Billy Newman Photo Podcast | 130 Building Alexa Flash Briefings

Building Alexa Flash Briefings | Billy Newman Photo Podcast

Building Alexa Flash Briefings

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130
Hey, thanks a lot for checking out this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. My name is Billy Newman. I’m a photographer based in Oregon in the Northwest. And I try and shoot landscape stuff. A lot of the time, if you’ve listened to this podcast before, maybe you’ve heard me talk about that, I’m sure, no doubt. But as it goes for today, I’m going to be talking about a couple of the things that I’ve been working on. And some of the media stuff that I’m doing. I’m still doing a bunch of photo stuff. Right now, I’m editing through a bunch of the pictures that I took through the weekend trip up to the Mackenzie River that I talked about just a couple days ago. But that’s been pretty interesting. And I really liked the Mackenzie River area, you know, I think I talked about last time, too, that it’s, it seems to be an area that I really haven’t checked out as much as I probably should have. Back, you know, in the past, or in the past couple of years that I’ve lived here in the Willamette Valley area. So it’s cool, I really appreciate getting to go out there and check out some of the hiking stuff. And it’s really nice right now, especially because of the really crystal clear look in the water. And I know I talked about that. But it’s just amazing to see like how sharp it is, or the kind of blue quality to it that you get from that fresh snowmelt that comes off. And I don’t know, it’s just a fantastic spot to go. But it was really is really cool to go on up there. There’s a handful of photos that I’m trying to get through. And there’s also a handful of photos that I’ve been sitting on for a while I think there’s an image that I took, like after a rainstorm pass through back in early April, as is really pretty kind of backlit view across the valley, south of the south of Eugene here as you go out. What is it territorial highway, I think that’s the name of it, as you go out there, there’s a lot of kind of farmland and just sort of open Valley land really, it’s it’s not that developed. But a handful of really beautiful views, you can you can spot through there. But as a lot of things goes, it was just kind of a right moment sort of thing. The reason that I like this photo that I’m talking about, it just kind of the way that the the light sort of broke up after a storm, I think that is what I liked most about it. So it was kind of cool getting to go through and check out some of those old photos, I’m going through my Lightroom catalog, and I’m trying to find kind of continually like I was talking about what I’m trying to go through and sort of build up a better portfolio of images, and a better portfolio of like images to go out for free social media, or you know, for Yes, content that I need to fill up all these channels that I’ve created. And so it’s kind of an interesting challenge to try and go through that that as much as I can. What I’m trying to do right now is I dropped Hootsuite as part of the process and I brought on buffer

as one, I’m just saying the words now, I suppose, but as one of those other services that I can use to try and I guess put my content up and then have that go out at a scheduled time. Here best practice is always to put it up onto the website that you’re posting it to just in the first place. So maybe that’s a better way to do it. But as it goes through me, I like doing this. And it makes it a lot more convenient. I mean, if you do pay attention to my podcast, or any of my feeds, really what you’ll notice as as the dominant theme is that it’s, it’s what I say it’s just inconsistent, right? That’s and that’s something that I really want to try and change through the course of 2018 is what I’ve liked. And you know, sometimes with the sign of inconsistency in some of the social media content posting stuff it ends up being a situation where I had actually something more important to do, which I guess I can’t really be said about, you know, and that’s that’s sort of what I was hoping for at the beginning of the year. So by no means is sort of a frustration, I guess. But what I hope to do is sort of fall through, I guess with with a larger number of my commitments. So if one of those is to produce content for a handful of media streams that day, then that’s I guess what I need to try and get done. And part of that’s gonna definitely include audio, too. I’ve been I’ve been really interested in the Alexa. Well, I guess just the Alexa platform, and then some of the stuff that I might be able to do trying to produce flash briefings for the the echo system. I think there’s a, there’s a echo behind me that just woke up when I said that. But using echo to develop a flash briefing, I think is kind of an interesting way to produce some audio content, I think that’s something that I might be able to do in an easy way. Or you know, I have a lot of the equipment and in a higher-order working way that maybe a lot of people do. So there’s an opportunity for me to just make a whole rundown of different themes of content that I need to produce for the channel. And then there’s probably be a significant amount of attraction that I could get with with trying to put something out there early on. You know, I wonder if you guys think about this, right, then think about a little silly ways to make money, and I never actually do any of them. So I’m on the right path, I suppose. But I was thinking about while I was looking at the Amazon Alexa developer portal I was going through there today, and there’s a lot that you can get into. And especially if you’re like a skilled developer, you have, you have a background in some of the programming languages, languages that, that you can use in the command line that Amazon has available for you, there’s, there’s really a lot that you can do, especially a lot that you can do outside of even the echo platform. So I’m sure that there’s, you know, there’s just like an endless amount of virtualizations that you can do, once you get involved with that. But for the Alexa platform, it’s kinda interesting what I was trying to do. And you know, since I don’t really have like a ton of coding, well, I don’t, because I don’t have a ton of coding skill, I’m most interested in trying to put together some of the flash briefing systems, which really seems like you just you kind of go through the system one time, which was almost really just filling out a form if you haven’t done it before, but beyond that many people have. But if you haven’t developed a flash briefing, it was really just like filling out a form, it wasn’t really significant, or there was no code, there was no open a command line or build a file or have any kind of assets available for something in advance of what you would need to develop, it really isn’t any of that it’s just on, you know, on the website, or wherever I’m developing my feed there’s has to be like a handful of stipulations met. But but that’s not really much more than what you’d have for any other kind of, you know, system where you’re hosting, processing and serving an audio for you. And for my circumstances and not collecting any information or any payment processing. So I think it’s a lot simpler, just kind of having the audio feed from RSS go into something that’s, you know, pre selected to serve that from the alexus system. And that’s kind of an interesting method of using it, I don’t use the flash briefing system really, as much as I thought I would,

I guess kind of day today, it’s because maybe it’s like the type of content that I seem to be able to run into, it’s just sort of a lot of street stuff from Wall Street Journal. And it doesn’t really seem to be very relevant, or really, truly what like the headline news would be, if I really needed to hear something in audio this hour, would it be that I don’t really know. So it doesn’t quite seem like it. But that’s probably some kind of level of content issue I’m going to run into also, and maybe this is just my personal situation of it, maybe not being like a time kind of thing that that I’m able to do. But, but what I’m interested in trying to do, I guess, is take advantage of all the people that might be trying to use their echo system a little bit more. And yeah, try and kind of participate in that and try and be one of the voices that is served. On the echo system, I was impressed. A while back when we were doing some testing with the Alexa platform. And when we were we’re checking out with like the, we’re putting together an astronomy based like sky watching. Alexa flash briefing, and it was kind of interesting. Trying to put that together. I liked it a lot. See, there it goes, Alexa stop. So when I was trying to put together this flash briefings, it was interesting to see the real spike in traffic that was there. And so you know, I don’t really have a draw of traffic as it is at all. I’m not sure if it was all just spam or some kind of weird artificial server track traffic I was getting once I submitted it to Amazon. But there was hundreds of I don’t know markers of activity on that on that file. And that feed, it was far more like multiples of anything that I’d seen from from the iTunes podcast system in in my time setting up podcasts and the time passed. So it was interesting to see just that kind of like rush in of things or ask people or I guess, I guess echo systems that had queued or triggered the feed that I had. So it was kind of interesting, seeing some of the analytics behind that. But that’s a part of what makes me want to get into this type of content a lot more. The other part is that I’m trying to get more into podcasting, I have some other some other kind of podcasting, things that I have to be working on in the next couple of weeks and months. And so I’m really trying to get into kind of the audio side of stuff and do a little bit more of the audio editing. And, you know, I’ve been thinking about it a little bit too, in terms of, I guess, I don’t know what you produce in a podcast. I think this is fine and fun. And it’s probably fulfills a lot of the stuff that I would listen to a podcast for man, you know, so yeah. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to this. I understand. I get it. But to talk to that point, I guess a little bit of what I mean is that you need a podcast to be useful. You want some of the information that you’re here for a bit of time to be to be useful or to be, you know, entertaining or somewhat informative or some kind of level of a hang. I don’t know, that’s what I listen to a podcast for I guess we’re not really like hyper, hyper informational, or, you know, there’s not like a ton of specific data points to get to that a lot. I’ve learned a lot. You know, it’s a type of communication platform that seems to service my learning a lot better than whatever type of articulation seems to happen more clearly in an audiobook that’s a little bit harder for me to wrap into than what it is with And the more natural flow pause, and then pacing of a conversation or, or just have a person, you know, talking or trying to try to talk off the

top of their head.

I guess like professors to do that, or, you know, teachers would do that when someone’s lecturing, which I hope this is not quite a lecture. I have nothing to teach you or nothing. There’s nothing you can learn from me. That’s probably that’s probably the truth. I’ve tried, though. But, but yeah, I guess for for photo stuff that’s going on? Well,

I don’t know what I was talking about. That was Alexis stuff, right? I haven’t even gotten the photo stuff. For the Alexa stuff.

What I’ve done is I’ve produced a billy Newman photo flash briefing, to go on to the Amazon Echo platform. I’m watching my words more carefully now. And I’m also trying to put together some of the other podcast ideas that I’d had in the past, something around media and technology, I’m trying to put something together around astronomy and sky watching, I’m trying to put something together to there also. And I’m also trying to figure out some stuff around I guess, photography, specifically, and then outdoor camping, travel adventure stuff, specifically. So I’m going to try and find some names that that might be useful for that kind of thing. And I’m going to see if, if I could try and put that together. But But yeah, be kind of fun. I’m I’m looking forward to trying to try and get some traction on building out some content on the Alexa platform stuff. Now moving on to the photo, photograph stuff that that I might have to talk about. I talked about a couple of pictures and stuff earlier, I posted a picture to Facebook, it’s an image of, of the tulip fields, and a motorhome, that’s some of the stuff that we’re going to be getting here in the next few days. Because that’s what I had been working on. It’s kind of a cooler commercial project that I put together. And it’s really one that I’m more proud of now than or you know, I don’t know how that goes. It’s just the way that you work on photographs evolves over time. And if you’re doing it right, I guess you would hope that that the current projects you’re working the hardest on are the ones that are coming out the best; I guess that means you’re, you know, you kind of growing or evolving over time. And I do like these Yeah, I think it was really cool. And I really, really like the way that these images sort of represent the area and the things that people are stuff, I think a lot more than the way that I like even the really nice images that I made in that same format a few years ago at that tulip field with a motorhome. So that was a cool opportunity to get to get some chances to build that app. There’s a handful of problems that I ran into on that part of those are related to the Sony camera part of those problems I got into on that last podcast but but all in all that said the news of that is I’m going to sell this Sony camera, and I’m going to sell off in parts, I’m going to try and get as much cash for it as I can. And I’m going to try and move on to another professional body system for for camera capture. But I think I’m looking at a Canon five D Mark three; this is an older camera, it might even be an older camera body than the 2013 made a seven are that I’m currently photographing things with. So I’m trying I’m trying to sell this a seven are off. And then I’m going to try and slide into a Canon five D Mark three; I think part of that is because I’m trying to do more. What am I trying to do, I don’t know, I don’t have a great reason for this, you can use a Sony camera for this. And a lot of ways there’s absolute lacking is that my camera has for what I want to do with it. And I’m set up to do a handful of weddings this year. And what I really noticed about the Sony system is that it’s just really not functional for professional capacity wedding photography as what I believe really interesting stuff for low light, really interesting stuff or like carry on camera. All these problems have been addressed in later iterations of this camera. But for me for what I have, and for the breadth of lenses I have available to me it seems more financially viable and reasonable and interesting and you know, just sort of experimental adventures to move on from Sony and go check out some canon stuff, which is the camera manufacturer, of which I have not partaken of yet in in my adventure and expedition of learning how to be a photographer so so that’d be kind of an interesting way to go about it. I like the idea of taking the camera and using it for a year you know, or using the body for a year and then try to sell it off but but I think it’d be a good value to try and jump into something like that, that of the camera and train, train, use that as a workhorse for a while over the summer so I can build the photographs out and still build like video out and build some other things out but but I’m learning a little bit more about renting equipment too. And sort of if I have such a difficulty as maybe mentioned before, trying to satisfy my wants to be working with the highest level camera equipment that’s available, you know, like, I don’t have an 85 millimeter one four and a nice camera body or a current-generation digital camera body to build my work with. I just don’t have that around for me. So I have you know, sort of some some level of Sort of lower quality and by by much love are many levels of lower quality are much cheaper, at least equipment to do any of the level any of the kind of work I’ve had with. And so there is really at a professional level, there really is like a

whatever, for whatever reason would cause someone to spend $100 for a 50 millimeter lens and then spend 15 $100 for a 50 millimeter lens. It’s that value difference there, that ends up starting to represent itself to me when when I’m trying to work with some of this equipment. So I’ve been trying to think of that. And since one of those is not achievable for me, I’ll let you guess which one the cheaper one or the inexpensive one, I’m starting to think about making it available to me by renting it at a cheaper price, or at least renting some of the components for myself for shorter periods of time at a cheaper price. You know, one of the drawbacks that I ran into I think I bought a lens, maybe a wide-angle lens, maybe for somewhere around, let’s say $400. And then when I sold the lens A year later, some months later, I don’t know it depreciated the amount, and I hadn’t really used it for that many things. I was thinking, Oh, you know what, I wonder if, if I could have just rented a wide-angle lens like this, that that one time I went on that long camping trip and then that other time I went on that trip to do that thing that I needed the wide-angle lens for for the Astrophotography, or whatever it was. And I didn’t really shoot with it that whole winter there. You know, there’s, there’s a handful of things I did, it was cool. There’s a lot you can learn with something when you do own it. And that’s definitely why I prefer that. But I guess just as it goes for some sort of specific telephoto that I might need for a certain type of job, I really would probably not grab for that day in and day out with the work that I do. And so I guess sort of thinking about those sort of things. I’m trying to get to a position where it could be a little bit more, a little bit more flexible with the camera I have, maybe I would have liked, maybe I just buy lenses now. I don’t know. And then I just rent camera bodies when I need it. That sounds crazy. I would lose a ton of money if I did that. What am I thinking? I don’t know. These are just ideas, guys. Who knows? Or folks, I don’t know who’s listening.

Let’s see. So as probably

most of the super interesting stuff that I have to talk about on this episode of the building, even photo podcast and you can always check out more of my stuff at Instagram at Billy Newman, at Billy Newman, its ability to win on Twitter and on a few other things. So there’s a few other imposters out there that a billion humans but no need to talk about them. Let’s talk about me. You can check out my stuff at Billy Newman photo comm. You can also check out some of the flash briefings that I put together on the Amazon Echo system. I think you can look for maybe the Billy Newman photo flash briefing. I think you have to use the app or something to do that. You can’t just ask it. Yep. And then night sky 365 flash briefing. That’s the other one I’m trying to try to bring in for some skywatching astronomy news. But yeah, thanks for checking out this podcast from Billy Newman photo.com. Have a good day.