Weekly Roundup: Things I Have Learned

If you've been reading our weekly roundups for a while, now, you probably know that in addition to iOS development, the other thing I'm really passionate about is photography. I've been shooting at least a photo a day every day since Jaunary 1, 2013, and in that time I've learned a couple things that should be self-evident, but weren't necessarily to me at first.

Rule 1: Understand your tools and how they operate inside and out. I've spent 2014 shooting almost entirely with manual cameras and black and white film, and virtually every aspect of the experience has positively informed my digital photography. Being forced to memorize full, half, and third-stop apertures, and often working with a camera that doesn't even have a built-in light meter (i.e. to figure out the proper exposure for a scene I need to use a dedicated, external light meter) has improved my ability to eyeball and set up a photograph even when I'm working with a DSLR.

Similarly, I've probably saved myself hours of time and a ton of frustration over the years by memorizing Xcode and OS X's keyboard shortcuts. Want to jump to the beginning of the line you're on? Ctrl+A. End? Ctrl+E. Want to jump a single word forward or back? Opt+Left or Right Arrow. Spend an hour or two reading through lists of some of OS X's 'hidden' keyboard shortcuts and you'll make yourself significantly more productive. (and impress the hell out of your friends and coworkers.)

Rule 2: Use the right tool for the job. If you're trying to shoot a landscape, you're likely going to want to bring a wide angle lens, which can capture the entire scene. If you're shooting a portrait, you're probably going to want a shorter telephoto lens (and perhaps a strobe or a reflector, or both). If you're doing street photography, leave the hand cannon at home, and bring along a rangefinder instead[1].

By the same token, if you're trying to build a simple app, skip the bloated extras, and use what's built in. Heck, I bet most of the time you probably don't even need AFNetworking (not that I don't love it; I use it in virtually every app I build, but I think that for simple cases it's overkill).

Rule 3: Every rule can be bent or broken. I have, on a few occasions, very successfully captured landscapes using a telephoto lens. This sounds crazy, but I very intentionally used a telephoto lens in order to allow me to capture a single landscape scene across 20 different photos. The net outcome of this was that, after stitching the photos back together in Photoshop, I had a single photo that could be printed at a size of 10 feet by 1.5 feet. The only rules that cannot be broken in the iOS world are the ones that Apple (sometimes arbitrarily) set.

Break the rest, but know why you're doing it.

Rule 4: Remember that, at the end of the day, these are just tools that help us accomplish a goal. Lots of photographers obsess over camera gear in a way that makes software developers look like a bunch of luddites. The cameras and lenses we have access to today put everything that the greatest photographers of the 20th century had available to them, and yet lots of my peers waste endless hours convincing themselves that if only they could spend $10,000 on the latest and greatest Leica hardware (and that's a low estimate on the cost of some Leica setups), they'd finally be able to create beautiful photographs. I bet you almost anything that Wil Shipley, Craig Hockenberry, Daniel Jalkut, or Brent Simmons could produce utterly stunning software with a 2008 MacBook Air and an iPhone 4.

Don't convince yourself that external, purchase-driven limitations prevent you from creating something amazing. They almost certainly do not.

Best,
Aaron

[1] I know this sounds like it contradicts 4 in some ways. But just make sure you read 3, too :). If you're stuck wanting to use your massive DSLR for street photography, drop $80 on a nifty fifty and get back to shooting.

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