From Broken Strings to Backup Solutions

From Broken Strings to Backup Solutions === ​[00:00:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Hello friends. So, as I prepare for having conversations with my friends, and colleagues and just different people in the photography and music industry for Lenses & Lyrics, I thought I would take a moment and just share a quick tip for photographers listening to this. And it, it all comes down to a story, of A Musician's Early Struggles --- Scott Wyden Kivowitz: when I was playing a show and forgot to bring backup strings. [00:01:00] 'cause you know, you, you sometimes, this was early on in my music career, so to speak. You know, I, I, I did tour, I did play in bands, but. I wouldn't quite call it a career. it was a hobby that I had immense interest in, but obviously didn't pursue music full time. Right. so what happened was, I forgot strings, extra strings, and a string popped. The Importance of Backup in Music --- Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So what do you do when a string pops and you don't have extra strings? You quickly take the string out so it's not dangling and in your way. Well, first of all, you play through it and then when in the break you take the string out, if nobody has a backup string, you play through it. Right? You just play without the, with the missing string. It is what it is. Hopefully it's not an important string. If it's a guitar, your chances of it being an important string are far less [00:02:00] than if it's a bass guitar, but there's always workarounds. You can always, if it's a bass guitar, you can adjust and play, you know, an e on a different octave. Whereas if it's a guitar guitar and you're do a chord, if you do a different chord for an E, it's gonna sound different. So, you know, it could throw you off. But with that said, I did get lucky and that case, somebody else, one of the other bands that was playing the show had an extra pack of strings. So I quickly strung up tuned. Good to Go. I think I was out one song, from playing with, with the band. Transition to Photography --- Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Now, why does this relate to photography? Because. When I was photographing bands early on, I was purely film. When, the world started shifting to digital, I shifted to digital. I started with a point and shoot. I still have it, I have it right behind me actually. And then eventually got a, a, my first digital SLR. So I went from a point and shoot to a digital SLR. [00:03:00] during the process I had lost photos twice. Twice with no backup. Lessons Learned and Redundancy --- Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So the moral of the storying is always have a backup, always have safeguards, extra strings. If your pedals are battery powered, always have extra batteries for those. If you're bringing a power strip for your amp or whatever it might be, keyboard, always have an extra power strip. Redundancy is important. Backups are important. I'm recording this right after world backup day, and I think backups and redundancy applies to more than just digital things. I think it applies to physical, tangible things as well. You would not travel without an extra pair of clothes. so, if you're playing in shows, if you're playing in bands and you're touring, you're playing shows, concerts, whatever it might be, redundancy is [00:04:00] important. Again, I had, I was lucky that somebody else had strings, but when it came to the photography stuff. A lot of my film got lost in a flooding of a basement, and unfortunately I didn't have it in like plastic buckets. Plastic containers that would protect it from the water. So I lost a lot of the film, and then when I went digital and I had a hard drive crash, I lost all of my original band photography. Since then, I've created a really good backup workflow, and I'll link to that in the show notes here. But this just goes to show that the lessons you learn in music also correlate to the lessons you can learn in photography. Conclusion and Future Content --- Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That's what Lenses & Lyrics is about. It's about sharing how music and photography collide. It's about sharing how your life as a musician impacted your life as a photographer and vice versa. And it's, it's [00:05:00] important and it's powerful and, I can't wait to hear more stories from. Other people and to share that with you. So thank you. If you hit subscribe, if you hit follow to Lenses, & Lyrics, I cannot wait for you to hear more about what is coming to this podcast. 'cause it's gonna be a lot of fun. It's gonna be a lot of fun. So let's do this thing.