Why doesn’t Apple have this fundamental feature in Photos to easily help people organize their precious images?

I sell enterprise data classification software. In less buzzword terms, one of the features of our software is that it can add labels to things (including photos). This helps business people find things they need to work on.  

In my personal life, I am a photographer and spend time organizing and classifying my photos. I add keywords to photos in Lightroom and tags to videos in Finder (MacOS). These are part of my workflow.  

With the billions of photos people take every day (like the zettabytes of data in the corporate world), I feel it’s vital we use some form of organization.  This helps us find what’s most important to us while eliminating distractions, and reducing unnecessary and costly storage requirements.  

Like many of you, I have an iPhone and use Apple’s Photos app. I noticed today that there is no way to add labels (keywords, tags) in Photos on the iPhone.  You can add captions, adjust place and time, tune people identification, and use markup to add text, but you can’t classify your photos with words that suit you. I know about the game-changing features of AI assisted search but it’s not perfect, and cannot be corrected or customized. I had a quick check of Google Photos on my iPhone and it appears they have the same limitation.  

I can’t understand why Apple would not have this fundamental feature in Photos to easily help people organize their precious images. It’s tempting to think of evil corporate strategies to make us consume more iCloud storage and keep us scrolling for more minutes on our iPhones. I can’t believe they didn’t think about it. It’s possible they may not wish to add features that could be confusing or misused. I can’t think of a technical reason. I’m going to post this on Apple Communities and see what other people say. 

I’m passionate about photography as an art form and for preserving memories. I like helping others get the most from the magic of digital photography. I’ve written about this in the past - it’s a topic I spend a lot of time thinking about.  I’d love to know your thoughts.

Photographer’s frivolous fillings

My new camera bag is arriving tomorrow.  I’m excited.  I like organizing stuff and I have a lot of camera gear.  I’m constantly having to move bits and pieces from one bag to another and often discover I’ve forgotten something when I’m “on location”.  On the weekend trip shoot at the Beaches I forgot my audio adaptor for my action camera.  I once had everything organized, ready to go for a week away and I forgot my entire camera bag - well that’s another problem.

I like to research purchases and I spent way too much time shopping for a new camera bag.  I won’t list all the options here and I’m not going to talk about the bag I’ve decided on just yet.  But I thought I should organize my thoughts first it terms of what will go in the bag.  Yes, it should be quite a bit bigger than my current bag, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to fit everything in it.  And if I did, it would be very heavy and impractical for my local photo excursions.

First and the simplest decision - the camera(s) - the Fuji XT-4 and the DJI Osmo Action

Lenses - how many?  The 50-150mm is the best lens I have and the biggest, it belongs in the bag, but it may be removed if I’m really aiming to travel light and/or when I know exactly what I’m going to be shooting.  The 18-55mm kit lens and the 10-20mm super wide are my urban and landscape go-to lenses.  The 35mm is superb and compact, but it’s usually on my older XT-1 for walking around the neighbourhood.  A maybe.  The 56mm is great but I don’t use it that often.  I purchased it more for portraits, but it would be interesting to see how I’d use it in the field.  A maybe.  The fisheye lens?  It’s a Nikon mount and I have the Nikon-Fuji adapter on it, so it’s not that small.  But it’s fun and would definitely be a nice option to have more readily available.  I’ll give it a spot in the new bag.

Accessories: I have three filters, two variable neutral density (ND) for video work (another thing I forgot on the weekend) and a soft glow that I keep forgetting about.  I have two Smallrig cages and a Smallrig grip that I’m not certain about.  The one cage for the XT-4 is quite large and specific for video work.  It’s maybe and it would be a good test of the size of the bag as it’s a weird shape.  The Smallrig grip is usually on the XT-4 so that stays and the other cage is for the action camera for vlogging which I hope to do more of - so, yes.  There is the 2x Fuji lens adapter  - small but not a biggy to leave behind.  There’s also the close-up tubes - mostly for home project - so I can leave them out.  The Rode microphone - yes, but the lavalier mic and extra long audio cable maybe not.    The DJI iPhone gimbal - hmm, I havent’ used it in a while, so probably not, especially since I added the DJI action camera to the kit.  Cleaners and the puffer go in.  Extra SD cards go in.  Let’s not forget the Peak Design camera strap (I often do).  The flash and and LED light panel I’ll leave out unless a portrait session is planned - which may be the case this weekend when I visit my parents to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.  

I’ll probably have the small gorilla pod strapped to the side and find room for the folding selfie stick for the action camera in side somewhere.  There are a also few action camera mounts and one for iPhone that always come in handy.

Now there are other important accessories in a smaller Peak Design gadget bag, so the question is - do I move the important bits (e.g. extra batteries) into the new bag and do I put the whole gadget bag in the newer bag.  We’ll see.

Don’t worry, I don’t think I want to do a What’s in my bag Vlog, but this kind of gave me a game plan for tomorrow.  Happy shooting folks.

Music menu

One of the ways I align my (wide) music tastes with my life is to listen to specific genres and tempos at specific times of the day.  I don't always do this and not always have my say in what music is played at home, but when I do have the turntable, and when I'm not fussy on specific bands or newer versus older tracks, then I switch on a few large, tailored playlists to fill the specific music gap in the day.   To do this my way, you need to have a pretty good grasp on genre assignments and upbeat/mellow settings.  For instance, I've been able to narrow the number of genres down to 22 and I use the Grouping attribute to indicate whether the track is mellow or upbeat.  My library isn't perfect and I don't necessarily categorize and rate tracks my wife or kids download, but for me it works quite well.

My music genres (with some examples) are:

• Rock/pop - U2, Robbie Williams
• Rock and Punk - AC/DC, The Clash
• Modern Rock and Alternative - Arctic Monkeys, Metric
• New Wave and Early Alternative - New Order, Talking Heads
• Pop, Idol and Kids -Spice Girls, Miley Cyrus
• Pop/Rock - The Script, The Beatles
• Folk/Rock - Devendra Banhart, Diane Birch
• Country - Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton
• Electronica - Thievery Corporation, Morcheeba
• Dance - Tiesto, Madonna
• Hip Hop and Rap - Timbaland, Lauryn Hill
• R&B - Mary J. Blige, James Morrison
• Reggae and World Music - UB40, Matisyahu
• Jazz vocal - Madelaine Peyroux, Ella Fitzgerald
• Jazz instrumental - Chris Botti, John Coltrane
• Blues - B.B. King, Susan Tedeschi
• Soul - Joss Stone, Duffy
• Soundrack - instrumental scores mostly, like Big Night and Snatch
• Classical
• Opera
• Comedy
• Christmas

So, for instance in the morning, the playlist is of course mellow, and I exclude genres like R&B, Hip Hop and Electronica.  Late/easy evenings is mellow again, but excluding Folk/Rock and most Rock categories.  For me, I can't picture listening to Madonna on a quiet Sunday morning or The Beatles when I'm tired and having a night cap.  Of course, there are many more times in the day and music appropriate for different mealtimes, e.g. some get up and go music on a weekday morning (upbeat rock/pop for instance); heading to your hockey or ultimate game (upbeat dance or punk); or jazz instrumental and mellow soul during dinner.

So how about the following menu for this coming Friday ?

• Some gentle mellow folk/rock to greet the day, then changing folk/.rock to upbeat mode during breakfast time and some upbeat new wave for the commute.  
• Over lunch, we go with the blues.  
• Heading home we get urban with some upbeat hip hop & rap, but change to mellow R&B as appertizers are prepared.  
• Some jazz vocal and mellow modern rock and alternative (to keep the kids interested) over dinner, followed by some upbeat soul for dessert.  
• Drinks with candlelight with mellow electronica to finish your day.  

Custom music menus available by request.  Bon Appetit.

Reminders

How do you manage your reminders and to-dos ? See the new poll feature on the right-hand-side-panel.

Quite a few people seem to use their email inbox for reminders, tasks and to-dos. Most email applications have some way of tagging, flagging or starring individual emails so they stand out when quickly glancing at your inbox. Other more business focused email applications can also have automatic pop-up reminders for emails based on a set date and time. Although this works well in desktop Outlook, it doesn't work when you're looking at synchronized emails on your Blackberry.

Now the trick is keeping the mail box items email count low ( I try to keep mine below 50) and getting emails in there to fill in missing action items.

Does mess equal stress ?

After writing Messy is cool last night, I kept thinking about it as I was heading to bed. Although I said that chaos appears natural and may be a thing of art in my life, there can be too much of a good thing ! Too much or constant chaos in my life definitely brings on stress and shows me glimpses of a life of dysfunction and waste.

So, I was thinking that perhaps the easiest and maybe the only way to really reduce the amount of chaos in my life is to limit or reduce the things that could fall victim to this natural energy. For instance, in business, maybe reducing the amount of products I try and learn and sell would help; at home, perhaps the dream of adding a bedroom or family room extension would only create two more junk rooms. Of course, having one email address, one credit card and one car would make my life so much easier. Then you start thinking about other categories, food, clothes, um - maybe. Then there are some things in my life that I definitely want lots of choice in, lots of variety, and they tend to be entertainment pleasures, more music, movies and books !

Sure, I'll relax and accept the natural chaos in my life, I may even try and enjoy it. But why not try a few things to simplify my life.

The picture is a plot of the Lorenz attractor for values r = 28, σ = 10, b = 8/3, whatever that means.

Messy is cool

I saw this American Express print ad this weekend and thought what a great photo ! For some reason this shot appealed to me as a photographer, a techie, and someone struggling with organization. And also because of Tina Fey, it somehow says Hey, it's cool to be messy, what's the big huff ? And I like that.

What I'm trying to tackle these days is organizing my life, the things in it, how much time I spend with its things, and perhaps indirectly hoping to see the forest. But images like this and realities in my life suggest that the natural state of affairs naturally returns to a state of chaos. The tidy and paperless office; the empty inbox; fully indexed and categorized music, movies and photos; a budget; and knowing what things you have to do this week, are all either mirages of an organized life or examples of unstable equilibriums. And there is art and beauty in chaos, you just have to look a little harder and change your point of view.

If you're not familiar with Tina Fey, she came from Saturday Night Live and produces, writes and stars in 30 Rock.

The pic came from geeksugar.