Weezer's "Holiday" is playing in my head as I'm watching the surf drag along Kaikoura Beach's block rock sand. For real, I'm right there, right now, writing this. My trip camera, a Sony RX100-M3, my iPhone and Squarespace's Blog app are awesome teammates for mobile content creation.
The M3's wireless connection allows me to seamlessly transfer images between it and Sony's PlayMemories app. I seriously didn't think I'd use this WiFi feature going in, but it allows me to fiddle with images while I'm on the ferry or whatnot. Also, the app acts as a wireless remote for long exposure shots and the Touchless Shutter in-camera app allows me to wave my hand behind the pop-up viewfinder to fire a bulb shot.
A few boops and a beep and the images are in the mainframe.
From there I hit Adobe's Lightroom app for iOS for post-processing. I sometimes use VSCO (mood) or Afterlight (midtones) for post, but Lightroom commands so much of my laptop workflow that I rarely leave their environment.
+4 to Temperature is the secret to Lightroom, y'all. It's like the Konami code. (wink)
After a few tweaks you end up with some nighttime beach magic:
The theme of our travels this year seems to be "pines by the beach."
New Zealand is just unfair in the nature game.
There are some caveats to this process. Conversion of RAW to JPEG between the camera and phone introduces lossy adjustment issues. Lightroom mobile lacks spot filtering options, as well as some more robust options like chromatic abberation adjustments, which would have helped out on some scrapped images. All in all though, it's a lot of power in a pinch.
As for the Squarespace end, it's beauty in simplicity. The Blog app lets you add text, markup, images from your device and video via links. You can also add your meta elements like categories and tags, main image thumbnail and change the author or post-status. I would have liked the ability to upload short videos directly, but I may experiment with a YouTube workflow for our brand, which would solve that problem. I don't find myself posting mobile-ly often (see: never), but this is cool enough to give a few more short posts a shot. If anything it's a great way to start draft posts, and edit in the web app's richer environment, which I'll likely do in the morning.
The tide grows higher, the sun lower and I'm going to enjoy the rest of this breathtaking view.
UPDATE: I'm back after breakfast to put some finishing touches on the post. Here's an audio bonus of the waves on the beach using Squarespace's SoundCloud block, recording using the iOS Voice Memos app:
T-minus five hours to Myanmar. I awoke at 5AM after a night of fever dreams, having sweat through everything. I emptied the entire contents of my body, again, and ran a cold shower. Standing in the dark, near tears, I steadied myself against the glass wall and leaned into the water. The only rational thought I could muster was "Will this get better before it gets worse?"
I gently woke Emily and mumbled the dreaded words:
"I need to go to the hospital."