Tech How To | At Home with Tech

December 5, 2021

How Motion Blur can Improve your Photography

Softness in your photos can be a desirable effect if that’s your goal. Adding in a touch of blur around your main object can create a bit of a mystical look. Here’s what happened when I slowed down my camera’s shutter above The Rink at Rockefeller Center.

When snapping a photo, any motion in your frame has the potential to look blurry and ruin the shot. As the father of an active eleven-year-old boy who’s been moving about pretty quickly over the past decade, I’ve often been preoccupied with being able to freeze the moment in my photos and capturing any movement without blur.

Sometimes though, the blurred motion in a shot is the most important part to capture. The key is to isolate it without affecting the rest of the photo. Of course, to accomplish that, you just need to slow down your shutter speed and make sure your camera doesn’t move. (A tripod is especially handy in these moments.)

Here are a couple photographic opportunities I’ve run across with my Panasonic Lumix LX-10 that benefited from this approach.

Moving Water
The silky flow of rushing water in nature can be a prime candidate for this type of visual exercise.

Waterfall with motion blur (Zoar hiking trail in Connecticut)

The waterfall without motion blur

People Walking
The blur of a crowd of moving people can offer your camera a great opportunity to ‘see’ motion.

Grand Central Terminal with motion blur of all the rushing commuters

The same space without motion blur

The Art of Chasing Blur
Again, the key to success when allowing targeted blur in your shots is making sure that everything else is in focus. Otherwise, that dreamy feel you’re going for will instead look like you’ve fallen asleep behind your camera!

Enjoy finding the right blur to enhance your photos!

November 21, 2021

Why Face Masks and AirPods can Make a Dangerous Pair

If you’ve returned to your commute, you may need to consider how to properly arrange what you wear on your face and ears. Here’s why.

I’ve been enjoying my new AirPods 3 on my Metro North commute to Grand Central Terminal.

Not only am I a new AirPods user, but I’m also a new subscriber to Apple Music. (I took advantage of the six-month free trial membership offer I received as part of my AirPods purchase.)

So as you might imagine, my commute has become a more immersive experience of motion with music.

Walking with AirPods
That said, I’ve been a real baby about walking through the streets of New York City while wearing my AirPods. Why? I’m worried that one of my wireless wonders will drop out as I weave my way to work.

I know that’s silly, especially as I pass hundreds of people every day happily sporting their own AirPods.

If you’re wondering, I deliberately did not buy the more securely-fitting AirPods Pro, because I didn’t like the way they felt when I tried on a test pair at the Apple Store a couple years back.

But I’ve been studying the faces I pass, and plenty are not wearing the Pro model.

And I don’t believe there’s an epidemic of people dropping their AirPods on New York sidewalks and lunging about to rescue them.

So, after a couple of weeks on training wheels, I decided it was finally time to do a proper test drive.

Losing my Left AirPod
Of course walking with them in my ears was fine. Until it wasn’t. That’s because there’s one variable that AirPods were not designed to handle.

Face masks.

When I arrived to work and walked out of the elevator, I simultaneously reached up to remove my mask. It’s become something of an automatic gesture that I don’t think about anymore. Plus, I was rushing.

And that’s a mistake.

An AirPod didn’t just drop out. I did better than that. I literally launched one out of my left ear.

My mask’s cord caught the AirPod and transformed into a rubber band catapult.

My AirPod became a little projectile and ricocheted like a pinball onto the marble floor of the elevator hallway. The sound was excruciating.

I lunged after my AirPod as another elevator door was about to open… possibly releasing a crowd of crushing feet. (I had a flashback to that “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” scene where the little antidote bottle was kicked about the dance floor.)

I finally caught up with my AirPod and jammed it back in my ear. (No, I didn’t consider the hygienic consequences.)

I stood up and looked around. The elevator hallway was still vacant.

Nothing to see here.

And then I walked away.

Damaging my AirPod
Of course I tested my naughty AirPod when I arrived at my desk. Thankfully, it worked fine.

But the next morning on my commute, it was completely silent. Yes, it had juice. Was it dead?

In a bit of panic, I researched the problem on my iPhone, and Apple suggested I reconnect my AirPods and charging case to my iPhone. So, I quickly did that Bluetooth reset.

…and my left AirPod came back to life.

Hmmm.

So did I damage my left AirPod? It can’t be a coincidence that it needed to be reconnected the very next day following the ‘incident.’

Well, it’s been working fine for the past couple of weeks. Perhaps it’s out of the woods.

AppleCare to the Rescue
If you sometimes wonder if you need to buy the extended warrantee on your tech, my advice is to always get it when it comes to Apple products. That’s because they’re mostly moving about with you. And life happens.

Yes, of course I bought AppleCare for my new AirPods. I may be clumsy, but I’m not oblivious.

Learning to Adapt
And that’s my cautionary tale. File it under ‘the art of wearing your face mask.’

Sure, it’s a no brainer being more careful when removing a mask while wearing AirPods. Clearly, I just have to master that little maneuver.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the need to wear face masks is going away any time soon.

October 17, 2021

How to Give your Photos a More Personal Touch in Post

If you want your fall photos to have more pop, consider taking these steps after you snap your pics.

I admit it. I often like to add in a bit more color and contrast to the photos I snap. A little more brightness too. The process is easy to do in any number of ways. You can do it directly using your smartphone’s photo app or in a photo-editing program like Adobe Lightroom.

Add your Own Ingredients
Enhancing the look of your pictures is like adding your own personal filter, and this practice should give your pics more pop without making them look too manipulated.

Even if the colors start to look a little too good to be true, if the effect pleases you, I say why not?! (By now, haven’t we all become photographic artists at some level?)

And with fall colors all around us, now’s a perfect time to take some shots and squeeze a little more oomph out of your images.

Here are a few of my own shots from my iPhone and Panasonic Lumix LX-10 during my family’s recent apple-picking adventure. I’ve positioned the original photos on the left next to my ‘Barrett-boosted-versions.’ (And if you need to look closely to spot some of the subtle differences, then I’ve done a good job.)
Take More than One Step Forward
Sure, you can always slap on one of your photo app’s premade filters to give your pics more zing, but contributing your own special visual ingredients in post can maintain your sense of ownership.