Tag: well-being

Evening at the baseball field

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Leander, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/100 sec, ISO2500
 Leander, 2016

こんばんは！How’s it going today? Wow, the days are flying past like crazy… I don’t remember when time seemed to move so fast.

Today I took Koa to baseball practice. I took today’s photos when I was picking him up at around 8pm. As you can see, there was still plenty of light in the sky… it’s already starting to feel like summer!

Only five kids from Koa’s team showed up for practice, but that’s to be expected because of Spring Break. Many families go on vacation this week but we usually stay at home. Our school district usually has a few days off earlier in the year, when other schools are still in session. This works out nicely because the popular vacation destinations are usually empty!

The past couple years, we’ve taken advantage of this to go to Disneyworld and the parks were empty! Well, not like a ghost town, but the wait times for rides were usually around 10 minutes or so. It was so great, with less stress and we didn’t have to have a strict plan. We kind of just played it by ear and just went with what felt good, and we still got to experience all the rides we wanted to go on, some rides multiple times!

But back to today… we bought something to help improve our health: an exercise bike. The model we got was relatively inexpensive, but rated very highly. I assembled it this evening in about 40 minutes… there was only a slight problem with one plastic piece, but it is not a big deal and doesn’t affect the performance nor safety.

What I like about this bike is that the handlebars have a large area that is perfect for a tablet or kindle. So, I am thinking that I will try to read a bit and get some exercise in after I wake up. It seems like I should be able to wake up a bit earlier and get in at least 15 minutes before showering and getting ready for the day. We’ll see how it works out. I am curious to see how it affects my energy levels and mindset during the day.

Leander, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/50 sec, ISO3200
 Leander, 2016

Well, I hope you have a nice evening! おやすみなさい！

-バロン Barron Fujimoto

Cloudy skies

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"Cloudy Skies" SWEDEN. Stockholm. 2015.
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO500
 “Cloudy Skies” SWEDEN. Stockholm. 2015.

This is a photo from the end of August 2015 when I went on a business trip to Stockholm. The city is beautiful, especially because it is on the water, where reflections can highlight the city and bridges, making for some wonderful photo opportunities. I am not sure exactly how much distance I covered during the days I had free, but the city is so walk-able that it I found it impossible not to just wander around the city. In fact, there were a couple of times where I stepped outside the hotel doors, chose a direction and just started walking. There are even some fantastic routes for running right in the middle of the city, which is so convenient. If you ever have the chance to visit Stockholm, you should!

Clearing the desk

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Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/13 sec, ISO6400
 Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！ Happy Monday everyone!

Today I worked from home because the kids are off from school for Spring Break and Mariko is working at SXSW. Today’s photo is of my workspace, and the new addition to it – a Logitech wireless mouse.

For the past month or so my old mouse has been acting strangely by disconnecting and reconnecting with my computer, seemingly at random. I’d hear the notification like when you unplug a USB device, but then immediately hear the new device notification. This would happen several times an hour. I figured it was time to replace that old wired mouse (which must be several years old) with a new wireless mouse.

I did a quick search on Amazon and settled on the highly-rated yet inexpensive ($12) Logitech mouse. I like the fact that it is a little smaller than a regular mouse (I have small hands) and that the battery is rated to last 12 months. That is great! I was also looking forward to losing the cord, which was a lot of visual clutter on my white tabletop.

But an unexpected benefit with the new mouse is that the tracking mechanism is much better than my old mouse. The wired mouse was very jittery on the surface of my desk which forced me to use a mousepad. The new mouse tracks very smoothly, even without the mousepad. So that means I can get rid of the visual clutter of the mousepad as well. Just look how nice and clean that space is now!

I’m so happy with the wireless mouse. I just wish I had made the switch sooner. For such a small price to pay, the benefits are huge!

Have a great Tuesday, everyone! おやすみなさい！

-バロン Barron Fujimoto

Being early

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Here’s a wonderful post over at Unclutterer all about the benefits of being early.

I try to be early for my appointments, but especially for things like arriving at the airport. I would rather get there an hour earlier than recommended and spend the time reading or getting a bite to eat, than stressing over missing my flight, worrying about traffic, getting stuck in long security lines, etc. In fact, I feel good when I am in a long security line but realize that I have plenty of time and don’t need to stress. Or if traffic backs up unexpectedly (which fortunately Google Maps/Navigation can alleviate), I know I don’t need to worry. I’ll make it in time!

Culling photos and RAW vs JPEG

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"Olympus XA" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/25 sec, ISO6400
 “Olympus XA” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！How’s it going? Over here, it’s raining… make sure to keep dry and stay healthy!

Today’s photo is of one of my favorite cameras, the mighty Olympus XA. It is such a great design, and takes wonderful photos because of the lovely Zuiko lens. I love it, although I don’t shoot with it too often.

Tonight I replied to a post on Flickr that was concerning running out of hard drive space because of shooting many RAW files. In writing my response, I thought about how my philosophy on making photos has changed over the years to where I am now, which is a happy place. Not surprisingly, it has to do with decluttering. Below is the response I posted:

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Just my personal experience…

Short answer: It helps if you cull your photos early on, and be “ruthless” about it. 🙂

Long-winded answer:

I think many of us have gone through or are going through a similar situation, myself included. There was a time when I was shooting so much, in RAW, kept everything, was running out of space, and “got behind” in processing those files. Photography started being less fun for me.

Then, I started shooting some corporate events and my view on culling the photos started to take shape. Each time I clicked the shutter, I would think “This photo is going to take me X amount of minutes to process.” This left a feeling of dread – I didn’t want to stay up all night processing so many! So I decided I needed to cull more aggressively. Now, if I shoot one event presenter, I might take 40 shots, but immediately (in camera) cull that down to 15, deleting obvious ones like closed eyes, weird mid-talk expressions, etc. Then later in Lightroom, I’d spend one minute to cut that to 3 maximum (more for a keynote), and post-process those.

I then started applying that to my personal work. I found that choosing the best ones in-camera soon after I took them made photography a lot more enjoyable. The sooner I deleted the rejected photos, the less I would think about them and consequently eliminate any regret I might have had in not keeping them. (I didn’t have time to get attached to those photos) And my memory card felt nice and tidy, free of clutter.

Another change that really helped me enjoy photography more is that I now shoot exclusively (for my personal photos) in JPEG. I have found that committing to the image immediately gives me a sense of closure and peace-of-mind. This may sound weird, but to me, a RAW file is the middle step in the photographic process, with the end of the process being a print or JPEG. It’s like the RAW file represents an unfinished project (with endless possibilities) and when I had 1,000 RAW files sitting on my hard drive, it was like having 1,000 unfinished projects just gnawing away at me. (I guess I have some issues!)

So now I cull like crazy, and I’m happy with (or at least committed to) the images I keep, and forget about all the others… it’s a lot less clutter on the hard drive and less clutter in my mind.

Sorry for the long-winded (and somewhat off-topic) message, and thanks for reading.

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I hope you have a nice rest of the evening, and let’s do our best tomorrow!

おやすみなさい！

-B Barron Fujimoto