Sixth Street Showers

A Non-Expert’s Guide To Writing

Three important lessons for people who are inspiring writers and have never done this before:

• Get a unique story idea.
• Plot it out.
• Research and study the hell out of your topic and genre. 

A fourth lesson would be to stop focusing on all of those and just get to writing something. Anything. Please.

It’s Not Relevant

Instagram sucks.

It used to be a great way to network with great photographers and friends. It has evolved from a creative community into an abomination of memes, unoriginal work and advertisements.
When Facebook purchased Instagram everyone knew that it would change drastically and not for the better. 

Shortly after, ads were popping up with no regard for anything. Nothing was relevant because Facebook hadn’t yet figured out your likes, dislikes, friends. It still hasn’t figured me out. I am seeing ads for candy, ads for salt. Yes, salt. Ads for a house flipping seminar by some faux celeb on a DIY channel. Ads for paint etc etc. What the hell does salt have to do with photography? This is a photography platform…or it used to be.
IG has added video features, photo/video stories, IGTV for longer video stories. All laced with ads. 

FB and IG both have shitty algorithms that is distracting what we want to see. Their shitty algorithms have also destroyed the order in which we want to see our friend’s photos by assuming they know best. But FB and IG don’t know me at all. They’ve stopped caring and allow any advertiser to show whatever they want, relevant or not and then have access to our data.

How pervasive are these irrelevant advertisements? It averages one ad for every four photos in your feed. Four, maybe five of your colleague’s images and then you get a “sponsored post”.

Think these offered options matter?

Why don’t you want to see this ad?

It’s not relevant

I see it too often

It’s inappropriate

Think again.

Deleting Facebook was easy. I never took it seriously and my friends appreciated me mocking everything that they enjoyed about FB.

Speaking of deleting…I just accidentally erased my whole last paragraph and don’t have the energy to recreate it. Anyway, IG sucks and I am getting real close to pushing that “delete account” button

It’s Not Relevant

Instagram sucks.

It used to be a great way to network with
great photographers and friends. It has evolved from a creative
community into an abomination of memes, unoriginal work and
advertisements.
When Facebook purchased Instagram everyone knew that it would change
drastically and not for the better.

Shortly after, ads were
popping up with no regard for anything. Nothing was relevant because
Facebook hadn’t yet figured out your likes, dislikes, friends. It still
hasn’t figured me out. I am seeing ads for candy, ads for salt. Yes,
salt. Ads for a house flipping seminar by some faux celeb on a DIY
channel. Ads for paint etc etc. What the hell does salt have to do with
photography? This is a photography platform…or it used to be.
IG has added video features, photo/video stories, IGTV for longer video
stories. All laced with ads.

FB and IG both have shitty
algorithms that is distracting what we want to see. Their shitty
algorithms have also destroyed the order in which we want to see our
friend’s photos by assuming they know best. But FB and IG don’t know me
at all. They’ve stopped caring and allow any advertiser to show whatever
they want, relevant or not and then have access to our data.

How
pervasive are these irrelevant advertisements? It averages one ad for
every four photos in your feed. Four, maybe five of your colleague’s
images and then you get a “sponsored post”.

These are the offered options when telling IG you don’t want to see their ads:

Why don’t you want to see this ad?

It’s not relevant

I see it too often

It’s inappropriate

Deleting Facebook was easy. I never took it
seriously and my friends appreciated me mocking everything that they
enjoyed about FB.

Speaking of deleting…I just accidentally erased
my whole last paragraph and don’t have the energy to recreate it.
Anyway, IG sucks and I am getting real close to pushing that “delete
account” button.

**Update**  It is gone.

A Non-Expert Guide To Writing

Three important lessons for people who are inspiring writers and have never done this before:

• Get a unique story idea.
• Plot it out.
• Research and study the hell out of your topic and genre.

A fourth lesson would be to stop focusing on all of those and just get to writing something. Anything. Please.

Get Lost

“…to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be
capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost
but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a
chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography.”

                                                                      – A Field Guide To Getting Lost

iA Writer

After several free trials, beta tests and tribulations I have chosen iA Writer as my tool to help me create stories I want to tell (not calling myself a writer or author yet).

The software for me had to pass several standards such as:

Cross-platform (Windows, iOS)

Inexpensive

Clean, simple and aesthetically pleasing.

No overwhelming amount of tools that I’ll never use

Mission accomplished.

Stay or Go?

When I noticed recently that the total number of photos stored
on my computer is almost 40,000, it seemed time to do some organizing and pruning. No problem right? Just get rid of the images I don’t want and look for the keepers.

So, what to do with pictures like
the one above? It’s probably not worth saving for the fact that it snows in Houston Texas once every ten years. Or that we only had enough snow to make this cute little guy on the top of our car. Look how cute that baby carrot nose is.

The photo features a brilliant blend of colors and an excellent bokeh and was shot three days before my birthday in 2009 at f/5.6 at 1/500 seconds on my old Nikon D90 with no flash.

Yes, I’ll keep it.

One down, 39,999 to go…

Stay Or Go?

When I noticed recently that the total number of photos stored
on my computer is almost 40,000, it seemed time to do some organizing
and pruning. No problem right? Just get rid of the images I don’t want
and look for the keepers.

So, what to do with pictures like
the one above? It’s probably not worth saving for the fact that it snows
in Houston Texas once every ten years. Or that we only had enough snow
to make this cute little guy on the top of our car. Look how cute that
baby carrot nose is.

The photo features a brilliant blend of
colors and an excellent bokeh and was shot three days before my birthday
in 2009 at f/5.6 at 1/500 seconds on my old Nikon D90 with no flash.

Yes, I’ll keep it.

One down, 39,999 to go…

iA Writer

After several free trials, beta tests and tribulations of desktop writing software I have finally decided on my tool of choice. iA Writer helps me take notes and create the stories I want to tell (not
calling myself a writer or author yet).

The criteria I needed:

• Cross-platform (Windows, iOS)
• Inexpensive
• Clean, simple and aesthetically pleasing
• No overwhelming amount of tools that I’ll never use

Mission accomplished.

on the desktop ^

on the iPad ^