My problems with ADD and ADHD

 

I seriously need to take control of my ADD and ADHD.  My mind is just all over the place.  I just can’t keep concentrating on anything for more than a couple of seconds.  I have so many ideas, so many options.  For example, I’m typing this on my Dell XPS 17” 9700 laptop.  I keep wishing I had brought by 2022 iPad Pro 12.9” instead.  But if I brought in the iPad, I’d wish I brought in the Windows 11 laptop.  I can’t win either way.  I use both of the devices for very different things but they’re all the same.  I could do everything on my laptop and I could do everything on my iPad.  The thing is, is that I have both of them.  I wish I had just one device so I could do everything just on that one device.  I could be using Adobe Lightroom Classic on my laptop along with Davinci Resolve to edit my videos.

Last fall, I purchased the Leica Q2 Monochrom.  Fantastic camera.  Amazing piece of equipment.  It’s the only camera I use.  Yet I still have two Canon G7X Mark III’s at home along with a Sony RX100 Mark VII.  I could use these for video as well.  But I have a Sony FDR AX700 B at home for 4K video.  I have way too many options.  I think when I start doing the nomad life just living in my life, I will just use one camera for the video and one camera for the photos.  I think I’ll be using the Leica for just the photography and the Sony FDR AX700B for video.  I’m going to have to learn how to use Affinity Photo ver. 2 on the iPad Pro and I’ll have to keep learning and using Lumafusion for video editing.

I keep using the iPad Pro for 99.9999% of the work that I do.  Lumafusion and Davinci Resolve both run on the iPad Pro like a dream along with Affinity Photo ver. 2.  The problem with the iPad Pro is it’s only 12.9” large and it isn’t 4K.  My Dell XPS 9700 has a 17” 4K monitor and it’s amazingly gorgeous.  The problem with the iPad is the lousy operating system and the lack of Final Cut Pro on the machine.  Multitasking on the iPad Pro is also a bit problematic.  It’s not true or real multitasking.  If Apple just ported the real Mac operating system onto the iPad, it’d be a fantastic device.

What the iPad line is missing a real operating system and some more pro apps such as Final Cut Pro.  The Apple office suite seems to need more of an update as well.  Since I’m going to be the nomad / living out of my car thing, I can only have so many devices with me.  All I really want is one photo camera, one camcorder and one device to edit all these things on. 

The benefits of a laptop is true multitasking, storage and the versatility of a laptop.  The downsides of a laptop, especially my Dell, is the portability and storage along with power consumption.  I could sit in a coffee shop for hours on end but I don’t want to be doing that.

The benefits of an iPad Pro is the size and weight.  I barely notice it while carrying the iPad Pro around with me.  Another benefit is the Apple ecosystem.  I have several Apple devices including the iPhone, the Apple watch and the iPad Pro.  I also have 2 Toshiba T5 SSD hard drives which are small and light. They’re both 2TB in storage size.

All of this info to summarize is I want to move out west to Calgary and do the landscape photography full time.  I sell quite a few photographs on the various stock agencies a month but you cannot sustain any lifestyle on the amount of photos I sell.  I thought of selling prints but I don’t know how many people buy photography anymore.  I just need multiple sources of passive income to sustain a photography career.  YouTube is difficult to do.  Currently I have 47 subscribers.  I would need a few thousand to get any real income from that.  I use Fine Art America to sell prints but those are far few and in between. 

I have to make my photography career work.  Photography is my passion.  People say follow your passion and the money will come.  I wish the money would come a little bit faster.  So here is a simple synopsis of my ADHD and ADD.  An article all over the place.  Like my wandering mind.

Apple has become a joke

I’ve been using an assortment of Apple products for the past 15 years or so.  I started with a Mac Mini.  I upgraded the hard drive and RAM in that machine.  Now, you can’t upgrade anything since all the parts such as the RAM and hard drive are soldered onto the motherboard of every Apple computer from the iMac Pro to the new Mac Mini.  That’s just the computer hardware side of things.  The iPhone lineup is a joke as well.  Minimal upgrades every year it seems like.  This years new iPhone Pro or iPhone 11 Pro Max is a joke.  If I want a real camera, I’ll grab my Sony RX100 Mark VI or Mark VII.  I don’t even consider using my iPhone 8 Plus as my main camera.  The Sony RX100 Mark VI is the perfect travel camera I don’t even use the iPhone for anything but making phone calls and watching the occasional YouTube video.  My iPhone is a phone and and iPod.

The thing that irks me the most now is the software upgrades.  The Apple software is buggy and unstable.  Almost unreliable.  I was hoping that iPadOS would come out when iOS 13 for the iPhone came out on September 19th, 2019.  Nope.  It’ll take an extra week and a half for iPad OS to come out.  More beta testing is needed for iPadOS 13.1.  iPadOS 13 is more than likely not going to come out.  Us iPad Pro users will likely get iPadOS 13.1 on September 30th, 2019.  Luckily I still have my Asus ROG gaming laptop to edit photos and videos on.

On another side note, I start a new job on September 16th, 2019.  It runs till the end of December 2019 with a good chance of extension.  I’m hoping I get extended until March 31, 2020.  Then we just move to Calgary, Alberta.  I am so sick of Ottawa.  It’s so depressing living here.  I want to pay off some credit card debt and then take a week or two to get to Calgary in April 2020.  I cannot stand Ottawa anymore.

I’m studying and learning how to use Affinity Photo for the Apple iPad Pro.  I have it on my laptop as well but I’m finding that I am using the iPad Pro more.  With Apple iPadOS coming out at the end of the month, I’ll be able to use the iPad Pro for 100% of my work.  Hopefully Apple will upgrade the RAW drivers to include the Sony RX100 Mark VII so I’ll be able to use the Sony RX100 VII with the Apple iPad Pro.

The new Apple iPadOS

I honestly cannot wait until Apple releases Apple iPadOS.  It’s honestly the updated every iPad owner has been waiting for.  So far my four favourite things about the operating system are dark mode, mouse support, external hard drive support and the ability to import files from an SD card directly onto the iPad or an external hard drive.  I just have to buy an external USB-C hub and I can attach my earphones, a hard drive, an external mic and an SD card  with the SD card slot.  This OS is why I bought the 2018 Apple iPad Pro in the first place.  With the exhorbitant prices Apple is asking for their laptops, the iPad was a better choice.  The keys actually function properly and the iPad doesn’t underclock the CPU when it’s put into heavy use.  I just hope that my apps will be updated to use the new iPadOS functionality.  I only use LumaFusion for video editing, Pixelmator Pro, Affinity Photo  and  Darkroom to edit my photos.  I also use the iPad as a media consumption device.

I can finally get rid of my late 2013 MacBook Pro and the Asia Windows laptop I got last year.  I won’t need the laptops anymore.  The 2018 Apple iPad Pro will be able to do everything I want.  

The list of software I currently use is Affinity Photo, PixelMator Pro, Darkroom and LumaFusion for my microstock agency business.  I of course use iTunes for music and AppleTV and YouTube for videos.  When the Apple TV service is started in September I will of course subscribe to it.  I already subscribe to Apple Music and Netflix.  I’ll probably end up killing of Netflix when the Apple TV subscription starts.  Netflix sucks right now and has been sucking for a while now.

I’m just thinking about what Apple announced at WWDC2019 and I have to laugh at their arrogance charging $999US for a damn monitor stand.  It’s a monitor stand!!!!!!!!  With what they’re charging for a monitor, they should have included the damn monitor stand.  It’s unreal what they’re charging for the new Mac Pro, the new monitors and the stand that they just announced.  I get it.  It’s high end and it’s for companies that make a killing in movies, commercials and that stuff.  But for me, it’s far overprice.  In the end, I’ll probably just end up buying an iPad every three to four years and spend $2000 on it.  I already have the needed accessories like the keyboard and Apple Pencil.  Now that the iPad is going to have mouse support, I probably won’t even need the Apple Pencil.  I can’t draw worth a damn.  I might just use it to write notes to myself.  But that’s about it.

My full 2018 Apple iPad Pro setup (Well, almost full setup)

So this will keep me pretty mobile since it all fits in a slim laptop bag.  I have my 2018 Apple iPad Pro with a 512GB SSD hard drive, my Sony RX100 Mark VI camera and a WD My Passport Wireless Pro (4TB) hard drive.  I just got the WD hard drive yesterday so I am still learning how to configure it and how to use it with the 2018 Apple iPad Pro.  It seems like the WD wireless hard drive is pretty easy to setup over the network.  I’m sitting at a Tim Horton’s coffee shop right now and I’ve backed up a few thousand photos to the hard drive already.  It takes a while to upload all the photos and videos from the SD card used by the Sony RX100 Mark VI but it’s actually fast.

LumaFusion, my footage editing software actually has direct wireless access, once setup of course.  I still have to learn how to use LumaFusion as I’m coming from Final Cut Pro X on an early 2013 MacBook Pro.  I have to of course start watching some YouTube videos on the software.

But this setup is simple and easy to use.  I can set it up quite easily and be up and running in about a minute.  You can of course always email me here.  I am still learning how to be a film maker and such.  I never actually went to school for it.  Just took accounting, computers and photography in school.  This I will pick up on my own.  Oh yeah!  The photo was taken with an Apple iPhone 8 Plus.  Another tool in the pocket of a photographer.

The importance of computers and post processing.

I have two Apple computers.  A late 2015 iMac with a 5k 27" retina monitor with a 2GB video card, 1TB fusion drive and 32GB of memory.  I also have an early 2013 Macbook Pro with a 2.7Ghz processor, a 500GB SSD hard drive, 1TB video card and 16GB of RAM.

I absolutely love both of these computers.  Why?  Because they just work.  They're responsive and I don't have to fix them every couple of days.  They just work.  I edit 1080p 60fps video on both using FCP X and edit 20.2 megapixel photos created with multiple Canon EOS 6D bodies and various lenses.

I use Mac computers because the administration and upkeep is pretty non existent compared to any Windows bases PC's.  I work for a federal government department that use Windows 7 and Windows 8 PC's.  Let me tell you, they are a headache compared to Macs.  Driver updates, software updates, hardware replacements etc.  For home, you go Mac or nothing else.  Yeah, Macs are more expensive, but you get what you pay for.  In my time, I've built my own Frankenstein PC's and used different MS operating systems from Windows 98 to Windows 10.  When I need things to work, I use an OS X based computer.