My son Eden and I spent many hours on the road yesterday picking up some antiques I purchased at an auction. I got an assortment of goodies: a pine stand-up desk, and small tavern table, and a pair of beautifully painted kubbestols (Swedish stump chairs). It’s been fun exploring these pieces, trying to discern the story of how these things came to be and how they seem to have been used throughout their lives. The layout lines, patina, ink spills, green paint remnants, empty nail holes, and pencil marks each tell the attuned inquirer something new. You can expect to see more about these fascinating pieces in the future. For now, here are a few shots from my phone:
As Mike mentioned in our podcast the other day, I’ve been taking photos and videos with my new iPhone. This is novel for me because I’m committed to the quality that my DSLR and RAW files deliver. People have told me for years that photos from the latest phone cameras are nearly indistinguishable, but I’ve never been convinced. (I’m still not convinced.) Having said that, I have to confess that the iPhone 13 Pro is pretty dang good. Definitely good enough for off-the-cuff snapshots and video clips.
I cannot envision ever ditching my DSLR for a camera phone but having a decent pocket-sized camera at-the-ready inspires me to share more of what else is going on around here and things I find while antiquing. I rarely bring my camera bag around on those trips because I don’t want to be that guy who spends more time behind the camera than actually looking at the thing being photographed. But if a smartphone can capture a quality image in the click of a button and allow me to carry on with my business, I’m all for it.
And the video on this thing is pretty dang nice, too. Until now, our video editing has always been an involved process shooting on the DSLR, uploading the files into Premier, cutting, fading, exporting, uploading. Having a quality way to share M&T happenings at the click of a button would mean we could share things we’ve never made time to show.
Like the shop library. Because I’m having fun playing around with this thing, here’s a brief video tour of the books that we dig into when we do our research. I’m a regular at Better World Books and sometimes AbeBooks (even though they were unfortunately engulfed by Amazon a while back). I’ve never taken an inventory of the titles on hand, but we’ve got an entire wall of the shop garret lined with shelves and there’s another large unit on the gable. (In the video, you’ll notice the stack of books that need a home soon – always more shelving to make.)
I’m not a techie/gadget-loving kind of person by any stretch of the imagination, but I can say that I’m excited to find that my new phone seems like it will enable us to give you all a clearer window into our world.
– Joshua