I have always liked monochromes — black & whites or sepias. On a recent trip to Puerto Galera, Mindoro I took plenty of color photos but I also took a handful of monotones.
I wanted to see how the places I visited would look like in sepia rather than in the traditional colored photographs. I was surprised the photos invoked a feeling that I was back in that period of time in the early 1900s and there wasn’t much people around.
Photo notes: The photos did not go through any post processing save for the waterfalls which I scaled down to meet the maximum upload size of the blogging software. The images were taken with a Canon EOS 100D in one of the programmable monochrome modes which I set myself. The lens is a Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM set
Mount Banahaw guarding over Sampaloc Lake. After this photo was taken one so very early morning I just had to stop and just take in the quiet and sight for a handful of moments. Not everything needed to be taken a photo of. Some you just leave for your eyes. + Click on the image to enlarge it
I went to San Pablo one February weekend to get some duties done and to test and get familiar with this lens I got. I am quite used to using a 50mm prime lens and I want to see what photos I can get with a 24 – 35mm wide angle zoom. The image above is one moment I was able to record and more will be posted here in the coming months.
I have been going through my medium to long-term to-do/promises list in my head and I realized that I have just recently been ticking off a couple of major items. I know it’s not many but these items have been on my list for years — some, for a decade — so it’s a major thing for me to finally check them off. And I can also see crossing off several more in a couple of years.
It’s vaguely satisfying. You saw something years ago that you have get to or do but you know it will take a good amount of time and effort to get to and now you realize you’re standing on that place. And it seems that the other places you have to get to or the things that you have to do is so much easier to reach than it was all those years ago.
I want cloud storage for my photos, my videos, books and documents. Okay, Google offers the 15 gigabytes of storage space free for every gmail account and you get more at an additional per month cost. Dropbox offers an initial 2 gigabytes free space and a few more with referrals. If you want more then you’d have to pay more.
You get the idea — you’d have to pay more if you want more storage space (or more of anything, really). Facts of life. So now, all you’re left to figure out is how much money are you willing to spend for the cloud space you need. And you pay for that monthly — or yearly, it’s your preference.
I’m at that point in life where I’m exhausted of monthly payments. Seriously. If it’s at all possible, I’d prefer to pay everything up front and not worry about it anymore. Maybe it’s impatience or age. I don’t know.
Right about the same time all this exasperation is mucking about I came upon pCloud. It was new to me and it was offering free 10Gig storage on signup and an additional 1Gig if you install it on your smartphone. You’d get more free space with referrals. What caught my attention was their lifetime plan. And, as you guessed it, the initial cash outlay is up there but then I don’t have to worry 12 times a year where I would get the money to pay for it.
I tried out the service for a while and it seemed agreeable to my needs so when funds became available I got a lifetime plan. A 2-terabyte cloud space is mine until I croak by which point I would hardly care what happens to the contents. I can imagine it going up in flames or just disappearing.
If you want to try it click on my referral link and you’ll get something for free.
I have been a Flickr user since 2006. At the time, I have been looking for a place to store my digital photos. I’ve tried using external hard drives but (at the time) capacities were small — least the ones I could afford. Flickr offered free storage for up to 200 full-resolution photos. If I go beyond 200 I would only see the latest 200 photos and the rest are just hidden. This was what I remember. It has been twelve years. At one point, Yahoo! decided to open up and lift the 200-image limit and they gave one terabyte of storage space per user. This was too good to be true, I told myself. But I am not complaining.
I am not a professional photographer. I even consider myself half an enthusiast even though I have over 26 thousand photos in Flickr. I love taking photos of places I’ve been to, of friends and loved ones and each time I take a camera out I tried to improve on something even just a little. So my Flickr account contained mostly personal stuff. Memories. The added storage allowed me to see improvements I have made (if any) through time comparing photos from a year or two before to the ones I take today. It became more valuable to me since my wife passed away in the second half of 2014. I gathered all the photos and videos I had of her and uploaded them to Flickr. This was the point I started to use some more of Flickr’s features — grouping photos into Albums, once in a while I’d use tags for easier searching, looking at EXIF data. Flickr offered a lot more for the professional photographer but all I needed was a place to store the memories I’ve taken. It was like a box of photos taken over time. It was a large plus that I can organize things by using albums.
But I did say it was too good to be true. And be it good or bad, nothing lasts.
Yahoo! got sold to Verizon and Flickrgot snapped up by SmugMug. Things are changing. I got mails about what’s going to happen and for the most part it was good. Someone who knows photography is going to take care of a neglected Flickr. Finally.
Change is inevitable and, for the most part, change is good. There will be some collateral damage but hopefully it will be at a minimum.
So okay let’s be candid then. SmugMug is a business. It’s acquisition of Flickr is a business decision first and foremost as it offers a promising growth path for both companies. And I say, “Good for them.”
So what do I, as a user, do now? To be honest, I’m on the fence on this one. The Pro offer is good but not in the budget as I am not even a professional. If stay with the free Flickr I get free storage for thousand photos and videos and the rest gets deleted. Deleted. That royally ticked me off.
I was thinking, “They’re going to delete my memories.” That’s over 25,000 mostly family photos and a handful of videos gone. And they make it sound like it’s not a big thing to them. Wouldn’t you be pissed?
Fine. I can just download everything and go. But I can also take the Pro offer with the 30% off and I can sit on the fence a bit longer. So I go and visit the site and and I found out it’s not 30% off as stated in the email.
It became 15%. No explanations. This is something getting close to shady, guys. It just makes me think you cannot keep your word.
Fine. Maybe I can still swing it. But if you guys decided on something like this, don’t change it. It just makes you look like you’re unsure of what you’re offering.
So with pouted face, I am still on the fence. Maybe I’ll get the Pro for one year so I can prep everything I need to prep. And then go.
