A really quick post to share a couple of tools that I’ve found useful in my studies so far.

I’ve used Evernote for a while, but since beginning the course, it has really come into its own. It allows you to create notes in your account from any of your devices.

For example, my job involves sitting in front of a computer for much of the day. For the time that I’m not or on the bike ride home (often the time when I have the best ideas), I’ll have my phone in my pocket. Once home I’ll be close to either my desktop or my wife’s laptop. All of these are connected to the same account, meaning that I can add thoughts, pictures or links from any of them and they’ll automatically update onto all devices. Being often pushed for time, I’ve found it useful to be able to write the text for a post on here or my other blog a bit at a time on Evernote, before copying across.

I’ve also found it useful to create shot lists for forthcoming exercises from the course notes so that I have them with me wherever I am. When your memory is as poor as mine, you need all the help you can get. I use the free version and it does everything I need it to.

I’m a late comer to Pinterest, but came across it after watching The Art of Photography podcast. Ted uses it to gather examples of whatever subject he may be speaking about. I’ve found it useful for gathering images that I like or that want to remember for the future. It works like the old cork board and pins that you might have had in your kitchen once upon a time. It’s much more satisfying than a list of bookmarks in a browser and creates a flow of the pictures that I’ve ‘pinned’. You can also subscribe to other people’s boards, seeing what they pin. It’s also one of the best sources I’ve found for discovering classic photography works. For example, when I was looking for this picture, not only did I find it on Pinterest, but I found several boards where other people had collected either other Fred Herzog work or similar images. A warning though, it can be a real time thief as you flow from one board to the next, following leads.

My pinterest boards are here.

In other news, you may have read (and enjoyed) my post on Sunday night featuring pictures from the National Cyclocross Championships. Despite being on my student blog, I hawked the link around social media a little and it did very nice things to my stats. I usually bump along at 50-odd hits a day, but a few carefully aimed Tweets meant I ended up with 5000+ in two days. I hope that my new followers will not be too disappointed when the blog reverts to write-ups of exercises and assignments…