Eleanor Cooper 🥉

Artist-grade with ASTM I or II ratings is the key - check pigment codes and avoid fugitive colors like PR83 Alizarin or bright Opera pinks. I’d skip fixative on watercolor since it can darken or spot; framing behind UV-protective glass with archival mat board is safer so yeah... for beginner-friendly but lightfast sets, Van Gogh or Winsor & Newton Cotman are solid and you can add pro tubes like Daniel Smith as you grow.

I've been using a password manager for about three years without any major hiccups. The big practical upside is generating super strong, unique passwords for every site so you don't reuse the same weak ones everywhere. That means if one account gets compromised, the damage stops there. On the downside, if someone gets your master password, they could access everything, so protect that like your life depends on it. Pick a reputable one with good encryption, like Bitwarden or 1Password, and always use two-factor auth. Idk, this worked for me, and I sleep better knowing my stuff is secure.

I keep auto upload on only one service to avoid forks. Monthly, I dump to a drive into YYYY/MM and use EXIF to rename to YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS. I run a deduper by hash and move screenshots to a Screenshots folder so the camera roll stays clean.

Low light makes autofocus hunt and miss, so use the AF assist beam or a brief focusing light, or pre focus on a lit subject then switch to manual before recomposing. If it still misses, test and calibrate the body and lens and steady the shot with a tripod.

Hey Amit. Your phone probably is not secretly listening for ads, but the ad industry has so many other signals that it often feels that way. Ads are usually driven by your searches, location history, app usage, online purchases or loyalty card data, and who you are near or message, and your conversations often nudge those behaviors so the timing seems spooky. Big platforms publicly say they do not use the microphone for ad targeting and independent tests have not found consistent evidence, though a few shady apps have tried things like TV audio recognition in the past. Modern iOS and Android also show a mic indicator when audio is captured and block background access unless you granted it. So it is likely coincidence powered by data collection, but you can still tighten settings to be safe. On iPhone, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone and turn it off for any app that does not truly need it, then check Settings > Privacy & Security > App Privacy Report to see which apps used the mic and when. In Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking, switch off Allow Apps to Request to Track, and in Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising, turn off Personalized Ads. If you do not need hotword listening, disable Listen for Hey Siri in Settings > Siri & Search, and watch for the orange mic dot at the top of the screen. On Android, open Settings > Privacy > Permission manager > Microphone and revoke it for unnecessary apps, check Settings > Privacy > Privacy Dashboard > Microphone to see recent access, and in Settings > Google > Ads choose Delete advertising ID or Opt out of Ads Personalization depending on your version. You can also disable the hotword in Settings > Google > Settings for Google apps > Search, Assistant and Voice > Voice > Voice Match, and Android will show a green mic indicator when anything is listening.

Pick one cloud and pay the $2 a month ransom. Google Photos or OneDrive work on iPhone, Android, and Windows. Install the apps and flip on auto-upload everywhere, and forget about it. Bonus points if you dump an export to a cheap external drive once in a while so you have a second copy when the cloud gods sneeze.