Aaron Anderson 3/22/19 Aaron Anderson 3/22/19

Isolation in the Modern Age: Green Bubbles

This might seem like a weird thing to blog about, but it was so traumatic for me that it needs to be done. This entire blog will be to tell you about my horrible experience switching to a Galaxy S9+ recently. The funny thing is, it’s a great phone, and it has a great camera (which is big reason why I switched) but man, I didn’t know how terrible it would be to go back to Android after being with Apple. Let me tell you why.

Warning: This next paragraph might be offensive to Mac users.

Let me start with a little backstory and some interesting facts you might not know. For starters, I work on PC, almost exclusively, in fact I am writing this on a PC (I know, I know, just take a deep breath and keep reading). My laptop is a PC. I have a MacBook Pro, but I don’t use it and it’s old. I actually bought a Mac out of peer pressure, because that’s what “creatives” use, but I realized quickly that it didn’t matter, and I could build a PC for way cheaper than a Mac. That being said I might have just lost a ton of readers, but oh well, that’s the long and short of it. I think Mac is great, but I’ve never had a problem with my PC, and with all the stuff I have in this PC it would cost me over $4k with Mac, I haven’t even hit $2k with all the upgrades.

OK, let’s get to the meat of this blog. A few years ago my wife and I decided to try iPhones, everyone said they were awesome, and so we decided to give it the ol’ college try. They were great, I have nothing against iPhone…they had been really reliable as far as things go. Recently though, I became a little tired of the lack of compatibility and flexability that iPhones have. In a brash moment of stupidity, I researched phones and bought a Samsung Galaxy S9+. Really cool, and as I said earlier the camera system was getting great reviews, which is what I use it for most. It seemed like a win win, but there was no winning involved, it was very much lose lose.

Frankly, getting the phone going was rough. I bought an unlocked phone, and the SIM card from my iPhone didn’t work (shocker). I ordered another SIM card, which actually took a while to get. Once I got the new SIM card I switched everything over and had the horrific realization that if someone had an iPhone and I texted them I would not get the return text. It was going to my iPhone, on iMessage. The solution? After calling the phone company and researching online, I was told to text everyone who had an iPhone and switch my phone to text message only. That’s where it started, sending out a shameful little green bubble to hundreds of people publicly proclaiming that I don’t have an iPhone anymore.

Great, text message problem solved. I was good to go! Wrong. After that came some really bad realizations. First of all, I send images to people all the time, and I have people send me images and videos regularly, especially BTS from my assistants. I also send my wife a lot of photos and get a lot of photos/videos from her. I couldn’t do any of that any more, I didn’t get most of the photos, I couldn’t send photos or videos to iPhones because they were to big, and videos from other people came through as tiny pixelated movies that you could barely see, if they came through at all. On a positive note, there is something called Samsung Share (which is like iMessage for Samsung) so you can share stuff with all your Samsung pals! Oh wait, I only know three people who have Android phones and only two of them are Samsung.

That was the beginning of the end for me, I completely took for granted how many people have iPhones and what that means. There is an actual end though. It happened when we realized my wife couldn’t have the kids send me voice messages, and as I was walking her through downloading something in place of FaceTime while I was trying to say good night to the kids on set. I was getting ready for two big trips and this was definitely the straw that broke the camels back.

This might sound dramatic, and frankly this whole blog post is just a giant 1st world problem rant about how a big baby had to buy another phone, but it was genuinely isolating. It was as if I couldn’t communicate with people, especially my family and other people in my industry. It was terrible, and never once in all of my research did I see it mentioned that switching to Android would make it so you really can’t communicate the same way.

You could think of this blog as a review for people thinking about switching from iPhone to Android, I mean, A LOT of people said they were thinking about it when I switched. I can tell you now with great certainty that you shouldn’t switch, not if you’ve been on iPhone for any length of time. I was literally discovering things almost every day that either wouldn’t work or need a new app to work so I could do seemingly normal things.

How does this story end? With me shamefully walking into the Apple store and buying another iPhone. Let me tell you, if you think new cars don’t hold their value (which they don’t) new phones are even worse. I sold my Samsung for $340, after using it for 2 months, I lost almost $400. On top of that, I had to spend almost $900 on the new iPhone…I’m not great at math, but it wasn’t good. My advice, just be happy with what you have: I have an iPhone and I’m happy with that.

Aaron Anderson 1/6/17 Aaron Anderson 1/6/17

2017...the adventure continues.

2016 was an incredible year, we were extremely blessed to shoot with some amazing companies and individuals. Our last big shoot of the year was with Elizabeth Marks (pictured above), and to say the least she is one of the most inspirational people/athletes you can imagine. With that incredible momentum, and new year's in the recent past, I thought it would be good to get the year started off with a blog about what's coming in 2017!

First of all, you might wonder why I haven't really posted on any of my social media channels (or at least I like to tell myself you've been wondering) and that's actually pretty easy to answer, I've been with my family. One of the main things I want this blog to be about is the importance of priority and scheduling. As I have blogged about before, I am a husband and dad before anything else, that's what my main priority is. When we ended 2016 I was working anywhere from 70-100 hrs a week just to stay on top of the deadlines, and we needed to take a minute to regroup as a family and get some quality time. Next week I will be back in full swing, but I wanted to take a second to challenge you as you go into this next year with a couple of thoughts:

1. Get yourself into a good headspace - This can mean different things to different people, whether it be through prayer, meditation or even just sitting quietly, take a minute every day to visualize your day and your career. I still struggle with this, but every morning I wake up, make coffee and take the first few sips just for me. You can look to people like Chase Jarvis, Marie Forleo and I am sure a million other succesful people for more ideas on this.

2. Take Care of your body - I definitely struggle here, but I have been working really hard at making sure I exercise and eat as healthy as possible. I hate the gym, but I go, and try to take a minute to breathe. We all work long hours, and this industry takes a toll on you, but you will be able to handle it better if you are healthy. Plus, for all my fellow dads out there, it will help you be focused and have more fun with your kids if you can still pick them up at the end of a long day :)

3. Take time for creativity - This can also mean a lot of things, it could be sketching in a coffee shop, walking through the city, watching a visually inspiring movie, etc. Make no mistake, creativity is nurtured, it needs love and time just like any other skill.

4. Schedule it! - I think one of my favorite quotes from Marie Forleo is "if it's not scheduled, it's not real!" I totally agree with this, and as crazy as it may feel at first you need to make sure you are scheduling yourself. I am not just talking about scheduling those meeting you have, I am talking about scheduling personal deadlines, projects, e-mails, marketing, etc etc etc. If it's important to you it should be in your schedule.

Alright, so with those nuggets in hand, what can you be expecting to see from us in 2017?! I am excited for what's coming, and while I can't talk about all of it, there are some really exciting projects we are working on. In the next couple months we will be finishing our huge video series on composite photography, shooting in studio and on location to show you guys how it goes together. I am also working on more Photoshop tutorials to give you guys all the puzzle pieces you need! A little birdy has been chirping unconfirmed rumors of a podcast...but you'll have to wait to hear more about that one :) Of course we have a bunch of shoots coming up, and we'll be posting all the bts and images through our different social media channels.

I am also planning on broadcasting live on Instagram this year, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

In closing I wanted to open the floor to all of you! I would love to hear what topics you'd like to learn about in 2017, whether it's lighting, business, composite, Photoshop, or anything else, please feel free to leave a comment below and I will do my best to respond or possibly do a tutorial!

Thank you all for an awesome 2016, and now, go BE AWESOME!