May 18, 2020

Why Humans Totally Freak Out When They Get Lost →

The psychological consequences of getting lost in the woods sound awfully similar to the emotional experience of living through this pandemic.

Lost is a cognitive state. Your internal map has become detached from the external world, and nothing in your spatial memory matches what you see. But at its core, it is an emotional state. It delivers a psychic double whammy: Not only are you stricken with fear, you also lose your ability to reason…90 percent of people make things a lot worse for themselves when they realize they are lost—by running, for instance. Because they are afraid, they can’t solve problems or figure out what to do…They feel claustrophobic, as if their surroundings are closing in on them. They can’t help it; it’s a quick-fire evolutionary response.

This Wired story feels like a timely one, even though it discusses a more literal kind of disorientation.

Current circumstances have broken many of the anchors we use to orient ourselves emotionally. Different individuals feel it in different ways, and we’re seeing this play out on an unprecedented scale.

It’s Not the Tool →

David is one of my favourite working photographers, and was a key part of my photographic education.

I’ve spent many pleasant evenings wrapped up in his books—Within the Frame, Vision Mongers, Photographically Speaking, and others—absorbing his kind-hearted insights and enjoying the fruits of his photographic labours.

Nowadays, David continues to write and shoot, but he’s also taken to podcasting in the form of a brief weekly show called A Beautiful Anarchy.

How to Use Your Canon EOS-R as an External Webcam on macOS

Illustration adapted from blush.design.

You may have seen that Canon released a free utility for using your camera as an external webcam. Unfortunately, the beta is currently Windows-only, leaving macOS users reaching for alternatives.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to use your Canon EOS-R as a high-quality webcam, even in the latest versions of Zoom that have disabled virtual webcams.

Note that this guide is specific to the EOS-R, but the process is nearly identical for most recent Canon EOS bodies, and may also work for other brands that offer video over USB too.

The best part? It’s entirely free.

Using an iPad for Photography Workflows: A Complete Guide →

As I was doing the research for this piece over on The Sweet Setup, it occurred to me that I was spending less time justifying shortcomings and more time simply explaining differences in approach that are neither inherently positive nor negative.

Some parts of the photography workflow are now almost identical to their macOS counterparts, while others differ but in ways that aren’t inherently worse.