Staying organized is how I can stay on top of running Luminous-Landscape as well as Rockhopper Workshops and a number of other ventures I am involved in. My work space therefore is one of the most important areas for me and I have designed it to allow me to be efficient and productive.
I have an office in my home (where I do most of my work) as well as a gallery space in downtown Indianapolis. My home office is set up so that LuLa work is on one side of the room and my photography related work is on the other.
My main machine is a MacBook Pro Retina laptop, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 gig for Ram and a 750gb SSD drive. Attached to this machine is a Fujitsu – ScanSnap scanner, a Western Digital 8TB hard drive and a 1 TB USB 3 drive that serves as the backup using time machine for the laptop. All of this is hooked up to a 27 inch Thunderbolt display. My keyboard is a Logitech k750 wireless keyboard and a Logitech Performance MX mouse. I also have a Snowball USB microphone attached with a USB port that is used for conference calls and screen recordings.
This laptop has served me well with heavy use for the last 3 plus years. It works well in the field while traveling and serves as a great desktop machine when home. However I have been driven crazy by all the things that needed to be unplugged and plugged back in every time I venture out with the laptop. There is a power cord and a thunderbolt plug for the monitor. There is another thunderbolt connection for the hard drive and a USB for the microphone. Where do I put the laptop when it’s being used in this configuration? Until recently I made all the connections and then hid the laptop behind the monitor. It was such a hassle to take the computer out and hook it back up.
Then I stumbled upon a laptop dock made by Henge Docks and my laptop problem was solved. This is a very clever design that allows me to drop my laptop into a dock and have all the connections made. The cables are all tucked away neatly and I can pull out my laptop and drop in with ease. The dock itself is all aluminum construction. There is a clever cable and adapter management system to handle the hook ups. If you are using a MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt ports you will need to exchange cables from regular display port cables to Thunderbolt. It was fairly basic to do this. There is a clever Allen wrench integrated into to the dock so you don’t have to hunt for tools. My only difficulty was hooking the power cable into the dock. No fault of the dock – just big clumsy fingers. Once everything is in place you slide the MacBook into the dock and bingo, everything comes alive and works. How much easier could it be?
Now my workspace is neat and I don’t need to fuss with making connections each time I come back from a location shoot.
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