Steve Arnett Photography

Lafayette is beautiful in the fall!, a photo by Steve Arnett on Flickr.

Lafayette is beautiful in the fall!

Joshua Tree!, a photo by Steve Arnett on Flickr.

Joshua Tree!

I work a weird schedule… My 9-5 is Tues-Sat, and I take time off from that to shoot weddings and portraits. This week I worked Tues-Sun, with two weddings and then an engagement session on Sunday. Monday was my only day off, so I left town for a much needed adventure!

The delta has always intrigued me. It’s a different lifestyle up there. I headed out Highway 12 with an end-goal of Collinsville. (You’re probably thinking, where the heck is Collinsville?!?!) It got so rainy and gross out that I finally turned around and came home.

Such interesting history and so close to home. I’ll save the drive out to the remains of Collinsville for another day!

One of my fears in life is losing/damaging my phone and therefore losing all the data I’ve stored on it. My phone isn’t just a phone, it is a mini-computer I get to carry everyday, therefore it holds just as much data content value as my laptop. It has documents, images, my music collection, etc.

I’m serious about not losing my data and have been looking for a better way to backup my phone’s content than just plugging it in and manually copying files when I happen to think about it. Enter the app, FolderSync.

Right now I have FolderSync linked to my Dropbox account and via samba to my NAS at home. FolderSync monitors the following folders and backs them up for me.

-SMSBackandRestore: An easy to use txt msg backup app that backs up my txts nightly. FolderSync grabs the nightly backup and puts it in my DropBox.
-Photos: Grabs my photos and puts them on my NAS at home.
-Tasker: Tasker is my favorite app of all time. It allows full automation, and I have it highly customized. FolderSync grabs the backup file and saves it to DropBox.
-Titanium Backup: TB backsup my apps and their data, FolderSync backs this up to DropBox so I can restore my apps and data onto a new phone if I ever lose mine.
-Music: Backs up to my NAS. I tend to buy music from the amazon music store, but I like to know I have a backup somewhere.
-FolderSync: When I make changes to FolderSync, I make a new backup of the FolderSync database. FolderSync then copies it to my DropBox.

Paul C. Buff makes some great gear…… but nothing made is “Steve Approved.”

I find ways to break things, no matter what. I’m super gentle on my gear, yet somehow things break. I’ve learned this about myself, and therefore my handy skills always come into play. It’s an adventure to take a “Non-Steve Approved” item and make it better. I love the process actually, as frustrating as it sounds. If I could weld, it would make lots of things easier/cheaper in life

Recently I bought an Alien Bees flash and a Mini Lithium inverter/battery. The lightstand mount worried me from day one. The included clamp didn’t tighten up at all. I used a superclamp like many other folks, and one day I opened my trunk at a wedding venue and the photo below is what I saw. The built-in 1/4-20 nut had removed itself from the case, and took some plastic with it. I ended up throwing the battery in a reuasable safeway bag and hanging it from the stand for a couple weddings before I just HAD to make a new mount. My custom mount is so much more stable! WOOOOOOT!

The problem:

My solution: