You could spend thousands of dollars to visit Europe and explore other worlds.

Or you could do something way cheaper and very novel this weekend: take a “photo-cation” like visit to your hometown, going to places that have been ignored by you, as you lead your busy life.

Open your camera eyes, and you’ll see things you never knew existed before. It sounds simple, but trust me on this one.

Going out with the camera this way enabled “me to go out and explore my own city and play tourist for the day,” says Angela Andrieux, who you will meet on next week’s PhotowalksTV edition, from San Diego. “You get to experience what’s local, what’s around you. There’s just so much to see and do out there.”

I recently gave myself a personal photo project: to go out and photograph the best of my hometown, Manhattan Beach, but with a caveat. I couldn’t photograph her jewels: the Pier and beach. How much could I come up with?

The results actually astounded me. I expected to round up about 20 photos. Instead, I’m topping 80. (Examples here:)

I never realized just how much public art was all over the city, how we have two restaurants over 100 years old (Ercole’s and Shellback Tavern) and how much there is away from the sand and sea.

Art is everywhere you look and with your camera, you can make some pretty cool art too.

So go capture the flavor of your town by skipping the obvious candidates. No Hollywood Sign for L.A., no Times Square in New York…well, you get the idea.

I hope this exercise encourages you to look at your hometown in a different way. Yes, the gems will shine the brightest, but isn’t it fun to look a little harder and uncover some gold you barely noticed before?

Have fun!

AI Gone Amok

It’s hard to go very far these days without hearing about the dangers of artificial intelligence, and how it might put writers and artists out of work.

CNET, once a trusted, popular tech news site, admitted recently that it was using AI to compose some articles, and you know where this is heading: errors, corrections and mud on the face. The Verge has a fascinating piece about it: https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562966/cnet-ai-written-stories-red-ventures-seo-marketing

On the other end, my friend Jan suggested I ask the ChatGPT AI engine to come up with a title for this week’s PhotowalksTV segment. Novel idea! I gave ChatGPT the opening of my script, and asked for a 50 character limit on a good headline. Pretty much every one was perfect. Examples:

"Uncovering the Hidden Gems of Your Hometown"
"Exploring the Exotic Beauty of Your Backyard"
"Roaming Your Own Town: Discovering the Unexpected"
"Beyond the Beach: Discovering Manhattan Beach"
"The Exotic Adventure of Hometown Photowalks"
"Your Hometown Through a Camera Lens"
"Discovering the Hidden Gems of Manhattan Beach"
"Roaming Your Own Town: A Photographic Journey"
"The Hidden Beauty of Your Town"
"Explore Your Own Backyard: Manhattan Beach"

Scary, right?

Alas, AI can do a nice job with headlines. It’s also great for illustration, but only as long as there are no words in the title.

I asked the Dall-e AI Image engine for “Welcome to Florida.” This is what I got!

New Macs:

Apple introduced several new computers this week, and if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t want to spend huge money on new machines, these aren’t for you. Apple’s marketing is all about selling the extra oomph of a new “M2” processing chip, two years after getting us hyped on the superiority of the “M1” chip.

The M1 truly was faster than predecessors. And plenty fast for us mortals. I question the new marketing campaign reaching anyone but hardcore Macheads.

What I paid $2,000 for in January, 2021 in a maxxed out M1 MacBook Pro would cost $3,099 with an entry level M2 edition of the same 16-inch computer. (Max it out, with extra memory and storage, and you’re looking at over $6,000.)

I love my Mac, but even I don’t feel the need to ditch the old model for the new one with extra speed.

I can’t imagine the average consumer needing the M2 editions. Not when they are this pricey.

A word from our sponsor, SmugMug

I’ve been on a rant lately about why we all need to be less reliant on Big Tech for backing up our photos. What if they decide they don’t like us anymore (it’s happened too many times) and they ban access to our photos?

My mantra: back up your photos locally, and also have an online copy. I would prefer that to be with a non Big Tech company (no thanks Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft) and instead a smaller player that is less likely to give you issues about getting your photos back. My choice is SmugMug, where I’ve been a happy customer for over 15 years. I use the service to run my website, show off my online portfolio and act as a virtual hard drive (with unlimited backup) There's a free two week trial for SmugMug which I highly recommend you try out. No credit card required.

Jefferson Graham 🌅 @jeffersongraham

Thank you @SmugMug for supporting #PhotowalksTV and my photography all these years.

Share your Hometown photos with me

Here’s a cool SmugMug feature I’m trying out this week. I put up a gallery of some of my hometown photos, and they’re a little lonely. They’d like to see some of your images in there as well. This SmugMug group gallery feature is pretty cool: all you have to do is click the link, and it takes you straight to the upload page. Let’s see your work! https://jeffersongraham.smugmug.com/upload/d4FjfM/photowalksTV

Homework assignment: Please go out and explore this weekend with your smartphone! And let’s see your great work! Meanwhile, don’t forget to smash the Like button and let me know your thoughts with a reply.

Jeff

Jefferson Graham's PhotowalksTV newsletter

Weekend project: "Photo-cation" in your…