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liamsmithphotography · 5 years ago

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How to choose a wedding photographer

liam smith photography

Top tips on how to choose your wedding photographer

Know your fine art from your reportage

Look at lots of complete weddings, not just portfolios

Meet in person

Make sure you like them!

Understand what's included in each package

It's an age old question, how do you choose a wedding photographer...this is a long one, let's start with some LOL's...

Understanding the different terminology used when describing wedding photography style is integral to narrowing down your searches. I spent hours trying to define my own style. My work is fun, and it's also documentary. Wait... I've got it. 'Funcumentary' Don't you love a good portmanteau? Blend two styles of photography to invent a brand new one, how about, fine art and documentary? "fineocumentary" or "docart". Liam Smith – best docart photographer in the world (n.b, Liam is the only docart photographer in the world and wins by default) To answer my own question, how do you choose a wedding photographer? The answer is choose me...I'm obviously hilarious.

What are these stupid words I keep reading, what styles are there? What do these words mean? I believe in creating great images. I've read endless blog posts and magazine articles trying to define what a photography style is and what it means. In my years of experience I have found that there are essentially two types; posed and unposed. Unposed can be referred to as candid, photojournalistic or documentary, essentially they are the same thing; capturing people unawares. Counter to this there are posed images; fine art or traditional. These images are orchestrated and the photographer is in complete control of the outcome. So who cares? It's easy for people within the wedding industry to forget that there is a world outside it. Phrases are coined and banded about and then thrown at the customer expecting them to know what they mean. If I question these terms objectively, fine art sounds like each image is going to take as long as a painting and photojournalism sounds like my wedding is going to be photographed like a war-zone. This is of course me being dramatic, but I hope you can see my point. Documentary/Photojournalism/Candid Documentary wedding photography (sometimes called photojournalism) refers to capturing natural moments, no staging or posing. The intention is to provide the couple with a narrative of the day, it doesn’t matter what happens on the day, your photographer will record it. Grandma falls over; click. Grooms scrunched up crying face; click. This is the real stuff. Pure emotions. No pretending. Great documentary photographers are masters of composition. Patiently waiting to create artwork out of serendipitous moments. Timing is everything. You have to be in the mix, switched on and up close and personal with people. Documentary photographers will also take couple portraits and group pictures. I've written in more detail about documentary wedding photography here Here's an example of being in the moment. Documenting events as they happen.

Fine art Fine art wedding photography focuses on recording your day in the most beautiful and elegant way possible. Lots of bright colours, clean whites, couple portraits and details. Stunning pictures that would look amazing on the mantelpiece or in an album. Fine art wedding photographers are masters of light and styling. Being able to find soft, even light is a must and a keen eye to arrange details to capture that editorial feel is a sure sign of a good fine art photographer. The main man of the fine art world is Jose Villa, his work is exceptional, “For me, it is all about making something beautiful, even if I have to insert myself into the situation. Ultimately, my goal is to craft vibrant, energetic, fine art images that are as unique as the people in the photographs.”

N.B Fine art wedding photographers often take photographs using old school film - expect their fees to be considerably higher if they do. Takeaway/What to Google Documentary/Photojournalism/Candid wedding photography – beautiful images, story telling, documenting not posing, people focused. Fine art wedding photography – beautiful images, posing where necessary, lots of details.

Should I meet my wedding photographer before booking? In short. Yes. For me, this is the second most important factor after the images themselves when deciding on who should photograph your wedding. I always say at client meetings that they have to like me. How much you can like someone in an hours meeting may sound silly, but your gut instinct is rarely wrong. If the vibe isn't right, go with someone else. In order for you to relax, you need to like the person who will be spending the day with you. Of course they won't be partying and socialising, but if you don't feel like you trust them, then ultimately you won't relax, they won't get the pictures you want and everybody loses. Knowing when it's not a right fit is an integral part of the process. A wedding is a collaboration, you have to be able to work together. Even if you choose a documentary wedding photographer who won't be posing you, you still need to trust them. There may be a moment happening right in front of you and the photographer nowhere to be seen. If you can't trust that they are off somewhere else capturing an equally important picture, then you won't relax and you won't enjoy your day to it's fullest. Meet them. It's one of the best investments you'll make in your wedding.

What defines a good photographer? This is also tricky as it is so subjective. Awards are difficult to judge a photographer by as some are more valuable than others. Certain awarding bodies use client feedback to judge the photographers quality of images and service. Others prioritise certain styles, so it's worth investigating whether or not the wedding photography award has come from a relevant and established source. Who are these sources? WPJA, Fearless Photographers, Masters of Wedding Photography. Directories have their own awards, but only award to those who advertise with them. 'Top 50' round up posts are a technique used to get links to websites. Some photography bodies give you an award for submitting which means you can then call yourself 'award winning'. I have won an MoWP award, of which I am immensely proud. If I were to pin such a big decision on a question or statement, it would come down to this; when you look at their work, do you feel something? Great images move people. They stir something in the soul. Whether laughter or tears, if you can feel a connection to the images, and the people within them without even knowing them, then it's a great picture and you've found yourself a great photographer.

Look at the blog in serious detail Portfolios are there to give you a wow. The blog is there to tell you the whole story. A portfolio could be made up from 100 or more weddings. A blog is one day. Even if a photographer only blogs the most insane weddings it will still show you what they delivered to the client. If you are happy with that then add them to your shortlist. Important frequently asked questions and top tips A few thoughts and important questions to consider when trying to choose a wedding photographer. How much should I budget? This is of course dependent on your personal circumstance, no one should ever consider stretching themselves financially for the sake of a wedding. I love weddings, I think they're truly magical. But life is long, your family grows and develops, magical moments happen on multiple occasions. Whether it's a wedding day, the birth of a child or buying your first house and rolling around on the carpets, life is full of joy, pay what you can afford. Between £1000 and £2000 is realistic for someone who is good. “Define good” some may cry. Well that's subjective, and I can't. You have to use your judgement on this one and trust your gut. An iMac with the same spec laptop that I'm currently typing on would be one thousand pounds more expensive. Some products are more expensive because of their quality, some are based upon branding. Look at the photographers portfolio and then examine their blog posts in detail. Only then will you be able to gauge what a full days wedding looks like and then make a judgement on call on whether that represents good value. Do I need two photographers? If you love documentary wedding photography, consider this; with a single photographer shooting in a photo-journalistic style, there is no guarantee that all of your guests will be captured in an image. Does this bother you? Maybe it doesn't. Keep in mind that the photographer won't know how your most treasured guests are. A second photographer can be a valuable asset as although it goes against my documentary ideology, the second photographer could arrange formal photographs to make sure that your most important persons are photographed in some capacity. If you're a purist like me then ignore that bit, I like to give both sides of the coin. If your budget will allow it aim for two, more pictures is never a bad thing. Note, this is likely to push your costs up to the £2-3k mark. How many hours coverage do I need? When whittling down the shortlist, working out how exactly how many hours you need might save you money. Magazines for some reason say from bridal prep to the first dance. WHICH I HATE. Many couples don't have a first dance. And what if you don't want photographs taken in the morning? Ten to twelve hours should be about right for the vast majority of people. I always say to clients the best way to judge this is based upon the general vibes of the day. If you know that your crew is going to rave until the early AM, then twelve hours might be a good idea to make sure you capture all the madness. In my experience, ten hours is usually plenty. It gives you approximately an hour and a half of getting ready and another hour or so of the evening dancing. What's included?/what do I need in a package? One photographer, ten hours, £1000-£2000 is the average cost in the UK. With that in mind, ignore books in the first instance - you can always buy one later. I always recommend to clients that they book as many hours as they can if cost is an issue, they will always have the photographs and can save up for albums and prints at a later date. Do I need an engagement shoot? I think the question should be asking yourself is why do you want an engagement shoot? If the answer is 'to get used to the camera', then it may be worth considering the reality of that for a moment. If you prefer documentary style images, there's no need to pose, so no need to get used to the camera. Documentary photographers are skilled at being unobtrusive and capturing people off guard. Practising poses will not put you or the photographer at ease as you're both engaged in an activity that neither of you want. IF however, you love fine art style images, then engagement shoots are perfect. It gives you a chance to understand your best body position for posed photographs and gives you an idea of likely how long your posed pictures will take on the day. Gut instinct shouldn't be ignored. It exists for a reason. It's not a random part of your brain making decisions. It's a combination of all of your thoughts, feelings and experiences coming to the fore at an important moment. Trust it. The wedding is in the evening/winter etc. will lighting be a problem? You need to know the answer to this when choosing a wedding photographer if it applies. Any wedding photographer worth their salt will have equipment that can deal with low light levels. It is however, something to consider. Shooting in low light is difficult at the best of times. It's near impossible without high end equipment. -If your photographer is cheap, chances are, they won't have high end gear and will struggle to shoot in low light. If you are having a candlelit wedding ceremony, then these are questions you will have to ask. I received this message from a bride and it is a fantastic question. “Our ceremony is in the afternoon and will be by candlelight. We both don’t like staged photos and are looking for a creative photographer that can shoot gorgeous photos in a candlelit/fairy light environment. We are very aware good photos depend on lighting etc. and are very keen to hear your take on this. Would that be something you would be able to help us with? Do you by any chance have some photos to show from other night weddings? The plan is to create a fairy light backdrop for the ceremony (which will take in a separate area) with candles in the aisle next to the chairs. In this scenario there would be no light coming from above. Do you anticipate that being a problem? There is a beam that runs the length of the aisle that we could always wrap in more fairy lights if you think that might help. In the barn where the dinner and party will take place there will be a festoon light ceiling and a festoon light backdrop behind the main table. On the tables there will be candles, additionally there are loads of lights all over the barn that can selectively be turned on and dimmed. I look forward to hearing from you!" Here is my reply: There are two main considerations when working in low light. One – the images will be grainy Two – candlelight only from below can cast unflattering shadows I’ve attached a few images for your consideration. The first image is an example of how low light levels (only lit by the fairy lights) will result in what’s called ‘grain’ on the photographs. It’s simply unavoidable, but something you should certainly be aware of. Personally I don’t think it matters and often adds character to an image, particularly black and white photographs.

It's worth noting that when light only comes from below the shadows can be unflattering. Image two I photographed in a particularly dark barn. This is a combination of fairy lights and ‘candle light’ bulbs worked very well to produce well lit photographs whilst maintaining the ambience. The bulbs fill in the shadows and provide more even lighting across the face.

My recommendation would be to have a combination of the two, candles for ambience and fairy lights to add to the ambient light. Another consideration is the heat from the candles if they will also be your primary light source. I’ve seen the Gentlemen get quite hot in a three piece woollen suit stood next to candles! To reflect Low light equals grain. Grain is not indicative of bad pictures, only low light. If you are having a candlelit wedding ceremony you should definitely ask if the photographers you have shortlisted have example images to share with you.

How do I approach the day? – Blending the styles I believe that weddings should be photographed with care and compassion as well as integrity. Capturing the narrative of the day, true to events. Weddings are an opportunity to dress up. Thought goes into every outfit, from the bride to the second aunt, everyone considers how they will look and wants to look their best. I believe that the bride and groom should also have a series of images that document the connection between them and have them looking amazing. This is possible if you shoot in a documentary style and I believe gives more genuine images than pure fine art. By mixing the two you have the benefit of controlling the location, the light and the basic body positioning, but then you let your confidence as a documentary photographer take over and let the moment unfold naturally. Believe me this takes serious practice and belief in yourself as it can feel super awkward at first, but you have to be bold, if you’re confident, then your client is confident in you. Continue as if this is absolutely normal. I've found if you stand maybe twenty feet away and say "I'm going to shoot this one quite wide so feel free to chat" something magical happens. All of a sudden they feel free to express themselves, everything becomes more relaxed and the real people emerge, not the 'people in that pose'. Then, because you told a fib and you actually have a 50mm lens on, you can shoot at f1.4 and capture those dreamy fine art style images which have all the blown highlights and shallow depth of field, AND capture a natural moment. Hazaahs all round. Here's the magic Here's an example to demonstrate my point. Here we have a beautiful couple and a beautiful location and an outrageously sunny day. The control part from me is placing them in this location under the willow tree. I have used my knowledge of light, environment etc. to place them in a setting I know will look good. The boughs of willow trees create a perfect canvas of elegant greens to create a couple portrait. Next, my instructions are thus "enjoy yourselves, the wedding flies by so take this opportunity to be together in the moment". They look great, the light looks good and everything is peachy. Then I say "I'm going to shoot this one quite wide so feel free to chat!". Then the most extraordinary thing happens. It's as if people feel like they’re no longer being watched and the most intimate moments happen. I've heard of some photographers who say to their clients "imagine a comet is about to hit earth and these are your last few moments, what would you do?". Whilst this may work for some, having to enact a scenario isn’t real to me, plus my clients would probably tell me to fuck off, after all, they did hire me because of my documentary *ahem* unposed style :). The recent image that went viral is a beautiful example of how inviting clients to interact can work. The instruction in that image was "whisper in her ear why you married her". The sentiment is beautiful as is the resulting image, but if we're going all purist, is that a real moment? If my one aim is to show clients images of themselves that they recognise, will they look back on that image and say 'that was the most amazing moment of my life' or 'that was when the photographer instructed us etc. and I cried'? Here is the magic moment. No instruction from me, everything apart from the location is spontaneous. Even the holding of the dress looks amazing, but had nothing to do with me. For me this is the perfect blend of fine art and documentary. The image is absolutely them, this is how they interact, how they stand, how they hold each other. Its magic.

The one thing clients always say The second best thing about this image? We were only gone from the crowd for fifteen minutes. Everyone tells me they hate it at weddings when the bride and groom disappear for the entire drinks reception for photographs. There's simply no need. Find a nice spot, be calm, relax, let the magic happen. It's a moment, it only lasts for a few seconds and then it's gone, so you have to be ready. So Liam what do you do for the other 99% of the day? I take pictures like this:

Liam Smith is a documentary wedding photographer from mars (probably) If you like the look of my work and my philosophy, hey, why not get in touch?

https://www.facebook.com/liamsmithphotography/ https://twitter.com/smithlphoto https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamsmithphotography/ http://youtube.com/channel/UCDRq0noH6kh0afzWK0zt_qw https://www.instagram.com/liam_smith_photography/

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househunting · 7 years ago

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do you have any tips for making dorm rooms look and feel nicer? the one I'm going to be staying in has a ton of old wood built-ins and laminate floors and not really much extra floor space

Yes!! I never lived in a dorm, but there are two (very opposite) directions I would want to go if I had a dorm. I’m actually going to run with the first one and do the second one - wood and white brick Usonia 1940s minimalism - in a separate post if anyone is interested haha. I’m laughing as I’m writing this post because you asked how to make your dorm look nicer and I’m like, REVERT IT TO YOUR TWELVE YEAR OLD BEDROOM. altho I guess you’re probably 18, so maybe you don’t even remember this vibe. Turn your dorm room into MY twelve year old bedroom.

First, my heart of hearts would want to go full on Y2K Lizzie McGuire teen dream room from the first generation of AIM fanatics, like right before Myspace took off. Think pre-Mean Girls but post-Clueless. It was such a great time that was very ~cybergurl~ inspired, futuristic and retro at the same time.

I highly recommend going with a color scheme that is one of the following:

-turquoise and lime green

-hot pink and bright orange

-purple and zebra stripes

I would absolutely have to have a blow up chair (SIDE NOTE THIS IS ELEVEN DOLLARS WHY DOES EVERYONE NOT HAVE AN INFLATABLE CHAIR???) and beaded curtain to set the mood right (the exact kind of beaded curtain we were trying to avoid in this post).

A tacky ass lava lamp is necessary aswell. I had this glitter one when I was a y2k cybergurl but I also like this classic one. I think it’s really interesting how the 70s informed the early 2000s - lots of bright colorblocking with 1-3 colors, shag rugs, lava lamps, beaded curtains...

After looking at all this stuff Amazon recommended these “groovy flower decals” to me and I feel like they fit right in so I’m putting them here too.

The right linens like these sheets are required. Maybe even ombre curtains? Bonus points if you’re into a sport and do like, soccer ball sheets with an accent soccer ball pillow.

You need a weird shaped rug. I really wanted to find a splatter rug but something like this works too. Or just a shag rug. Why is this so cheap???

Honestly I’m really extra and would want a landline phone. They’re only like $9/mo and you could get a cool clear one like this, even tho it’s 80s and not y2k.

Take your iBook to class in your inflatable backpack! This is actually really practical for Seattle because it’s waterproof, lol. This one is cheaper but might be miniature?

Aaaand the look would not be complete without an iMac G3 obviously. Which you can somehow buy it on Amazon which I do not understand at all? I found one on the side of the road the other day so this is probably way overpriced but goddamn they are cool looking.

Lol I’m sorry for giving you an awful answer to your question but I had so much fun with this tbh

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sweet-star-cookie · 6 years ago

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Wreck-It Ralph 2 Thoughts

I normally don’t make this kind of post considering how long it has been out, but after seeing the WIR2 trailer when seeing Incredibles 2 (for the third time lol), I think I’ve articulated what makes me wary of what we’ve seen so far from it.

What sticks out to me the most is the era of the internet that they chose to explore with this sequel. I know I wasn’t the only one raising her eyebrow at the idea of WIR2 tackling the topic of the internet, especially after a certain other movie, but we’ll get to that.

I understand the need to appeal to modern audiences. Every studio worth their salt will attempt to do this in some way, it’s just good business. But what I liked about the first WIR movie was how they integrated the setting while staying focused on their story and characters. It felt authentic, but wasn’t in your face about it. I’m in my 20s (17 when I watched the first movie), so I was only familiar with a lot of the references and games present in WIR due to a supplementary knowledge of video games. But in the grand scheme of the story, I didn’t need to know this information to enjoy the movie at all. I could get a smile from seeing a licensed character I knew, sure, but at the end of the day I still cared about Ralph and Vanellope and everyone else relevant to the plot at hand.

WIR2’s trailer seems to be ditching this idea, at least somewhat. I feel like they jumped the gun a bit when attempting to connect the already established world of WIR to our modern world, which, if we’re following by years, has at least a 30 year gap in time. Yet in the trailer we see Litwack installing the blue iMac I had as a kid in the early 2000s and interacting with the likes of Amazon, EBay, and so on. Not to say that some of these things didn’t exist near this time, but they were largely in their infancy (dial-up internet anyone?)

I think they missed a huge opportunity to tie in the history of video games with WIR2, or at the very least they’re not advertising it as such. The console wars between Nintendo and Sega during the 90s swung a big hit at arcades once home consoles became more popular, and they could have easily made this story about obsolescence when it came to Ralph and company. They touched on this idea in the first movie with introducing Hero’s Duty into the arcade, and I think that laid the groundwork for expansion. You could even have the opposite side of the argument with Felix and Calhoun being able to adapt more easily to the changing times based on Calhoun’s more modern sensibilities, and the quite literal marriage of the two eras. Even if you have no knowledge of the gaming scene, that is secondary to the idea of technology constantly evolving, something we all deal with every day.

And now I think it’s time to address the elephant in the room: The Emoji Movie. While I don’t intend to populate this post with my opinions on this...film... necessarily, I think it’s still important to bring up when discussing what has been shown in WIR2 so far. I experienced TEM through a theatre rip on the internet during an extreme fit of depression last summer, and I can say with certainty that it didn’t improve my mood on the matter. More importantly, however, the presentation of the internet world in WIR2 bears an uncanny resemblance to the world of Textopolis in TEM, and watching the trailer gave me uncomfortably similar vibes. There’s a joke about clickbait that is almost directly ripped from TEM, and that sent my alarm bells ringing immediately. Never mind the cloying product placement and blatant pandering that plagues every inch of TEM, which isn’t exactly absent from WIR2 from what we’ve seen.

What I’m getting at here is WIR was never about frantically pointing out references that only a certain set of people will get, even if they were all around you when watching the film. If they wanted to avoid that with the sequel, I feel like they needed a different approach to their setting. From what we’ve seen from the outside world in this universe, it’s not that different in setup from ours, and presumably it would follow a similar history.

Perhaps they could go with the angle of the modernity existing in the internet realm a bit more than normal to play on the themes of growing old, but then you have scenes with baby Moana using a device that wouldn’t be invented until around the 2010s. It’s a bit jarring for me. Maybe instead of mobile games, Ralph and company could jump to consoles? Arcade games from this time were often ported to home consoles in an attempt to give players that same arcade experience, but with varying degrees of success. I can picture a joke about reduced graphics or sound quality in there somewhere.

I’m not sure what Disney has planned for WIR and whether or not this will be its only sequel, but I don’t see how it would be necessary to immediately connect to modernity if they already have characters and settings established in a specific era prior to it. Even if they moved on to another era in the sequel, wouldn’t it have made more sense to use the one that came immediately after? You could strike a balance between the kids today who like video games, and the kids that are now my age who remember the games from their childhoods, like the games from the first movie the adults remembered playing. WIR always had that edge of nostalgia, so it seems a bit odd not to capitalize on that, especially now.

But maybe that’s not the approach Disney wants with this movie, and at the end of the day I still want WIR2 to be good, even if it deviates from the original concept of the first movie. The video game nerd in me really loved the first movie, but not just for the references. There was more to it than that, and I hope there is for the sequel too. Disney has a knack for surprising us, so maybe they’ll do it again. Despite my wariness, the best I can do is wait and see.

(Seriously though, why isn’t it called Ralph Wrecks the Internet?????)

#wreck it ralph #wir #wreck it ralph 2 #wir2 #ralph breaks the internet #thoughts #rant #long post

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ohiamahugefknnerd · 4 years ago

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Bold of you to assume that being the lovable NPC and a cyborg are somehow mutually exclusive.

Deeply considiring your future cyborg/android construction materials gives me major bi vibes.

Also note the option for CHROMATIC clear plastic introduced shortly after...

Red jelly shoes.

Orange iMac G3.

Antifreeze green Nokia faceplate.

Blue inflatable couch.

Purple gameboy.

This fkn pink belt.

These will also forever known as items that radiate bisexual energy. If you owned these items and/or liked this post, you’re bi now. I don’t make the rules.

Also, thank you, Tumblr algorithm.

if I was a cyborg I would want all of my mechanical parts to be like 90s clear plastic so you could clearly see all the machine guts inside and I think that's really sexy of me.

#nokia #gameboy color #imac g3 #bi energy #bisexuality intensifies #90s #i don’t make the rules #tumblr algorithm #i feel attacked #harsh truths

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years ago

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That Time $50 Used Apple Laptops Caused a Stampede

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

There’s been a lot in the news lately about kids trying to embrace the weird world of remote learning.

The problem is that the technology, while it’s ready to handle such use cases, isn’t as accessible on a universal scale as it needs to be.

To put it another way: Many school districts, due to budget considerations, still do not give away laptops or tablets to every student in the way that most employers give their employees a laptop (or possibly even a phone). We may believe the children are our future, but good luck getting someone to put in a down payment on a decent computer during a pandemic.

The truth is, though, that this has always been a challenge. The pandemic simply puts it into sharp relief.

Back in 2005, another strange situation put this into sharp relief—although that situation was a bit more manmade.

Let’s go back to the time a school district decided to sell its old iBooks for $50, and the havoc that decision wrought.

23,000

The number of iBooks that Apple supplied to Henrico County, Virginia in 2001, in two separate shipments—one for high schoolers and one for middle schoolers. The plan, which was timed to the 2001 announcement of the white polycarbonate iBook G3 “Snow,” reflected how the county school district, outside of Richmond, was ahead of its time on technology, having purchased the proverbial “laptop for every student” at a time when computers in the classroom for most meant having a well-stocked computer lab. “This is the mammoth–the single largest sale of portable computers in education ever,” Steve Jobs said in a news release at the time. (That said, it does appear that many of the laptops Henrico County received were of the older first-gen iBook style, akin to the original iMac.)

How Henrico County became an iBook innovator before it became a weird footnote

There are two stories about the Henrico County, Virginia school district worth discussing in the context of computing history: The fact that the school may have been one in the first in the country to give a laptop to nearly every student, and what happened to those laptops after the district decided to upgrade.

The first is a story about a forward-thinking district leveraging its largesse for the purposes of equipping its student body for the future. The second, unfortunately, kind of has a Lord of the Flies-type vibe.

Let’s spend a little time talking about the first part, because it really was an innovative program. In 2001, Henrico County entered into a lease-to-own program with Apple, at a cost of $18.5 million, to supply an entire district with laptops. Dr. Mark Edwards, the superintendent of the Henrico County School District, spoke positively of the program when it was first launched.

“The iBook is going to change education in terms of how we teach and learn,” Edwards said in a promotional video for the second-generation iBook. “It’s a tool for collaboration; it’s a tool for invention, for exploration. With that, we developed a vibrant learning community where everyone is a learner and everyone is a teacher.”

The Apple deal had ripple effects—other nearby schools, such as Lindsay Middle School further down Interstate 64 in Hampton, Virginia, also started experimenting with laptops around this time, and other districts across the country started using laptops at slightly smaller scales. Apple’s long-standing push toward education, which helped keep the company afloat even during lean years, seemed like it was getting a few successful hits thanks to the iBook.

(Heck, Apple even developed its own specialized cart for holding the laptops when they were not in use, for schools that didn’t want students to take them home.)

But being an educational setting, there were (of course!) hiccups in Henrico County. While the program drew positive initial headlines, it gained its first hint of notoriety after 50 to 60 students were caught downloading porn on their machines—which (of course!) led to news coverage. One concerned parent let his opinion on the laptops be known.

“We have given them adult equipment—tools,” he said in comments to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “We have given them to kids who are using them as toys. We’re passing it down the line to kids who aren’t quite ready to use it and they’re going ape.”

And students were attempting to hack into the school district’s systems to change grades.

But Henrico County was willing to correct mistakes as needed. The wired network, which the teachers largely used, was separated from the wireless one that the students did. And in a 2002 article about the laptop program, Henrico schools technology director Mike Smith noted that the district had pretty good content filtering—an upgraded version that was 95 to 98 percent effective. He was a realist about the other 2 to 5 percent.

“The porn industry wants to get to children,” he told the Associated Press in 2002. “As long as that’s the case, you’re never going to be able to block 100 percent of it.”

All in all, pretty much what you would expect for the launch of a laptop program for classrooms in 2001.

$4M

The amount that Dell reportedly undercut Apple in a successful bid in 2005 to win the laptop contract for high-school students that Apple had earned for the iBook sale in 2001. (The middle-school contract largely stayed in place.) While the county said it valued its relationship with Apple, that deal was expensive to keep—and by the time the district started working with Dell, it had spent $43.6 million with Apple over four years.

A white second-generation iBook G3. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The day that Henrico County’s wide-scale iBook experiment turned ugly

When it comes to computers in highly organized contexts like education or business, there’s a constant need to upgrade. Generally, the cycle is around three years, maybe longer if your budget is tight.

With Henrico County, the cycle was about four years. I know this because of the strange situation that happened at the Richmond International Raceway on August 16, 2005. On that day, the county held a surplus sale in which the district sold these laptops, which originally went for around $1,400 new, for the bargain-basement price of $50.

The news stories, which got significantly more international press than the original agreement between Henrico County and Apple did, implied that desperation was driving the people trying to get these computers. People got trampled. Some needed medical care. Someone lost their sandal during the melee. One person wet themselves while waiting in line.

But these were $50 wireless-enabled computers at a time when, if you went to the Apple Store, $49 could buy you a mouse. For many families without access to technology, the value proposition spoke for itself.

Still, these laptops were fairly out of date at the time, but not to the point of uselessness. While you could get online with them, they would likely be quite pokey with the latest version of Mac OS X at the time, 10.4 Tiger. And they were soon to be made completely obsolete by the transition away from PowerPC announced two months prior.

And again, these were laptops used by high schoolers in all states of disarray. This may have been the most expensive thing a young teen ever owned, and odds are high that they’re going to break it. If a kid got a hold of a lighter and used it to melt down some of the plastic, or decided to draw on the back with a permanent marker, all that stuff was still there.

But they were computers, and they worked. And for some people, that’s all that mattered.

Now, surplus programs are generally not promoted very much, are low-key affairs, and are ways to get a computer on the cheap.

But that’s not what happened in Richmond. It was announced publicly, including on the school district’s website, and promoted to the media. A passage from the announcement:

A unique opportunity is available from Henrico County Public Schools. Used Apple iBook laptop computers will be on sale for $50 each, with a one-per-person limit. The one-day sale will be held Tuesday, Aug. 9 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

One thousand laptops will be sold at the school warehouse—361 Dabbs House Road beside the Eastern Government Center—on a first-come, first-serve basis. Only cash or checks will be accepted.

The white, Power PC 750s with 12-inch screens have 320 megabytes of memory, Mac OS 10.2.8, and AppleWorks 6.2.9.

The public announcement that the district was getting rid of a thousand iBooks created a frenzy, one that spread far beyond the school district’s borders and hit the international news. For one thing, Apple blogs drew attention to the event, and Apple fans are crazy, so many of them legitimately discussed traveling long distances to get a $50 laptop.

While the school district managed the devices while they were still in the classroom, the Henrico County government handled their sale and disposal, and did so in a fairly haphazard way.

Trying to find images or video of this thing that happened was surprisingly hard; I couldn’t even find video of the incident. Here’s a contemporary screenshot of a news report at the time. Image: Internet Archive

Case in point on this issue: A quote from a guy who was beating people with a lawn chair in an effort to protect his spot in line.

“I took my chair here and threw it over my shoulder and I went, ‘Bam,’” the guy said. “They were getting in front of me, and I was there a lot earlier than them, so I thought that it was just.”

(That quote was enough to draw the attention of famed Microsoft blogger Raymond Chen, who deadpanned of the man’s claim, “That’s one of the guiding principles this country was founded on.”)

If anything, the overwhelmed reaction to the iBooks reflected something basic: While Henrico County did its students a lot of good by purchasing these laptops, and put in a lot of work to acquire them and run its program, the program did not go far enough. The school district spent tens of millions of dollars on these machines, and when they were spent, the district tried to extend their life in the most haphazard way possible.

The district didn’t even bother to limit the sale to county residents until it started getting attention on Apple blogs. And by then, the buzz around the selloff all but guaranteed a bad result.

Looking at it now, the tragedy of the situation is much more clear: There were lots of people in its community that could use these machines, and even selling them for cheap left people out. A quote from Paul Proto, the director of general services for Henrico County, seemed telling to a degree, a general misunderstanding of the situation.

“It's rather strange that we would have such a tremendous response for the purchase of a laptop computer—and laptop computers that probably have less-than-desirable attributes,” Proto said to the Associated Press. “But I think that people tend to get caught up in the excitement of the event—it almost has an entertainment value.”

Yes, that is probably the most common, least charitable interpretation of what happened that day. But on the other hand, what if that value was handed off to people who needed it the right way, say, through a nonprofit like Goodwill?

This was the age before the smartphone, when real internet access required a computer. I imagine some of these people just wanted a way to get online, or at the very least, an extra machine to tinker with or hand off to their kids.

One has to wonder if we are too quick to throw off good technology just because it’s outdated.

3.8%

The approximate value that the iBook G3 devices sold by Henrico County kept over four years, based on their $1,299 list price in 2001 and $50 selling price in 2005. (One presumes that Apple gave the school district a discount.) That means that someone who started high school in Henrico County in 2001 saw the laptop that got them through four years of school lose 96 percent of its value through normal use. Can you imagine an equivalent device depreciating at the same rate today?

We’re 15 years past the Henrico County stampede, with a bigger need for older devices than ever. And we’re struggling to manage them correctly

Part of the reason I found myself reflecting on this story was a discussion I had with a Twitter pal of mine, John Bumstead, a recycler and reseller who specializes in old Apple equipment through his company RDKL, Inc.

Bumstead often sees old machines like vintage iBooks and MacBooks pass through his purview, many of which are good enough to reuse. But for many recyclers, there is often a cost/benefit equation at play. The way he put it to me involved electric drills getting taken to iBooks. At some point, the value equation may mean even working machines find their way to the scrap heap—because its raw materials are worth more than the machine itself.

“Recyclers have the unenviable task of deciding the fate of millions of devices—scrap it, or if it’s valuable enough as what it is (a usable computer), sell it to those who would repair/refurbish,” he explained in an interview. “A laptop has about a $10 scrap value, meaning if its parts are broken down (plastic, board, screen, battery, metal), the material can be sold for about $10.”

Perhaps the saddest examples, at least on the Apple side, are the “cloud-locked” machines, which are otherwise perfectly functional but made useless by anti-theft functions contained in iCloud. Many customers get rid of their devices without turning off this functionality, and the result is that phones, iPads, even modern laptops are of no resale value beyond the worth of their metal.

During normal times, stuff like this is already bad enough. But we’re facing a historic need for computers—particularly those just powerful enough to get a 7-year-old through a virtual learning session while working remote. And computing disparities can remove learning gains. While many schools have options like Chromebooks and iPads available, many others do not.

Bumstead notes that, as a non-certified refurbisher, he’s often not put up against the more stringent standards for certification. While it limits his access to machines from more traditional supply chains, in a way, this has put him in an unusual situation where he ends up taking the machines deemed not good enough for other recyclers—often polycarbonate MacBooks that can still access the modern Internet and still work just fine with a little TLC, but are more than a decade past their sell-by date. (The video above explains his POV on this situation.)

“I’ve sold hundreds in the last few months to people using them for school. And the irony is that they came from schools, were retired to recyclers, became half-destroyed in the process … then I pieced them back together and sold them back into circulation for students of the schools to use,” he said. “It begs the question: Why didn’t the schools just continue using them? Or better yet, why didn’t they give them to students directly?”

As for the reaction Henrico County saw for its iBooks in 2005? Bumstead gets it, based on what he sees in the modern day. For many buying these machines, the need for technology often outpaces their knowledge of what makes a good gadget for their given situation. While the technically inclined might find value in the dumpster, expectations need to be set when it comes to things like laptops with working webcams and functional Wi-Fi.

“People simply don’t know what they are buying; they are simply mesmerized by the Apple symbol,” he said. “And unfortunately at a time like this, that probably leads to them getting ripped off.”

I don’t talk about this much, but there was a brief period of my adult life where I didn’t have a working home computer. It was maybe about four or five months.

And the reason that it happened comes down to a known GPU fault in the iBook G4 I had at the time. The problem hit during the worst possible time: In early 2006, amid a transition period of my life, after I had left a bad roommate situation. I was broke, and I had recently moved halfway across the country, so I got rid of a bunch of stuff before I left town, including my old desktops. Student loan bills were starting to really hit for the first time. And while I had a good job in newspapers, it was simply going to take some time to raise the money I needed to replace the dang thing.

If I had technical knowledge at the time, I perhaps could have fixed it. But the laptop was second-hand and didn’t have AppleCare, and I was hundreds of miles from the nearest Apple Store. So, instead, I kind of had to live without it. I stayed longer hours at work to handle computing-related things, and went home, and just watched Stephen Colbert and the series finale of Arrested Development. (Which, famously, ran against the Winter Olympics.)

And because I was a sucker, when I finally saved up enough money, I bought the exact same machine—this time, however, with AppleCare.

I’m sure I joked about the iBook riots online in 2005. Heck, everyone did. Had this happened when Twitter was around, it potentially could have been a far bigger pop-culture moment than the footnote it became.

But I kind of look back at this time, knowing what I know about disparities and access, and I wonder if Henrico County—despite being visionaries around the role of technology in classrooms—realized after the fact how raw a deal it was giving to those in its community who were living without home access to modern technology.

It could have been a great moment. Instead, it was a disaster.

That Time $50 Used Apple Laptops Caused a Stampede syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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mystudioflow-blog · 7 years ago

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My Recording Studio Journey pt.1 (#mystudioflow)

I spent all of my teenage and adult life writing, producing and recording my own hip hop music treating it like a hobby although I claimed I would earn my living with it one day. In 2010 at around 30 years old after years of talking the talk and thinking I knew it all. I started to realise I was wrong. I had to start being honest with myself after I went and recorded with a local producer who was much further along than I was. He was working in Pro Tools, had a much better mic and a real outboard mic pre (UA710). Whereas I was working with outdated software and had no Idea what Plugins were, how to tune vocals or dial in a compressor. When I left his house I was driving home listening to the song we did. At first I was very excited about the pop sound with my vocals tuned and a decent rough mix…. even though up until that day I was ANTI-auto tune and hated modern pop music! After playing it on repeat for about 20 minutes my mood started to change. I started to get this indescribable gut wrenching feeling. All I could think was that he was five or six years younger than me and he was leaps and bounds past where I was with my craft. He was charging $40.00 an hour producing and recording for people in his apartment and I wasn’t getting any respect or making any money because my final product sounded like GARBAGE in comparison to his. As the days passed I started bugging out and feeling depressed.

After about a week of pondering on these thoughts and tormenting myself I came to a conclusion. I was going to need to either go ALL in on music production and engineering or I needed to just quit because I felt like a joke. Considering the fact that music and studio life was always how I identified myself and I felt so overwhelmingly passionate about it. I decided there was only one option….GO ALL IN!!! First I reached out to the guy I recorded with and asked him what mic and pre amp he had. I told him I was going to get some new gear, Pro Tools and some plugins so I could start making a living doing what I love like he did. He got quiet for a moment and responded by saying “Going and buying the gear I have isn’t going to make you as good as me”……… I took it well and stayed cordial on the phone but all I could think was “Oh yeh?!? Watch me mother effer!! WHATCH ME!!

My next step was to try and convince my wife to let me spend a few grand on some of the gear and software I needed to start working towards making a living in my own studio. After a considerable amount of debating I was able to convince her to give approval on a Guitar Center card to get the ball rolling. I also sold my 1988 IROC Z Camaro, my booming system and all the crappy equipment I had in an effort to raise money for some new gear. My first burst of purchasing went like this. i3 iMac, Pro Tools 8, Waves Native Power Pack, UA610 mk2, Sterling Audio st69 mic (yuk) and a pair of Dynaudio monitors. Oh yes and I also bought auto tune. I got all the equipment hooked up and software installed. Then the long road of learning and troubleshooting could really begin! I had been mixing all my own projects for years leading up to this but still didn’t really have a good understanding of mixing and mastering. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Over the next year or so I was layed off from work and home during the day with 2 babies trying to learn audio engineering while being Mr. Mom. I would wake up in the middle of the night and end up in my basement studio watching You Tube videos and franticly researching trying to learn my craft. I was reading books for the first time in my life!! I was going to Barns And Noble to escape my family and read all the audio magazines for free. About 2 years after my BIG decision to go all in on learning my craft we moved our family of four from Connecticut to Cape Coral, FL . This is where my wife is from and where we met years before. Shortly after arriving in Florida a friend at work recommended that I put an add on Craigslist as a home recording studio. That evening I sat down and did just that! It only took a few days and I got my first call which turned into my first steady client… A Christian Rapper. I was so excited and full of nerves for the first few sessions considering I had only recorded myself and a few friends up until that point and had never really charged much money. I was making $8.00 more per hour in my home studio than I was making at my day job doing strenuous physical labor. This was when my bad attitude towards my day job life began to escalate rapidly. I spent about a year recording with ten to fifteen clients before I decided to go take an audio engineering class at Vibe Recording in Ft. Myers, Florida. I felt I needed to go fill in the blanks with some formal education so I could gain the confidence needed to open my own commercial recording studio. This had been my dream since my first time in a real studio at 18 years old. I actually have an earlier memory of my uncle who was the lead singer in a band that took me to his friends house who had a recording set up. He had a tape machine, microphones and a mixing board. I was about 6–8 years old and all I can remember is how floored I was. I vividly remember being very excited that they could actually record music in their basement and play it on a tape in the car!!!!! I also remember them telling me that all their equipment actually sucked and was not good quality. I was not phased by there negative comments about their crappy gear. I thought it was absolutely AMAZING! This is the same uncle (Uncle Med) who took me to my first concert when I was six years old…. Michael Jackson (BAD)!! All I know is that as far back as I can remember music was a GIANT part of my life and seemed to be what made me tic.

Ok Im loosing track of the story…

I started my classes and just fell more and more in love with the process of recording, mixing and mastering. I started engulfing myself with information. I had podcasts going all day (Pensado’s Place, Recording Studio Rockstars and Working Class Audio) as well as reading magazines and books. Along with the obvious late nights in my home studio with clients or working on my own personal productions sharpening my swords. I was spending as much time as a 40 hour working married father of three could at the studio where I took classes definitely pushing the limit at times and straining my home life. I was going to work from 7am to 3:30 or 4:00pm. Then Picking my kids up from daycare to take them home, cook them dinner and eat with the family. Then I would go straight from the dinner table to class. At the end of class I would always try to spend some extra time. Whether at the studio sitting in on sessions or at the local brewery with people from the studio. Talking music, audio and making relationships with like minded people some work nights I wouldn’t make it home till as late as 2am. Actually I was hanging around people that were smarter than me in many cases which really helped to speed up my progression. I finished the class never scoring below a 99% on any test or project which is funny considering I had ALWAYS been an F and D student growing up. I started assisting my teacher and mentor Chad Zuchegno on saturdays as well as attending the next round of classes religiously in many cases assisting in the classroom as well.

After about 3 months of assisting and attending my second round of classes I did an 11hr day helping at the studio. Doing everything from setting up the mics to getting coffees and emptying garbages (keep in mind I’m in my 30’s). At the end of the day Chad took me out for a beer and a cigar which was kind of the norm. Then as I sipped my first bear Chad looked up from texting with the other owner of the studio and asked me “Hey do you want to work a session at the studio on your own tomorrow?” This would be my first session at a real established commercial recording studio! Of course I said yes! As the evening progressed he proceeded to tell me some things I really needed to hear. He said “YOU DO BELONG in the studio”….. “YOU are already a GREAT engineer!”…. “This IS what your SUPPOSED to be doing”…. This my friends was a pivotal point for the future of my life. On my ride home that night I remember having the windows down, loudly playing my own work and letting out shouts of extreme happiness “WOOOOOOOO YEEEESSS!!!! I DID IT!!! I AM DOING IT!!! I CAN EFFING DO IT!! WOOOOHOO”.

To be continued………….

#recording studio #audio engineering #musicprodution #songwriter #mixingmusic #beatmaker #makingmusic #diy audio

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swizzleisdashizzle · 8 years ago

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SPOILERS- Episode Reactions/Thoughts

This episode was so so good. This will probably be a long ass post. -AIDA cutting the superior was a wtf moment but sort of satisfying because I hate him. - Fitz comforting a scared Jemma, awww my heart - LMD detection as Fitzsimmons walked through the door together. I predicted the 4th wouldn't be Daisy but Fitz. That scene of them trying to figure out which one was the LMD is was so brilliant and intense. At one point they had me thinking it was Jemma. - Fitz and Simmons crying = me crying - When Fitz hit his artery I knew it was on purpose. Jemma was so caring despite the situation, that's when it was confirmed that Fitz is was a LMD and boy was I telling her not to go near him. - Fitz STABBING and KNOCKING OUT Jemma. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME. - Anyway Iain and Elizabeth yet again proved how great they are at what they do. - Fake Fitz talking about marriage, FITZ WANTS TO MARRY JEMMA I AM OUT. - JEMMA STABBING FITZ, FITZ STRANGLING JEMMA, THEN BEING ALL LOVING AND THEN JEMMA PIERCED HIS THROAT. Again why would you do this to me. - Lowkey love dark Fitz. Need more of this. - Daisy thinking real Fitz is dead my poor child. - Did nobody in the room find it sketchy that Coulson was so straight faced ? Really? - The Jemma + Daisy encounter was so intense, that embrace was everything. Chloe and Elizabeth killed that. Also Daisy comforting Jemma and Jemma saying she can't lose Daisy too. Skimmons is too pure. - Aida killing Radcliffe - Thank fuck for that, he had it coming. I wanted Fitz or Jemma to do it. - Daisy's fight with Mace was so goood, SHE SMASHED A IMAC OVER HIM. Guess she doesn't like Apple or Android *da,dum,tssshhh* - Stop shooting Daisy please - Daisy's special Kamehameha move was so badass. -Suicide bomber May wtf ? - LMD May choosing to do what she believes says a lot about May as a character. That speech was so asdfgw, May has a strong mind. RIP Philinda shippers who are getting so much at once. - I'm glad Piper is alive -Daisy saying Lincoln when she got the text in the Framework. My heart was beating so fast because he'd be back but part of me lowkey wished it was Ward instead. Then they just showed the arms & got the vibe that it wasn't Lincoln. Then I saw the picture... I may have screamed "WARD!" And squealed in joy. Yes I shipped Skyeward, yes I liked Ward, cuss me watch me give one. - Coulson against inhumans ? Um what ? - Mack has his daughter hope, I want him to stay happy. - Fitz a millionaire ? yes please, he looked so good. - JEMMA SIMMONS IS DEAD ARE YOU KIDDING ME. So is real Jemma just spectating from above or just chilling in the grave ? Because technically Jemma didn't die after she entered the framework, she was already dead. So real Jemma is okay right ? Also, why was the year of her death covered tho... Hmmm - With May I was like oh she's still an agent... Cool. That turned to a HOLY SHIT SHE'S A HYDRA AGENT , HYDRA IS BACK WHAT ? The framework is gonna fuck everyone up mentally. May is probably gonna die this season. Brett is back, idk for how long but he's back. So is Aida basically a whiny ass bitch who just wants to kill people and experiment till she can finally feel emotions ?

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rgrantwylie · 8 years ago

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Brand Research: Apple

Over the past decade, Apple has really excelled itself in stature. Having released various versions of the Macintosh throughout the years and also the iPod, it was Microsoft Windows that were leading the way in the computers industry (and still do), CD’s and MP3 players were the core of the music industry and you had brands like Motorola, Nokia and Blackberry fighting at the forefront of the phone sector. However, in the past 10 years, Apple got involved more than ever and had caused a massive shift in various industries.

2007 was a big year for Apple. The iPod was remade, looking better designed than ever. The interface was enhanced, colour was included; matched by the physical product. It looked cleaner, sleeker, nicer to use and the overall experience was enhanced. The iPhone was a massive cat amongst the pigeons of the phone industry. I remember when I saw it for the first time and what caught my attention the most was the fact it ‘seamlessly’ included camera and video, plus the fact you could listen to music, browse the web and download apps. I was desperate for one back then (it took me 9 years, but I digress...). It was new, felt like the future of phones and plus it was touch screen. There wasn’t a phone like it, and people flooded towards it. The iMac really announced itself in the same year too. It was clean, different, physically looked good. Interface-wise it looked different, with a Skeuomorphic approach to its icons, gradient backgrounds. It had apps like iTunes, iPhoto, calendar, Garageband, Safari, mail, and more. Between 2007-2009 was when I started to become more interested in graphics and such. I was so interested in their products like Final Cut and other media software.

Apple really took the bull by the horns and moved to the forefront of the music, phone and were really locking horns with Microsoft on the computer front. The point of this post is to explore the brand, which if you take out of context and away from the product side of things, loses a massive amount of its attractive perception from customers.

Brand Characteristics

Simplicity

Steve Jobs was the pioneer in Apple’s rise when they had their biggest impact. His vision was to make experiences better and more simplistic, to the point it became a natural experience for the people. More advanced and enhanced. That was the purpose of the iPod. Make the experience less hassle and more enjoyable. It was the same for the iPhone. All the essentials were on the first page of the screen, and it was all accessible on the touch or swipe of an icon. No clunky keyboard pressing the same button numerous times to get what was in front of you on the screen. You’re killing the time it takes to do a task and you’re making it seamless. On the first iPhone advertisements they were hammering down the point of how quick and simple it was to do various activities, like answering a call, organising contacts, viewing the web, growing the YouTube app and the sleek interchangeability between one app to the other.

Emotions

Back then the target for Apple was to give people a sense of excitement and joy towards their products. It was positivity (and still is) and a sense of uniqueness. It was like a cool style trend that would sweep everyone thus they’d love to get on the bandwagon, alongside the fact they were interested in the product for its capabilities. Apple really went for it with their silhouette adverts for the iPod and iTunes. The vibrant colours with the opaque dancers created this positive vibe with the fact you’ve got this simplistic product and easy access to a whole load of music.

Nowadays, they don’t really take this approach the same way anymore. That buzz for a new novel product isn’t there anymore, not to the extent it used to, and I think it’s simply down to the fact the products aren’t as unique and ‘advanced’ as they were perceived back then. It’s hard to find a technology company who don’t take a similar approach to the design and purpose to their phones / gadgets anymore. They’re all rectangular, touchscreen, do pretty much the same functions only with some enhanced specifications. The reality is they can enhance the specifications as much as they want, but until someone can make that next step and really offer something that’s new, more advanced and can become a seamless accessory to be added into people’s lives, I’m not sure you’re going to get that same buzz as when the iPod, iPhone and even the iPad were first introduced. More is being done with the likes of virtual reality and who knows, maybe that could be the next step for a seamless advancement into something people will get excited by, can use daily and really find enhancing.

Psychology / Trust

At a time when viruses were a big thing on Microsoft computers; the use of many ant-virus software to protect from everything on your computer practically burning to the ground (an experience I am not exempt to); it still happens to this day, and technology is becoming less safe arguably than it’s ever done now more people are becoming skilled in coding and are more capable of doing things that affect many things, particularly the more technology-themed everything is heading. One thing that was made a big deal for the iMac (more so numerous years ago), was its security. There were no official anti-virus software that was designed to protect a Mac. People just saw it as this un-harmable machine that couldn’t succumb to viruses the same way Microsoft computers could. This would be a big factor in more tech people who were aware of the dangers of viruses - switching to Apple. There wasn’t any news of Apple being affected by such problems, and this gave people a peace of mind when it came to difficulties like that. In a more recent example of this, since cyber security has become more relevant, there has been a fair amount made about the privacy of users details being exposed to others. Apple have been on the path to persuade people this is something they won’t have to concern themselves about. Cyber security will probably become a more significant matter in years to come.

Another instance of how people perceive brands products is the recent debacle for Samsung. Their Note 7 product had widespread reporting of the device exploding. The scale of this was so severe that they had to discontinue the product altogether. Samsung took a massive knock to their credibility after this, and no doubt persuaded people to look elsewhere for their phones. The company have began their path to reclaim put-off customers an retain the ones who have been loyal to them throughout the years. Security is something they’re making a big deal with, particularly with their latest flagship products.

The main point is, consistency of quality service is key to maintaining your customers loyalty and trust. Any drop in that can taint your brands image. The more aspects you can assure customers of, the better.

Brand Purpose(s)

As the years have gone on, Apple have positioned themselves further towards the environmental side of things. They make a big deal about their environmental efforts in regards to their products, the ones they are sent back and even their campus’. In recent years they launched a new service to recycle old iPhones that customers no longer wanted, and would reuse the material on those for their current models. A good incentive for customers to bring them back, and I’m sure helps Apple financially in some way as well.

Another big aspect Apple are honing in on is accessibility for all. As you’ll see on recent keynotes, they are working more on how to aid people with disabilities to use their products, like the iMac, for instance. This is of course a fantastic purpose. The more possibilities that can be made accessible to everyone, the better.

A further issue are focusing on is health & fitness. In recent years you’ll have found a health app on your iPhone, which is designed to aid you in various aspects. They have been discussing how they are working to help people will illnesses to reduce the impact the they’re having on them by taking carefully-specific activities. Fitness is something that Apple have made an integral part on their smartwatch. They have a fitness tracker (you can never be sure how accurate these are) and also include a breathing app, which may appear a bit gimmicky, but it’s all part of their image that they are pursuing in this sector.

Other aspects you can mention include, education - and the push towards people how to code, the transitioning between one device to another for transactions and so forth.

Their main aim is they want to have this overall image as a brand that focuses on enhancing the lives of people and aiding the environment as much as possible. It’s a global vision and one they will be competing with Microsoft for.

The Products & the Services

This ties in more with what we covered in lecture. With the terminology ‘lovemarks’. When you bring everything together - the approach to customers, the effectiveness of the product and the overall experience, you feel you are part of something of value. They focus on every detail - from the shop - to the customer service - to the packaging - and even to the experience of unboxing it. Even their customer care, in which some cases customers have been giving replacements for free, it just gravitates the customers affection towards the company even further. There’s not one thing they haven’t thought about, and you can notice when you look from the outside of it all and in.

Tying it all Together

As you can see, how you position your brand to aid your service can be the difference from doing alright to going above and beyond expectations. People can see through brands, particularly if there’s an insincerity about them. If the company clearly don’t have the want to help others and so forth.

When considering your own brand, these are aspects you’ve really got to think about. What is your aim? Where do you stand in terms of beliefs? And many more. There are countless numbers of brands out there you can analyse, but I think Apple are the most prominent example in the past decade of how a service and the branding to aid it can make such an impact. Connecting to people is the direction more companies are going now, and that’s only going to continue.

#ixdbelfast #ixd103

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babytrumph · 4 years ago

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Loki Series-Premiere Recap: Continuity Violation

I’ve enjoyed the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Disney+ offerings so far in general, but the first episode of Loki in particular is a delightful treat. It’s funny, it’s mysterious, and frankly it’s weird in a way that I really appreciate! It didn’t hurt that I was coming into it with a freshly reaffirmed affinity for the titular role’s actor, Tom Hiddleston, having just rewatched Crimson Peak last week. Much in the way that film was one of the first to let the actor express his skill outside of superhero films, Loki is itself a departure from those customs, instead subjecting the Asgardian deity of mischief — fresh from his 2012 attempt at world domination — to the relentless, inescapable drudgery of bureaucracy. As such, Hiddleston is given the opportunity to play the straight man (not that way, ’shippers, continue to do your thing) against the absurdist rigamarole of the Time Variance Authority, and audiences get to enjoy some slapstick fun at his expense, as he’s fitted with a kind of control device that allows the TVA’s agents to keep him from acting out by rewinding him a few seconds every time he tries. สล็อตฟรี2021 I’m getting ahead of myself here. The TVA is another one of those interesting little pulls from Marvel Comics history: It first appeared during the now-classic Walt Simonson run of Thor, the very same run that gave us such delights as Surtur and Skurge the Executioner in the 2017 film Thor: Ragnarok. The organization has only popped up a couple of other times in comics, which makes it perfect for an adaptation like this; the idea of time cops is a big, expansive one that’s been played with before in Hollywood, if not in the MCU. At the start of the episode, as Loki escapes from custody following the events of Avengers: Endgame (following, well … the events of Marvel’s The Avengers), he has officially violated continuity, which leads to the TVA sending agents to capture him. As a comics fan, this particular bit was hilarious to me. Did they care that he caused several deaths and attempted to take over the world? No, that was supposed to happen, as was the Avengers’ defeat of him. The TVA only cares that he escaped custody after the fact; as we know, in the normal timeline he remains incarcerated until the events of Thor: The Dark World (the show plays with these details as well, in a way that I won’t spoil, except to say that it’s absolutely heart-wrenching). So why was this funny to me? Well, like I said, he violated continuity. By escaping, Loki created a divergence from the normal flow of time, a conflict in the canon of Marvel’s official cinematic fiction. Canon and continuity are the sacred cows of comics, the things to which these large superhero universes are beholden (sometimes even to their detriment), the things that comics fans the world over just love to argue about, and, frankly, the things that get a writer like yours truly jobs, because some of us actually spend our time memorizing this stuff. The TVA’s bit of metafictional fun at continuity’s expense is, consequently, exactly the sort of joke I appreciate. Also, on a personal note, I appreciate a Time Variance — or “TV” — Authority arresting people for violating storylines on a TV show. That’s just plain good humor! The way the TVA’s presented is also fun. The entire organization has this sort of retro-fitted vibe to it. Like Asgard itself, it’s technologically advanced to the point of seeming like magic, and like the planet Sakaar in Ragnarok, it cloaks that technology in the spectre of aging industrial relics. But where Sakaar looks like a waste processing plant jazzed up with lurid colors, the TVA looks like a relic of the 1970s, with everything draped in drab browns, oranges, and yellows. The TVA Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) is rocking a mustache that is so perfectly matched to the show’s aesthetic that it somehow feels anachronistic, despite mustaches enjoying a current resurgence in popularity. When Mobius interrogates Loki, he does so with the aid of what is essentially a projector; it creates futuristic holographic images he can use to demonstrate his points, but is housed in what looks like a marriage between an old cathode ray television and a late-’90s iMac (you know the ones). This is such a great stylistic contrast in its own right that it’s easy to gloss over the instructional video that’s played on a screen as Loki arrives for processing: a purely retro-style bit of 2D animation, where TVA mascot Miss Minutes, voiced by Tara Strong, cheerfully walks visitors through the importance of adherence to the “Sacred Timeline.” This video is capped off by a simple, matter-of-fact explanation of what happens to violators; they are “reset,” a cute euphemism for the concept of completely annihilating the variant, so that the accepted “Sacred” version can follow the timeline’s path. Just as Loki himself is to be punished for his “crimes,” he’s granted a stay by Mobius, who does something that could almost be considered worse to Loki: He holds him accountable. It makes for a fun bit of parallel storytelling, as Mobius conducts this oblique interrogation, asking Loki what his plan was, should he have achieved his conquest, and leading Loki in circles as the god struggles to accept the sheer shortsightedness of his attempt. Because that was always the trick of it, no? Ragnarok highlighted this too, giving Loki a taste of rule as he impersonated his father, and exposing the truth that a deity of mischief is not built for rule, but the subversion of it. This sets up Loki to, as we expect, work for (or at least with, temporarily) the TVA. What I find fascinating about this idea is the scope it offers. At the start of WandaVision, audiences and fans found themselves wildly speculating about where the conceit of Wanda’s journey through sitcom television could lead; not just story-wise, but the fun little cameos and appearances and their various degrees of popularity. That was lost a bit in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s more straightforward approach, but I can feel it again here. The idea of jumping through the last decade and a half of the MCU’s in-universe screen time is a fun one. We saw some of that with the Avengers in Endgame, but there the scope was limited by both the movie’s runtime and its Infinity Stone–related plot. Here, the options are much more open — not only could we see some of the MCU’s recent past, we could see any point in its continuity, including brand new locales and classic Marvel characters who’ve never been put to film before. As Owen Wilson might say, “Wow.”

0 notes

babytrumph · 4 years ago

Text

Loki Series-Premiere Recap: Continuity Violation

I’ve enjoyed the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Disney+ offerings so far in general, but the first episode of Loki in particular is a delightful treat. It’s funny, it’s mysterious, and frankly it’s weird in a way that I really appreciate! It didn’t hurt that I was coming into it with a freshly reaffirmed affinity for the titular role’s actor, Tom Hiddleston, having just rewatched Crimson Peak last week. Much in the way that film was one of the first to let the actor express his skill outside of superhero films, Loki is itself a departure from those customs, instead subjecting the Asgardian deity of mischief — fresh from his 2012 attempt at world domination — to the relentless, inescapable drudgery of bureaucracy. As such, Hiddleston is given the opportunity to play the straight man (not that way, ’shippers, continue to do your thing) against the absurdist rigamarole of the Time Variance Authority, and audiences get to enjoy some slapstick fun at his expense, as he’s fitted with a kind of control device that allows the TVA’s agents to keep him from acting out by rewinding him a few seconds every time he tries. สล็อตออนไลน์ I’m getting ahead of myself here. The TVA is another one of those interesting little pulls from Marvel Comics history: It first appeared during the now-classic Walt Simonson run of Thor, the very same run that gave us such delights as Surtur and Skurge the Executioner in the 2017 film Thor: Ragnarok. The organization has only popped up a couple of other times in comics, which makes it perfect for an adaptation like this; the idea of time cops is a big, expansive one that’s been played with before in Hollywood, if not in the MCU. At the start of the episode, as Loki escapes from custody following the events of Avengers: Endgame (following, well … the events of Marvel’s The Avengers), he has officially violated continuity, which leads to the TVA sending agents to capture him.As a comics fan, this particular bit was hilarious to me. Did they care that he caused several deaths and attempted to take over the world? No, that was supposed to happen, as was the Avengers’ defeat of him. The TVA only cares that he escaped custody after the fact; as we know, in the normal timeline he remains incarcerated until the events of Thor: The Dark World (the show plays with these details as well, in a way that I won’t spoil, except to say that it’s absolutely heart-wrenching). So why was this funny to me? Well, like I said, he violated continuity. By escaping, Loki created a divergence from the normal flow of time, a conflict in the canon of Marvel’s official cinematic fiction. Canon and continuity are the sacred cows of comics, the things to which these large superhero universes are beholden (sometimes even to their detriment), the things that comics fans the world over just love to argue about, and, frankly, the things that get a writer like yours truly jobs, because some of us actually spend our time memorizing this stuff. The TVA’s bit of metafictional fun at continuity’s expense is, consequently, exactly the sort of joke I appreciate. Also, on a personal note, I appreciate a Time Variance — or “TV” — Authority arresting people for violating storylines on a TV show. That’s just plain good humor!The way the TVA’s presented is also fun. The entire organization has this sort of retro-fitted vibe to it. Like Asgard itself, it’s technologically advanced to the point of seeming like magic, and like the planet Sakaar in Ragnarok, it cloaks that technology in the spectre of aging industrial relics. But where Sakaar looks like a waste processing plant jazzed up with lurid colors, the TVA looks like a relic of the 1970s, with everything draped in drab browns, oranges, and yellows. The TVA Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) is rocking a mustache that is so perfectly matched to the show’s aesthetic that it somehow feels anachronistic, despite mustaches enjoying a current resurgence in popularity.When Mobius interrogates Loki, he does so with the aid of what is essentially a projector; it creates futuristic holographic images he can use to demonstrate his points, but is housed in what looks like a marriage between an old cathode ray television and a late-’90s iMac (you know the ones). This is such a great stylistic contrast in its own right that it’s easy to gloss over the instructional video that’s played on a screen as Loki arrives for processing: a purely retro-style bit of 2D animation, where TVA mascot Miss Minutes, voiced by Tara Strong, cheerfully walks visitors through the importance of adherence to the “Sacred Timeline.” This video is capped off by a simple, matter-of-fact explanation of what happens to violators; they are “reset,” a cute euphemism for the concept of completely annihilating the variant, so that the accepted “Sacred” version can follow the timeline’s path.Just as Loki himself is to be punished for his “crimes,” he’s granted a stay by Mobius, who does something that could almost be considered worse to Loki: He holds him accountable. It makes for a fun bit of parallel storytelling, as Mobius conducts this oblique interrogation, asking Loki what his plan was, should he have achieved his conquest, and leading Loki in circles as the god struggles to accept the sheer shortsightedness of his attempt. Because that was always the trick of it, no? Ragnarok highlighted this too, giving Loki a taste of rule as he impersonated his father, and exposing the truth that a deity of mischief is not built for rule, but the subversion of it. This sets up Loki to, as we expect, work for (or at least with, temporarily) the TVA.What I find fascinating about this idea is the scope it offers. At the start of WandaVision, audiences and fans found themselves wildly speculating about where the conceit of Wanda’s journey through sitcom television could lead; not just story-wise, but the fun little cameos and appearances and their various degrees of popularity. That was lost a bit in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s more straightforward approach, but I can feel it again here. The idea of jumping through the last decade and a half of the MCU’s in-universe screen time is a fun one. We saw some of that with the Avengers in Endgame, but there the scope was limited by both the movie’s runtime and its Infinity Stone–related plot. Here, the options are much more open — not only could we see some of the MCU’s recent past, we could see any point in its continuity, including brand new locales and classic Marvel characters who’ve never been put to film before. As Owen Wilson might say, “Wow.”

0 notes