My trusty Nikon D500 is typically wearing the rather excellent AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200mm lens (I also love my 35mm lens!). I’ve been a fan of Nikon SLRs since playing around with my dad’s Nikon F3 as a teenager.
To my unending chagrin, the old adage “the best camera is the camera you have on you” has turned out to be all too true, and most of my “photography” is done with my iPhone 12 these days, since it’s so often in my pocket.
I have a Canon SX620 HS which I got back when I thought I was going to be doing more vlogging and didn't think my phone could handle it. My plan throughout 2024 is to try and use it more, because it does take better photos than my phone.
The vast majority of my photo editing and organizing is done in OS X/iOS Photos, which is not my favourite but does have the benefit of being pretty mindless. I still really regret the loss of Aperture 3 (RIP) and, in my own opinion as a complete amateur, no other professional photo editing software has ever come close to touching how good it was on OS X.
Reading
Though I subscribe to Umberto Eco’s philosophy of the unlibrary, I do also have a relatively old Kobo which is also very useful for taking out library ebooks and reading PDFs. (Being able to sync to the Kobo app on macOS for more serious note-taking is also really nifty.)
For keeping track of my reading, I typically use my account on Millefeuilles. (You can follow all public posts from anywhere on the fediverse by subscribing to @gersande@millefeuilles.cloud, if you’re not on fedi, there is also an RSS feed here.)
For research and citations, I’ve been using Zotero since January and finding it very intuitive.
For following RSS feeds (mostly blogs), I’ve been using NetNewsWire on macOS since the mid-2000s. If you need a webapp RSS reader programme with a bit more oomf, I tried out flus.fr recently and really liked it (it was simply not what I need right now, but it’s a really great web app).
Writing
My heart still belongs to paper (so many Goatbunny notepads!) and fountain pens. I love ink-stained fingers. For personal thoughts, I have a leather-bound journal I bought in Paris almost a decade ago, and at the start of the pandemic (as I stopped travelling) I placed a big order of inserts from that shop in the Marais that I’m only just now reaching the end of. Uncertain if I’ll place another order for the same paper or if I’ll switch to something else. For organizing my life, Bujo-style, I use a Galen Leather traveller’s notebook filled with Midori inserts to keep track of studies, reading notes, ballet notes, dog training notes, and more.
I’ve been using Scrivener for well over 15 years now for all my comprehensive, long-term research and writing projects.
On iOS, I’m a big fan of the Notes app for jotting down incomprehensible fragments to puzzle myself with later. (The scanning function of the Notes app is also really helpful for creating digital backups of my handwritten notes.)
A few months ago, I dove into Obsidian.md because I was trying to find a snappier and more intuitive solution for my personal digital garden/wiki Nemetona Electronica. So far, Obsidian.md has proven to be a really remarkable tool for writing and note-taking projects that don’t necessarily need what Scrivener offers, but could still really benefit from the organization and plugin ecosystem that comes with Obsidian.md.
For spell-checking in both French and English, I use the Desktop application Antidote 10 . For spell-checking and dictionaries in French, I sometimes also use Le Robert Correcteur 2022.
