I have the Canon 350D with the kit lens, which is okay, but last fall I bought two new professional lenses for it. First, the 50mm f/1.2L USM fixed focal length lens, which is awesome, because it can take photos in almost no light. And next the 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, which is also awesome.
But what I’ve learned is that it works best with the full-frame cameras, like the 5D and up. For the 350D and its brethren, the 400D, 20D and 30D, the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM is likely to work better. The 17-55mm range corresponds to 27-88mm with a ful-frame body, which is roughly equivalent to what the 24-70mm will do. Also, I believe it’s smaller and lighter, which would be a bonus, because currently, the 24-70mm lens feels awkwardly bulky and heavy on top of the compact 350D body. The bottom line, at least, has been that it’s too big and heavy for me to bring along just in case. And I could really use some even wider wide-angel shots than what the 24-70mm can give me.
So I’m looking to sell my 24-70mm lens, and instead buy the 17-55mm.
Do you have any recommendations before I do? Is there another lens that I should consider instead? Anything to consider that I missed?
I read this quote from William Eggleston in Image Makers Image Takers, an awesome photography book by Anne-Celen Jaeger:
Interviewer: What goes through your mind when you are framing a shot?
Eggleston: Nothing really. It happens so fast. I compose very quickly and without thinking, but consciously. I take a picture instantly and never more than one. Sometimes I worry about the picture being out of focus, but I take that chance. A long time ago, I would have taen several shots of the same thing, but I realized that I could never decide which one was the best. I thought I was wasting a lot of time looking at these damn near identical pictures. I wanted to discipline myself to take only one picture of something, and if it didn’t work out, that’s just too bad. But it’s pretty much always worked.
I don’t know about you, but especially with digital photography, I’ll almost always take at least three shots of any subject, because, well, it’s free, and what if you’d overlooked something, one was blurry, someone blinked, etc.
And guess what, I’ve found is that 9 times out of 10, the first shot was the best.
Why that is, I don’t know, but a guess would be that too much conscious thought makes the picture less interesting, not more. That what caught my eye in the first place is what’s captured in the first shot.
But it wasn’t until I read this quote that I realized it wasn’t me, it was the idea of taking multiple shots. Now, if you’re on assignment, and taking a portrait, of course you take more than one shot. But if you’re taking photos for the pleasure of both the process and the outcome, art photography, if you will, then it makes sense to just take one shot. Especially because it’s so mindnumbingly boring to look through all those near-identical photos, when you could spend the time taking more pictures, being with your family, writing your blog, or whatever else you fancy.
I love it when people make a realization, and then act on it. So often do we stand there, like I did, realizing the flaws of our ways, but not making the consequential decision and acting on that realization. It’s so powerful when people do that, and stand firm.
Here’s the mandatory upgrade announcement. On Friday, I moved my blog over to Mephisto. I considered Wordpress, but ultimately chose Mephisto for now, because of the clear upgrade path, it’s Rails, which means I could drop-replace the site on my server, I could make old permalinks work seamlessly with the new site, I could just leave all the files and other assets in place, and beacuse I’d have to install and maintain wordpress myself, anyway, because wordpress.com couldn’t do what I needed it to do.
So there you have it, I’m now on Mephisto.
There’s been a lot of talk about falling housing prices in Denmark, so I just wanted to take this chance to update my own statistics.
On October 8, 2006, the number from boligsiden.dk was 49,982. It is now 61,860.
That’s a net increase of 41 units per day since my last tally on October 8, 2006.
It’s a net increase of 58 units per day average since the low point on February 22, 2006.
The rate from February 22 to October 8, 2006 was 79 units per day. So the rate has dropped to about half, but the net number is still growing at steady pace.
A good time to be buying, if you can take the risk. Remember Warren Buffet’s word: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”
Apropos the discussion of fixed vs. growth mindset a few days ago.
I used to smoke. And when you smoke, there’s probably at least 10 or 12 things keeping you in the habit. And one of those things for me was that I believed it made me look cool. The reason I knew that is that I knew people that I thought looked cool, and they smoked.
Well, a few weeks ago, I happened upon an additional piece of information. One of the people who I thought looked cool, it turns out, spent countless hours smoking in front of the mirror, perfecting his cool look.
What did I take away from this? The more effortless it looks, the more effort probably went into perfecting it. Even being cool is not something you’re born with. It’s something you’ve trained for. Interesting.
I went to shop for a new deodorant at Stansted on my return trip from London this weekend. As always, I found it terrifying. All the smells. It’s hard enough to get a clear smell without too much alcohol or other smells in the air. It’s harder still to figure out if you like the smell. It’s all but impossible to gather how it’s going to smell on your body. And once you’ve gone through two, you can’t tell a thing anymore.
And what if you buy the wrong one? They’re not cheap, you know, so you’re stuck with that Old Spice for months. And maybe you buy something, like that new Britney Spears Fantasy, and it turns out that all your friends think it’s really lame, and they think you suck. Shopping smells can be a tormenting experience for men.
But I was traveling with two pretty hip girls, one of whom is even a fashion designer in London for a top British brand. You’d think, if anyone knew how to shop for smells, they would. But they turned out to be even more tormented than I was.
That’s when I decided, to hell with it. If we all find it so difficult, then it’s not me, it’s the process. I decided to not give a damn about what might go wrong, and just go by my instincts. It worked. I bought a new smell, and I still like it, and so does my wife.
This is my segue into a topic that I’ve been fascinated with recently, namely the feeling of being not-okay. Self-aversion. Shame. Feeling of unworthiness. Lack of self-esteem. Lack of belief in one-self.
It’s actually an interest that started way back in highschool when I traced all kinds of behaviors down to lack of self-esteem. The thread lay mostly dormant, however, until our yoga instructor and tour leader during our trip to India in February brought it to my attention again. Every day she would remind us all to just accept ourselves as we are. If you can’t make the pose, that’s okay. Just recognize how it is today and accept it. Then I bought a book, called Radical Acceptance. And I went to see Jacob Holdt’s slideshow.
Accepting ourselves as we are should be the most natural thing in the world, and yet it isn’t. It seems we’re all busy trying to be something else. Fitter, stronger, slimmer, smarter, more wealthy, powerful, beautiful, happier, thinking positive, not judging or blaming or feeling sorry for ourselves, and on and on. The self-improvements can be endless, and the resources available are certainly endless.
But if you accept yourself as you are, won’t your life just grind to a halt? Why strive for anything, why even get up in the morning, or care to be a good friend? If you just accept everything, won’t you get lazy?
There’s a difference between learning something new or working out because we genuinely enjoy it, and doing it because we feel like if we don’t fix ourselves, we’re not okay.
Accepting one-self is about accepting what’s there, right this moment, whatever it is. Even if it’s self-judgment, such as “why do I always come late”, or “why can’t I quiet my mind and meditate properly, dammit”. Accept the thoughts, the judgment, the anxiousness, accept your body, mind, and spirit, as it is right now. Don’t resist your feelings, and don’t try to feel or think something you don’t. Just let it be.
It’s a kooky habit, once you think about it, to not accept oneself. What’s the point? After all, we’re the only one we have, why not just make peace with it. Something that really triggered me was to learn just how common it is. According to the “Radical Acceptance” book, it’s most people in the Western hemisphere. According to my coach education, 95% of all people belong to the club.
Whether or not the number is accurate is not the point. The point is, you look around the room, and by far most of the people around you don’t think they’re okay. Most have good strategies for hiding it, perhaps even for themselves. When it’s so common, why not just pad each other on the back, and declare that we’re all okay. Here. I’ve done it. Who’s to decide, anyway, but us? God? I’m sure God loves us all.
I’m not saying it’s that simple, there’s still lots of pockets of pain and suffering that it can take years to get out. But that realization was a turning point for me. For some reason I felt that it was important that I held on to that feeling of unworthiness, because, I guess, it somehow proved that I was at least committed to fix myself. Realizing that I was in excellent company made me drop that.
There’s also plenty of habitual strategies connected to this feeling. Being afraid of sharing too much of myself, for fear that others realize how broken I am. Or putting too much weight on other people’s opinions because I think they’re less broken. Especially in this whole self-help business, it’s easy to get sucked into “I’ll be fixed if only I do this”. Whenever that kicks in, it’s time to take a deep breath, and remind myself that I’m okay. No matter what. Period.
I’ve been sampling various magazines recently and wanted to share my experience, and gather yours.
Here’s what I’ve tried:
- Fast Company: The lastest issue was fantastic. I loved the behind-the-scenes articles on Al Gore, on the $15B bottled water industry, and a few other features. I’ve subscribed to this.
- Inc.: I don’t have a recent issue, but I’ve bought a handful in the past. I recall finding it both useful and readable.
- Entrepreneur: This I’m not so sure about. I’ve bought copies in the past, but I’ve always found it a bit boring, I’ve found myself gravitating towards other reading materials instead.
- Business 2.0: I’ve only ever bought one issue of this one, back in the fall, and I was very positively surprised. What I remember was an interesting brief interview with Richard Branson, and the cover story on best business ideas was good, too. I might want to subscribe to this.
- Scientific American: I bought the July issue for the cover story on memory, and it does have some interesting articles on global warming and cancer as well, but I don’t have the patience for it.
- Wired This has felt more like a hit-or-miss experience. Sometimes it’ll be great, but mostly it’s just not terribly relevant. However, this is the only magazine on this list stocked by my local magazinemonger.
What are you reading? Are you reading something that I haven’t considered? What’s your favorite?
A while back, inspired by Jason Fried, I started collecting interesting quotes I’d stumble upon, and recently I also decided to start writing down the principles I believe in, including pieces of advice I’ve picked up here and there.
It’s very much a work in progress, I keep adding and maintaining, sometimes pruning out old beliefs I now no longer hold.
The point here, though, is that I’ve found that there’s a surprising amount of power in just having my beliefs consciously considered and written down. When I have to make a decision to go this way or that, when a client or a business partner is arguing in favor of going in a particular direction, it’s good to know what I believe in and why.
The point is not to go look it up, but to have been through the process of consciously considering what, of all the different things we’ll hear and see from different sources, I have chosen to believe is true fo me.
It’s like I was talking about yesterday, we tend to have this small team of voices inside, and having considered each of their advice and chosen which one I agree with brings clarity and lets me make better decisions more easily.
I was reading this article about a gromth vs. a fixed mindset in the last issue of FastCompany, and it made a few things fall into place for me.
At its core, a fixed mindset is when you believe that people are born with a given trait, and if they don’t have it, tough luck. A growth mindset is the belief that things can be learned. Saying leaders are born, not made is a fixed mindset, and the opposite, leaders are made, not born, is a growth mindset (note the page counts on those searches). Or to give another example “Talent is everything” is – you got it – fixed, while this brilliant quote by Calvin Coolidge represents a growth mindset:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Any given person will typically have some areas that they believe are learned (driving a bicycle, tying your shoelace), but others they believe are innate (leadership, playing the piano, people skills).
The mindsets have consequences. When you believe that a skill cannot be learned, you’ll be less inclined to test it, and react more strongly to negative criticism, because it means you don’t have that particular skill and there’s no hope. Other than to blame the person doing the criticizing. You’ll also be inclined to take it easy, because, hey, I’m born with this skill, I don’t need to work too hard for it.
When you believe skills are learned, on the other hand, you’ll want to apply it, test it, get feedback, and work hard on improving your skill as quickly as you can.
So far, so good. Here’s where I started connecting the dots.
Last Christmas, I had just launched a product onto the market, and we were waiting anxiously for the market to respond. But not much happened. Then, when we visited my brother-in-law, he asked me about our marketing plan, and not only did I not have a good answer, I also reacted with very strong emotions. I closed up, got tense, became sad and defensive.
What happened?
One thing we’ve been taught during in the coaching program is how we only react emotionally to things when we believe they’re true. That’s a quite basic, but also powerful insight, because it lets us easily dig out our beliefs. It’s quite obvious when we react to something, so all we need to do is ask ourselves what we believe is true about what we just reacted to.
In this case, it was true that we didn’t have a good marketing plan. But if that was all there was, I could just admit that, yes, we don’t have one, and we really ought to have one, would you help me make one? What was I reacting to?
Deep down, it was a belief that entrepreneurs are born, not made. That either I had it in me to be a successful entrepreneur, or I didn’t. It wasn’t so much about the marketing plan, as it was about the fact that the product wasn’t selling, and that I was afraid that meant I would never be any good at starting a business. Indeed, a few days later, I dove into a dark hole of depression and self-doubt, where I felt that I was the worst entrepreneur ever. Thankfully it only lasted for a day.
Now, here’s the confusing thing: I do believe in Calvin Coolidge’s quote from above. I do believe that entrepreneurship can be learned. So what’s going on here?
The clue is in another thing Sofia Manning taught us in an off-hand way: We usually have a small team of people or voices inside, believing different things. Unless we’ve made a conscious effort to think it through and figure out what we really believe, we’ll experience this cacophony of voices. So the reality is, I believe both.
When I put them side by side, I know which one I really believe. By examining both, and whatever others there may be (INFPs are lousy business people, they’re better as counselors or priests might be one), and then explicitly phrasing and saying out loud what I really, now believe to be true, the voices can be united.
I believe that anyone who wants to can learn to become a successful entrepreneur. Especially if they know what their strengths are, and partner with people who complement them.
The book they talk about, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success doesn’t look like it’s worth the time to read it. The point is good, but can probably be gathered from the article in FastCompany alone. Besides, the fixed mindset is really just one example of a limiting belief, so you can apply any of the common tools for replacing limiting beliefs with supporting dittos.
It’s about time. Typo isn’t working very well for me anymore, it’s hogging too many resources on my server, commenting is really slow, deleting comments is even worse, and I’ve botched my svk/svn setup so I can’t upgrade easily anymore. So I’m at the point where switching software is about as easy as staying.
I have a couple options on the table already. There’s Mephisto, which seems to be less bloated than Typo and have a clear migration path, but it’s not under active development right now, and there’s still the burden of maintaining my own server and stuff and worrying about all of that.
So I’m also considering hosted, just to avoid the hassle of moving stuff when I change servers. Wordpress.com and TypePad come to mind as the top contenders in this area, and I’m leaning towards Wordpress, if only because they have a free-forever plan and don’t require a credit card to get started. And Matt seems to be a cool guy.
What about archives? I’d like them to move over, and even better, to have the same URLs still work, but that seems like a long shot at this point. There’s a lot of content there, dating back to 1999, and it’s still getting quite a bit of traffic. That’s one thing in favor of Mephisto: There’s a clear migration path from Typo, keeping the content (not sure about the URLs).
What would you recommend?
I’m sure there are others out there with Typo blogs looking for alternatives.
I just got this from Jan, the author of CSSEdit.
To get CSSEdit 2.5.2 to autosave all files when focus is lost, just close CSSEdit and type the following in terminal:
defaults write com.macrabbit.CSSEdit SaveDocumentsOnDeactivate YES
This is critical when using CSSEdit alongside TextMate. I still very much enjoy TextMate’s Cmd-Shift-T for navigating CSS and other files, and in general, once you’ve gotten used to this way of working, it’s so easy to forget to save your changes.
The other piece of the puzzle, automatically picking up new changes on disk when CSSEdit receives focus, is still missing.
We saw Jacob Holdt’s American Pictures slideshow yesterday. It made a deep impression on me.
Jacob’s core belief is that every person on this planet is fundamentally good. He meets everyone with love instead of fear, and it turns out that it really works. People holding him up at gunpoint becomes his friends. He picks up every hitch-hiker on his way, and his friends include the poorest outcast black people, poor outcast white people, Ku Klux Klan members, Woody who personally killed more than a handful of “niggers” just because, the Pabst and Rockefeller families, FBI agents. Jacob meets anyone with love and understanding, regardless.
I’ve always shared Jacob’s core belief, that everyone is fundamentally good, and deserves to be loved, that people who harm others do so out of fear and pain. But as with so many things, I haven’t actually acted on that belief. I’m starting to learn how our brains have this habit of not going down paths it hasn’t been down before. So I may have had that belief, but I had never sat down to think through its implications, and where I wasn’t following my belief. Do I really mean everyone? And am I really meeting everyone with love, or do I meet some people with fear?
Jacob has shown so powerfully that yes, it really does include everybody. It turned out that Woody had a childhood of abuse and incest, and that he, too, softened up completely when shown some love and attention. And so too with the others. It’s just as wrong to meet Nazis og Ku Klux Klan with fear and hatred, as it is to meet black people or muslims with fear and hatred. Everyone needs to be loved, accepted, and understood, regardless. Period.
One of Jacob’s other powerful messages is that Ku Klux Klan is much less of a problem than the middle class. Yes, they burn crosses and try to scare people, but really, when you talk to them, they’re just sad and lonely and quickly soften and open up. But above all, they’re without any real influence. They’re marginalized themselves. This is what he calls “small racism”.
What Jacob calls “big racism” is the middle class who moves out of a neighborhood when too many black people (or muslims in Europe) move in. Who take their kids out of the school when too make black or muslims go there. Who teach their kids to fear blacks or muslims. Who have all the right opinions on the surface, but aren’t willing to actually change anything in their own lives.
What happens is that black kids or muslims get the message that they’re not as good as white people. That they’re not as worthy. And each time a white person meets a black person with fear, that look of fear communicates to the black person that you don’t trust him. It reinforces the belief.
Give enough time, this becomes an internalized belief. Black people start believing that they really are worth less.
There was a sociological experiment which showed this, I believe it was in a Malcolm Gladwell book (if you know the reference, please post it here). People of all races were give a test, and they did equally well. Then the test was altered so the first question was which race they were: Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Asian, etc. The result? Blacks and hispanics did considerably worse. Why? Because the racist frame was invoked. The frame that says that blacks and hispanics do worse in tests than white people. People’s expectations of themselves really matter. Once you believe it, it becomes true.
I’m reminded of another test that I’ve heard referred to – again, if you know or can find the reference, please do. It was a school in the US where a teacher was given the worst-performing class in the city, but was told that they were really brilliant, they might behave a bit strange, but that was only because they were so smart. Similarly, another teach was given the best-performing class, but told that they were stupid losers. Turns out that the worst-performing class started doing much better, while the best-performing class started doing a lot worse. Lesson: People’s expectations of others really matter, too.
There’s two emotions going on here. One is the despair once you realize just how bad it is, and just how much you and I are contributing to the problem without really knowing or wanting to. The second is the hope and power when you realize just how simple it is to do something about it. Simple, if not easy.
Step one: Fully accept yourself. Don’t blame yourself for being a racist. It’s not your fault. You were brought up to be this way.
Step two: Fully accept everyone else. Don’t fear other people. Regardless.
People are not born this way. Black people are not born feeling inferior, white people are not born fearing black people and thinking they’re inferior. It’s something you learn from your parents and from society. Once you connect with and accept your own pain and suffering, you can start connecting with and accepting the pain and suffering of others, and you can get back to that state from before you were trained to be racist.
Only through actions at the individual level can we hope to heal the larger problem.
The implications of this are huge. This isn’t just about black people in the US. In Europe, it’s about muslims.
But it’s not just about racism, either. It’s also about sexism and homophobia. In short, anywhere you judge others without first understanding their background, culture, and upbringing.
But this is also something that has huge geopolitical consequences. Because people in the US, and increasingly in the western world, are brought up on a diet of fear, they approach the rest of the world in a state of fear. They invade countries and think in terms of war. But fear only generates more fear.
To sum up, my take-away from the show is that it really is possibly to meet everybody with acceptance and love instead of fear. And that it pays to do so. And that I want to learn to do this.
Jacob also offers people to travel with him. I’m excited. It sounds like it would be a life-changing experience, but we gotta figure out what to do about the kids and all.
Thanks to Valerie Saunders at Zentropa for sharing this great experience with us.
