Even Gandalf got tired of my sticky notes!

I can’t tell  you how elated I was when the upgraded version 3.0 of my iPhone launched and this foreign little icon of a microphone jumped out at me on the screen. It was a voice recorder. A built-in microphone. Do you realize what this has done for my world?

No more sticky notes! No more scraps of paper clinging to whatever crevice I can find to hold the note. And, even better no calendar alerts to myself just to remember how bloody lame my memory can be sometimes.

Years ago I used to carry around a small pocket-size tape recorder. In fact, I still have it buried deep in the back a of a desk drawer figuring I would use it someday on another assignment. It was very handy at times when you really didn’t have time to take notes in the field. You could dictate scenes from photographs, grab folk’s identification and telephone numbers to follow up on a particular comment or element pertinent to the story or project you might be working.

The trouble with those devices were the collection of batteries and the the myriad of tapes you stored for fear you might need that quote or address one more time.

Now I’ll I do is activate the iPhone app and deliver my verbal list of things to do or things to remember to do.

I have a weird feeling though I will want to have a sticky note somewhere reminding me that I have things to do and I should check my iPhone listing!

iTunes music and news from around the world are part of my daily life at world headquarters.

Macintosh has been a big part of my life for 26 years. Because of Mac I enjoy working on the computer every day. I seldom have had major issues with my systems over the years (knock on wood). Macs are intuitive, fun, built to handle the heavy stuff and certainly always pushing the envelop.

Today I was working on a rather mundane office task demanding some basic online research. To smooth over the tedium such as this I enjoy listening to a little music to make the work more enjoyable.

I launched iTunes and started searching for music. I checked out folk. Nope  that didn’t  cut it this morning. I went to R &B and that seemed to be the ticket for awhile. Then the songs started deviating from my initial interest so I was back in the music library. The afternoons are generally saved for either a Denver National Public Radio station KCFR or my old college station KUNC so I was searching for something different.

I decided to check out the “Ambient” list and came across Mountain Chill which promoted itself as ” the planet’s destination for chill”. Sounded good to me- a guy that lives at 8,000 feet ought to find something amusing about the music. Sure enough it was easy going, nice variety and it managed to keep my work flow rolling.

I love having the opportunity to listen to news half way around the world on BBC or hear what folks are listening to or talking about say in Chicago as well.

My all time favorite so far though is a station in my neck of the woods affectionately known as KGOAT. KYGT is in the mountain community Idaho Springs just west of me. You talk about a Northern Exposure throwback. If nothing else go online just to see the station’s headquarters. What a hoot.

In today’s times it  is reassuring to know there are still some down to earth, funky aspects of life we can embrace and enjoy.

In the days of transparencies I did a fairly good job of getting my caption labels on the slides and when push came to shove I would at least clip the captions notes to the slide pages so I could eventually transfer the information. About 13 years ago when I started shooting digitally I was diligent about getting photos into proper folders with  file names but I was pretty lax about inputting meta data.

Big mistake! I have had to scrounge through notes, go to “topo” maps, Gazetteers and make phone calls to assignment contacts for information if I had abandoned photos for too long of a period. Now that DSLR’s have built in audio tagging my office life has become much more bearable and certainly more organized.

I  have been updating my AGPix Live photo catalog and came across an image that I had inadvertently forgot to caption. My first reaction was, ” Darn, I won’t be able to catalog this photo without some painstaking investigative work.” But then it dawned me that I might have audio-tagged the image along with several others from the shoot since they were travel images. So when I opened up that folder of images in PhotoMechanic my hopes were verified. There was the little red loudspeaker symbol ready to spew out what tidbits of information a had stored on the wav. file (Waveform audio file). Within moments I was able to build a caption and log enough keywords for a reasonable search and I was then onto the next photograph.

PhotoMechanic's active audio tag is always visible in the lower left preview screen of an image on display.

If you have not tried this simple procedure or haven’t discovered this easy to use devise on your camera I highly recommend using it. Often times I will record a photo subject’s name and telephone number and then call them at a later time for more details and to verify the spelling on their names. It certainly save a lot of headaches months down the road.

On Canon systems the microphone button is aligned with the photo locking symbol

1) Engage audio button 2) Speak clearly into microphone 3) watch progress bar 4) Acknowledge recorded file