

Happy New Year! (Sal Mubarak)

As a Gujarati, only the second wish is common place. I never grew up wishing people a happy Diwali since our family cared more about the next day, which is new year's day in the Hindu calendar. But since college I've been exposed to the variation of Hindu culture and I receive Diwali greetings all day, but I tend not to wish anyone a Happy Diwali.

Not because I'm a stooge, but simply because I'm used to wishing people a Sal Mubarak.

I confirmed this with several Gujarati colleagues yesterday (which was New Year's Day), so I can truthfully say that most Gujarati operate this way. We wish each other Sal Mubarak and go to temple on new year's day and go out to each on new year's day and call everyone on new year's day and generally make a big to-do about new year's day.

Diwali? Eh...light a diya and be done with it :)

Anyways, just a light hearted way of explaining how we Gujaratis are even wierder than you thought ;)

Musical Thoughts

I haven't written about what I've been listening to lately and since I've been listening to some very different things lately, I thought I'd provide some recommendations. And yes, I'm putting my reputation on the line by encouraging you to listen (and perhaps even buy!) this music ;)

In the "Most Spinned" category is The Bravery. I first heard about these guys on New Year's Eve last year as one of the DJs on Live105 was spinning some tracks by artists he though would break out during 2005. I loved the track he played at the time, but it took me a while to remember the name. So it was at least March or April before I even listened to it again. Well, I'm glad I found the info since I've been listening to this album at least once a week for the past 3 or 4 months. If I had the CD, I'm sure it would be all worn out by now! Thank heavens for digital music ;) So what's The Bravery like? Well, they're definitely part of the 80's throwback crowd like The Killers, but The Bravery seem to do it much better. They seem less conscious about trying to sound 80s-ish and in my opinion, just have a better sound. Their tracks are a bit more dance-y than Franz Ferdinand or The Killers and that be part of the reason I like the sound - it gets my energy going. But here's the odd thing...they also remind my of Joy Division. In fact, when the Live105 DJ was introducing the band last year, he referenced Joy Division and how The Bravery were one of the few bands who could harken back to them without sounding like rip-offs.

Anyways, the album is great from beginning to end. There's an amazing remix of "Honest Mistake" which really harkens back to 80's 12" remixes building up sounds, then breaking them down, and then back up. Great stuff all round. Give it a whirl.

Next album to throw in the cart would be M.I.A.'s Arular. I won't go into the love affair that Sepia Mutiny has with her. Not to say that she doesn't deserve it, but there's no need for me to rehash it all. Anyways, M.I.A. caught my attention first simply because there was buzz about some South Asian chick. I don't normally follow-up on this buzz since there's only a small chance of anything coming of the buzz. In this case, however, I actually liked her first single and decided to give her a chance. I've since listened to her album and have found it to be very listenable. Now, let me say that many people will not like her music simply because of the genre. I don't know if it's official or anything, but I would place M.I.A. in UK-garage. It's a genre which I like, but it's something that many people wouldn't ever want to listen to.

So anyways, it's a good listen. The buzz about her seems to be growing and it's well deserved. Some random examples about growing buzz: she's opening for Gwen Stefani on part of her concert tour and she's got "Galang" playing during a Honda Civic ad.

I may post a little more about music I've been listen to lately, but for now, you should have some fun with these two albums.

On the Line

Ok, so I promise to cut back on the post about business and some of the things I've learned while starting up this photography thing...for the time being though, here's something I've thought a lot about:

I heard something interesting a few weeks ago at work about customer satisfaction. You can ask customers a million different questions about how satisfied they are with you, but there's a single question you can ask to really find out how you're doing: Would you refer us (to friends, family, colleagues, etc)?


Why is that such an important measure of success? Because it's asking if your customer is willing to put their reputations on the line. Why is it putting their rep on the line? Because they're essentially telling their friend, "I had a good experience with this and you should trust me on this recommendation"

If the friend does indeed have a good experience, then they'll trust future recommendations from that person even more. If they have a bad experience, then maybe future referrals will be taken with a grain of salt.

Personally, I don't want anyone to take anything I say with a grain of salt! Unless I'm just joking around, I expect people to believe what I'm saying and trust recommendations I make. If I don't have a specific recommendation, then I might tell them about someone or somewhere they can get a rec from, but I'm not going to give them a random referral because I don't want to lessen the trust that person has in me.

Soooo...bringing this back to the photo business...I want every client of our's confident enough in our work that they will provide referrals to their friends, family, and anyone that asks.

In creating a customer satisfaction survey, we may be asking several questions of our clients, but for me, the one response I'm most interested in is whether our client would refer us in the future. That answer alone tells me so much.

And we remind our clients about that. Our goal is not only to satisfy them in their experience with us, it is to give them enough confidence to tell their friends and family about us.

What's more, this whole "my reputation is on the line" thing goes both ways. Our clients ask us about referrals for other services, like mendhi, event coordinators, etc. Generally, we don't refer many people simply because we haven't found other vendors whom we can trust enough to put our own business's reputation on the line. As we spend more time in this industry, I'm sure we'll have a nice list, but at this point, we don't. And if people ask us, we tell them.

So it's nice to know if we're easy to do business with, or that our style of photography is lovely, or we're really professional, but if I don't hear that our client is willing to refer us, then we've failed in our goal of satisfying our customer.

Nuff said.

It's the Quality Stupid!

Starting this photography business has been quite an experience so far. It's been less than a year since we started and we've signed up many more clients than we could have hoped for. Let's leave the reasons for that for another posting, but I'd just like to focus on one part of our running our business: Quality.

From the start my partner and I have always said that we want to be proud of the work that we do and we want our clients to feel the same way. Generically, this should probably be true of any work that a person does, but the reality is that quality can sometimes be forgotten when time is short.

So it's nice how things have worked out between my partner and me. We tend to focus on different aspects of quality, although we don't necessarily focus on just that area. I tend to be most concerned about the technical quality of our work. So that includes the camera bodies, lenses, data workflows, archiving, etc. My partner tends to remind me about the creative quality of our work. And in this business, that is so much more important than what I'm used to in my day job. I would say the quality of relationships with our clients is just as important, but I'm just going talk about the creative aspect right now.

Creative quality isn't just a matter of "being creative", it's a matter of having guidelines for ourselves around what we want to do, what we'll do to satisfy clients, and what we'll decline because it's outside of the realm of things we want to focus on. It includes ensuring our "style" is evident in all of our work. Style is obviously a vague thing, but it's one of those "I know it when I see it" things, and even more striking, it's one of those "I know it when it's not there" things. So it's very important to keep mindful of.

To be honest, we talk about our style and how we love to take certain types of photos, but we're really growing into it and understanding it better as we go along. And that's probably true of any person. Because it's such a vague thing, I don't think someone can define style in advance and fulfill the definition at each step. We can set up guidelines for ourselves about what is and isn't our style, but those guidelines take better shape as we get more experienced.

And that's what keeps this stuff so interesting. If one of us tries something out (either while taking the photos or while editing them) and we both like it, we'll try it out more often, and eventually it may become one of our hallmark things - a calling card if you will.

So back to my original point: keeping an eye of the quality of what we do is something I'm so much more mindful of than I've ever been. And I didn't expect to think about it so often a year ago. Sure I've aimed to do quality stuff at my day job, but if I slack now and again, it's not really a huge deal. But with our business, it's very difficult to get away with anything but the best. Each client of our's has so much riding on our work that it would be a huge letdown for them if we didn't put our all into. Afterall, they're not just paying us to take photos, they're paying us for something very specific. And that's our quality.

Overheard...

I know you're all looking for a great way to waste away your day. Let me afflict you with the most time-wasting activity known to humankind: Websurfing.

Here's the latest time waster: Overheard. There are two sisters sites, one for comments overheard in the office and the other for comments overheard in the New York. The idea is that people say the oddest things, and they sound even more odd when taken out of the context of the larger conversation. Of course, that's what makes the comments so fun to read. Mind you, these comments aren't for the faint of heart.

Here's an example of one of the tamer comments from Overheard In The Office:

Co-worker #1: So, do you get Columbus Day off from school?
Co-worker #2: No, we only get holidays for black people and Jesus.

The two sites can be found here:
OverheardInNewYork
OverheardInTheOffice

Also, while these two sites are great, I must give major props to the originator: In Passing. Eve, the site's owner, started posting comments she heard in passing in Berkeley while she was a student there. She has since graduated and gotten very busy with her chosen career. Even so, it's great to read the archives for a great idea of the insanity (and inanity) that is Berkeley.

Car Rental blahs...

I haven't been travelling much lately so I haven't had to deal with a rental cars in quite a while. I've never really had big issues with rental car companies and have never had anything remotely similar to what is shown on rental car company TV commercials.

The only reason I had to rent a car was because my Audi was in the body shop getting repairs to the front fender. I'm not going to talk about the process of renting and returning the car, because it was pretty straight forward. I just want to mention a few things about the car I drove for a week: the Chevy Equinox

I didn't really care which car I ended up with, but since they gave me a choice, I picked a car which I hadn't driven in the past. So how was the car? Well, there was nothing really wrong with it. But then again, there was nothing really right with it either. My comment to the rental car guy when returning it was "Too big on the outside, too small on the inside."

In fact, the Equinox is a pretty small SUV, but it seemed to take way too much space in the garage. I always had to squeeze out of the car whether in the garage or in a parking spot. And what did I get for all that space taken up? Well, not too much. I'm not talking about luxury & creature comforts. Since it's a rental car, I don't really epxect that. But in terms of conviences that should be included as part of the car, it just didn't feel as useful as our Honda Pilot. From simple things like sturdy cup holders (there were enough cup holders, but they were all rather flimsy and I had to keep glancing at my cup to make sure my coffee wasn't spilling out. I never feel like I need to do that with the Pilot or my A4. Shopping bag hooks in the cargo area are so useful and obvious in our Pilot that I was surprised when there weren't any built into the sidewalls of the Equinox. Overall, things seemed a bit flimsy on the inside. I'm not referring to the level of luxury, I'm just referring to the sturdiness of what is included. The biggest issue I had with the thing was the turning radius. I had trouble pulling into every parking spot I tried, no mater how much space I had. I ended up taking 3 and 4 point turns just to get the thing into a spot. I never have to do that with the Pilot and the A4.

So my take on this is that the Equinox isn't designed for the main thing people do with it: Drive it around town.

This is an issue with most SUVs. Clearly most people who buy SUVs aren't going to be driving down dirt roads any time soon, if ever. So I still don't get why car companies don't design their SUVs to perform better in the situations where they're used most often. SUV ads now claim they're great for city driving, but I think that's just marketing spin without any real changes to how the SUVs have been designed.

I feel like our Pilot is quite a bit better designed for city driving: great turning radius, lots of obvious conveniences inside, and generally drives likes it's much smaller. It could, however, certainly be improved.

Anyways, net-net on the Equinox: Don't bother. If you like Chevy's just go for the Tahoe since it's better designed. If you want something small for suburban life, there's much better out there from Toyota, Honda, and the like.

I'm much happier to have my A4 back and much prefer driving the Pilot when I need something bigger.

Appreciative

Ok...for the people that read my blog frequently, you're going to be tired of this since I occassionaly go off on this....but can I just say I'm appreciative of the life I've been given?


For once I won't mention my wife, dog, and friends in this context. I'll mention the people I work with. While there are many folks who say the right things (and don't neccessarily add much more), I rarely reflect upon a colleague and think that I'm better simply for having the person on my team. On the way home from a work dinner tonight, I reflected upon some people like that this evening. And no, it wasn't the wine talking. I've already thought highly of said people. It's just that this evening, I've had the chance to step aside from the work situations and really appreciate what these people bring.

Ok, go ahead and tell me how tired you are of hearing about the good things in my life. Now go back to reading about the latest iPod. It's much cooler than I could ever be anyways :P

Relationship Building

I'm not one to meet and talk to new people all the time. However, I definitely recognize the utility of building relationships with an ever expanding group of people. Not just to serve some end goal of mine, but simply to know these people....

Tonight was one of those nights where I was reminded of the importance of getting to know people. We had a happy hour with colleagues after an all day meeting. The idea was for folks from San Jose and folks from other offices to get together after a long day of presentations and business speak. It turned out that most of the folks from San Jose didn't come to the happy hour since they plan on coming to dinner on Wednesday evening.

I actually ended up spending a lot of time at the happy hour. I sort of feel bad for this since my wife was at home while I was out having drinks. But this situation helped put into perspective why I came to the happy hour in the first place. It wasn't to get a few free drinks (afterall, what's $10 in the scheme of things?). It wasn't to get to know more about the issues my colleagues were facing in their jobs. That's what the daytime meetings were for. It was really to build relationships with them. These relationships may help me in my day job and they may not, but I wasn't so concerned about that over a pint of beer.

To be honest, I could care less about our day jobs since I really have no desire to stay in my current job in the long run. But at the end of the night I found a lot of value in simply knowing my colleagues apart from their jobs. It's nice to know that one of my co-workers moved from Ireland to Brussels and hopes to never move back to the place he grew up in. It's nice to know that another of my co-workers had to convince her parents to live near her home after their retirement.

Will this knowledge ever help me in my day job? Probably. Do I care if it doesn't? No.

And that's the point. I rarely make an effort to meet new people. But when I do, I find such great fulfillment in knowing more about those around me. It makes me wonder why I don't do such things more often. I guess I have to be satisfied in simply being thrown into positions where I don't have to make much effort. In such cases, I go full bore and take advantage of the situation. Unfortunately my wife had to sit alone at home in this case, but did I find something to gain out of it? Yes.

Now I'll just have to spend a little more time at home :)

Mac and Me

No, I'm not talking about the 80's movie. I'm talking about my foray into the world of macintosh computers. With the new photography business we had to buy new desktop machines and we decided to go with Macs since we'd have to do video and other more multimedia oriented tasks.

It's been about 4 months since I started using the Mac so I guess I should give an opinion on it...

I should start out by saying that I'm a fan of Apple, but I'm not a fanatic. I don't own an iPod and I don't plan on getting one any time soon (although my wife loves her pink iPod Mini).

I've always heard about the advantages of OS X and the iLife apps, but wasn't sure if I'd actually use any of them without the excuse of the business.

So first things first...Apple is very concerned about the experience of owning a Mac right from when you bring the box home. Upon opening the huge box which our PowerMacs came in I found one sheet of paper with 5 steps on it to get started, two cables, a keyboard, and mouse. For some reason, this seemed really easy to me. Especially after I opened up the HP printer box and there was a ridiculous instruction sheet just to set up the printer.

Second, the look of the OS X desktop is mesmerizing. Maybe it's the calming blue of the default desktop or maybe just the idea of owning a "cool" computer. Either way, the screen still sort of hypnotizes me and helps me shut out other distractions and get down to work.

My first dislike about the Mac came pretty quickly and that's with the mouse. I don't so much mind the single-button, but for some reason, the mouse just doesn't seem sensitive enough. I mis-click and over shoot my target often enough that it's annoying. And this isn't just about getting used to a new mouse, I've since switched to a multi-button microsoft mouse similar to what I have at work and I still have problems. What's the deal with that? At this point, it's not just annoying, it's really frustrating especially when using Photoshop (which I use a lot) since the palettes line up right next to the dock (which I have along the right side). I feel like trying out a few different mice just to see if there's any way around this issue. Maybe I'll try fiddling with the mouse sensitivity settings again...

My first love about the Mac came with iDVD. It's funny because I don't use iDVD as much as iMovie or iTunes (I never use Garageband). I'm used to iTunes from Windows and I think it's really powerful and the fact that every competitor is copying the organization method is a sign of how well designed iTunes is. iMovie is great, but I'm used to Windows Movie Maker (which is truly a rip-off of iMovie). So using iMovie is really satisfying but I didn't drop my jaw. I did, however, drop my jaw an inch when I first used iDVD. First of all, it's well integrated with iMovie so you can create a DVD menu and burn it very simply after you're done in iMovie. This can't be said about Windows Movie Maker since there is no MS app which will create DVD menus and render discs for you. 3rd party DVD software on Windows has always underwhelmed me so just the fact that I can click a single button in iMovie and have iDVD open with a ready-made menu with all of my movie chapters ready to roll is reason enough to smile. But let's talk about the menu templates which iDVD comes with. Actually, I'm a bit speechless. To say the least, they're very slick. Very slick. I feel bad taking credit for a nice DVD experience (which our clients always compliment us on) since it's really iDVD which makes the experience so nice from the moment you pop in the DVD. Apple done good with iLife, integration across apps (iTunes and iPhoto are well integrated with iMovie too), and iDVD especially.

Speaking of iPhoto, I'm greatly disappointed by it. Picasa is much better for general photo management. iPhoto does have the ability create photo books and the integration with iMovie is useful, but Picasa has so many more useful features that the two can't compare. When a pro photographer recommends Picasa to anyone who'll listen (which I any time I'm asked for a rec), take that as a good sign. For the average person, Picasa can replace Photoshop without problems. iPhoto is just a hindrance for us in many ways. If I could, I'd switch it out with Picasa on moment's notive (Google are you listening?!)

Dashboard is one of the new elements of OS X Tiger and it's pretty useful. I like the implementation better than Konfabulator (Apple should really acknowledge that they ripped off Konfabulator like a mutha) since I don't like how Konfabulator defaults to showing widgets on top of everything. That's just a personal choice though since I can see how having certain widgets on top of all windows would be useful. The fact that Dashboard widgets are only visible when you bring up the whole Dashboard is kind of lame and Apple should add the ability to see widgets without having to bring up the whole dashboard. In any case, I don't use Dashboard too much, but when I need it, it's nice to have for a quick calculation, map look-up, or date check, etc. If you don't have a Mac, I highly recommend checking out Konfabulator. Since Yahoo! bought them, it's a free download now and definitely worth trying out.

The bigger functionality improvement in OS X Tiger is probably Spotlight, which lets you search for anything and find results quickly. I find Spotlight very useful. Rather than create shortcuts for everything, I can just type in something quickly and get simple, organized results quickly. I tend to use spotlight more often than dashboard.

One quirk about OS X I still can't get my arms around: when you click the red X button in the top left of application windows, some apps actually quit while others just close the window even tho the app is still running in the background. I actually like the latter since it's nice to have certain apps running all the time but not have them waste space. But the problem is that some apps don't follow this rule. I thought Apple were sticklers for how applications should interact with the user and certain actions should always have the same effect? So what's up with this?

Same goes for switching between windows within the same application. In OS X you can click "Apple-`" to cycle between windows within the same application, like multiple browser windows, etc (just like "Apple-tab" switched between apps). This is quite useful, but the problem is that it doesn't work in all apps. ESPECIALLY Photoshop! Photoshop is where I need this functionality the most! Alas, I must click through the various windows to get to the photo I need.

There are quite a few other interesting things in OS X, but I'll leave it be. This post is getting rather long.

Oh, one last item...the keyboard commands for home, end, jump one word at a time, and jumping to the beginning/end of a line are all different in OS X. Since I'm used to Windows for such keyboard navigation, I find this really frustrating. I've tried to remember to use the appropriate Mac keystrokes, but the Windows versions are totally motor memory for me, so it's been tough. Oh well.

And can I say that the Mac keyboard looks cool, but it gets dirty as hell? White may look nice, but it doesnt stay clean at all!

Hitting the Sweet Spot

Sorry for not posting. I really did mean to post more often since I found the urge a few weeks ago (man, has it been that long?!). To give you an idea of how busy I've been and how tired I've become.....we went to watch the Wallace and Gromit movie yesterday and about 2/3 of the way through I actually dozed off! During a Wallace & Gromit film! Since I've loved every short film of their's, it's a real surprise to find myself so tired that I can't stay awake. In any case, it's a good movie, you should go see it. I'm also going to try and stay awake :)

So anyways, to the topic at hand...

I mentioned the photography business in an earlier post and one of the things we wanted to do is target the Indian market with something unique and (we hope) much needed. We have a photo-journalist type of approach to our work and we think it shows in our samples. We've received comment to that effect from friends, clients, and some others who've seen our work in detail.

However, yesterday was the first day that we got tons of comments from person after person. We attended a bridal fair yesterday targeting the Indian market and we seemed to be one of the few vendors meshing two worlds and hitting that sweet spot.

What's the sweet spot you ask? Well, in this case, it's something which is really unique and high quality for the people you're interested in. The photojournalist approach which we have is actually not at all unique in the world of wedding photography, but it's very new to the Indian community (at least on the West Coast). We've had that feeling all along, but that was really validated yesterday by many former brides and even more brides-to-be.

So for us, it's nice to know that we've got many potential customers who've seen our work and want to talk to us. More importantly, for them, they've now got a resource where they can have the style of photography which can make their events all the more special. And just important is that they can get that style without having to explain every last detail about Indian ceremonies and traditions. Many of the prospective brides mentioned that they it would be wonderful if they didn't have to worry whether their photographer knew about the important moments during their wedding ceremonies or worry about explaining how a garba works, etc. Granted, most good photographers can figure such things out pretty quickly, but sometimes, in the time it takes to figure things out, the special moments have already passed.

So for us, I feel like we're hitting a sweet spot where our clients really want what we have to offer not just from a quality perspective, but from an overall experience perspective.

That being said, what I was even happier to see yesterday was that there were other vendors at this fair who seemed to be taking the same approach as we are. I'll call out one vendor specifically: a wedding coordinator. Now the idea of a wedding coordinator is obviously nothing new, but it's an idea which is still catching on amongst Indians on the West Coast. We talked to this woman who was just getting started in her business targetting the Indian market along with her sister. In speaking to her, I really realized how the trend in Indian marketing is shifting focus onto a new generation of clientele. Makes sense since there's a huge number of 2nd generation Desis coming of age now.

I feel like we're on the leading edge of this trend here in the Bay Area Indian community. And that's the sweet spot. If we changed our location to New York, we'd be middle of the pack since the trend has been moving in that direction for years. If we changed our market to the general wedding community, we'd again, be middlers since wedding photojournalists have been around few years and years.

But we're focusing on the Indian market in California. And we'll stick to this market until we own it...then we'll move onto the rest of the world :)