#noteworthy

The Pixinote blog

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Pixinote Picks for the Holidays

Maybe you’re done with your holiday gifting, or you’re scrambling for what to get your favorite Pixi beyond a little love in the mail. Whether you’ve got photographers, word lovers, makers, or just your little brother on your list, here’s the gifts those of us at Pixinote HQ gave and received and coveted and loved this year.

Sure Shots

For the photographers in your life, Sure Shot Andre Dos Santos (*Andredossantos) recommends the Fuji Instax cameras

“They are basically the modern equivalent of Polaroid and the cameras usually come with some of the "film.” Not sure it's classic emulsion based, probably more digital but really that doesn't matter. Taking a photo and having it ASAP is the norm these days but it's still cool to have it in hand immediately. Maybe it's the camera nerd in me but it's just always been a cool concept. Also Fuji has really souped their Instax cameras and they have some cool features now like super wide lenses and such. I think it's a good gift for an older kid, to get them into photography or a photo enthusiast, photographer, amateur photographer, whatever, as well.”

As for me, *Danielle, Pixinote’s social media manager, discovering all these awesome photographers and featuring them in Sure Shot profiles has been a gift itself. If you’re in the NYC area, consider booking a portrait session with Abbie White (*Abbie). More info here.

Or, you could go with some awesome photography books:

Francesca Woodman was the first young photographer’s work I loved. 

If dog is indeed your co-pilot, or your recipient’s, The Dogist puts 1,000 dogs on your coffee table.

Sometimes, the best gifts are free, and I won’t think of photography the same way after this amazing essay on the power of the Selfie by Rachel Syme.  “Thought of you while reading this” and a link is like sending a modern mixtape.

Short and Sweet

Co-Founder *Daniel is a fan of the Field Notes Shelter Wood notebook. “Write down those ideas. Sketch those views. Keep a list of Pixinote ideas!”

I’ll piggyback on Daniel’s rec here and say I’ve loved many pens, but the Pilot Hi-Tec Maica Gel is my current favorite. I’m partial to the blue black, but you could be a dear and get someone a whole set of them.

For the small or just playful people in your life, Oliver Jeffers writes and illustrates the kinds of children’s books that make you want to draw again. In his latest, Once Upon An Alphabet, he asks burning questions such as: How many elephants can you fit inside an envelope? (See the letter N for an answer).

We featured some of artist Lenka Clayton’s text-based art earlier this year. Some of those typewriter drawings are available for purchase here, or of course, the rare “Mysterious Letters Artist Book” created with Michael Crowe. Guys, it includes magical dice. 

Connection Matters

Co-Founder *Travis says “I’m going to go super on-personal-brand and recommend the Raspberry Pi 2 for the nerd in your life. It's a tiny but fully capable computer that can get mounted on a robot, wired into a home network for DIY home automation, or hacked into whatever wild project they can concoct.”

*Daniel had a whole list of playful ideas:

LittleBits – Gizmos and Gadgets. Super well-designed robot-creation kits to bring out the mechanical engineer in your kid (or yourself).

Buildopolis. Fort-building kits made from die cut cardboard and felt connector tabs. Think life-size legos that store back into a flat-pack box.

Dinosaur magnets. A fun way to hang those Pixinotes on the fridge. What could be better than powerful little dinosaur magnets? Plus, they're gold.

Teenage Engineering PO 10-Series pocket digital music devices. Link them up with friends for the ultimate Holiday beat-making hang.

Edit: Vinyl. Get daily vinyl offers via text, curated to help you build the ultimate collection.

Our developer Stephen *Sprinkle stays connected with his 1st Gen Android Moto 360 Smart Watch; the second generation one has just been released. 

Happy gifting and receiving and mailing and thanking, Pixies. From those of us at Pixinote HQ may you have some meaningful connections this year and next.

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Sureshots: Andre dos Santos

Photographer Andre dos Santos was born and raised in Nyack, New York and now lives in Manhattan, where he works for Columbia University Libraries. Dos Santos’s work, which recasts the buildings, sign posts, and shadows of the streets of New York as vibrant and arresting abstractions, has made it as far across the world as a solo show at the Bootstrap Gallery in London and has been featured in group shows in Beijing and Dubai Design Weeks.

What do you shoot?
 Mostly I do abstract photography but also urban landscape. Even when I'm doing landscape I try to introduce abstract elements into the photo. I go on treks around the city and take photos that I find interesting. The past couple of years I've concentrated on exploring the Bronx.

How do you shoot it?

I use a Rolleiflex medium format twin lens reflex for about 80% of my work. I prefer the square format and also like working via a waist level finder and the Rolleiflex provides both those elements in a small package. I also sometimes use a Pentax 6x7 SLR. And of course, an iPhone.

First camera? 
 My first camera was a Canon FT-b that my father gave me. We had a darkroom when I was growing up and it was a magical place for me.

Favorite recent shot? How did you get it? Why do you love it? 


I took this with my iPhone about a week ago. I love it because I think it epitomizes the kinds of images I love to find out on the street. Something you'd walk right by normally without a second thought. It was a scuff mark on a wall. Looked as if something large scraped up against it!

Tell us all your photography secrets. Okay, one will do. 
 What I always try to do is to look beyond what you see in front of you. Kind of like those magic 3-D posters where you slightly cross your eyes and images pop out. There are beautiful images everywhere if you look for them.

What do you love besides your work? 
 I am avid lover of strategy games: chess, poker, backgammon, etc. I also love the moving image: movies, television, etc. I also read a lot of fiction; I particularly love noir.

Who was the last person to take a photograph of you? 
 I am pretty shy when it comes to photos of myself—it's a bizarre family trait from my mother’s side. We are afraid of pictures being taken of us like something out of a vampire movie—but I was out shooting with some friends and one of them, John Gellings, snuck a shot of me when I was composing an image and not paying attention.

Best thing to come across your mailbox of late? About five rolls of Provia 100f color slide film. My favorite of what's available these days.

If you could send a Pixinote to anyone, dead or alive, who would it be, and what would be on it? 
 I'd send one to my father because he is the person who introduced me to photography. I'd try to find a photograph of something he would like and I'd tell him how much I'm grateful to him for introducing me to the art.

Follow Andre through the Bronx and beyond on Instagram, and check out more of his work at Cargo Collective or on Flickr. If you want to send him a Pixinote of something you’ve found by looking for beauty in the streets or elsewhere, Andre is *andredossantos.

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@wwp #veteransday #woundedwarriorproject #pixinote

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The Mailbox Mix

Our Dearest Pixies,

We made you a mixtape. Isn’t it romantic? It’s almost as good as getting a love letter, isn’t it? By our estimation, postcards deliver as much heartbreak as love though. Some would go so far as to light letters on fire. That’s passion. 

One thing is clear from this playlist; if you want to tell someone how you really feel, send a postcard. Every comma counts. Might we suggest a Pixinote?

Check out the full playlist: My Baby Just Wrote Me a Letter  

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Mail is back. 

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Sureshots: Abbie White

We’re excited to launch our profile series, where we ask a few simple questions of photographers, wordsmiths, and folks who know how to make a moment matter. This week we talk to Manhattan-based photographer Abbie White.

What do you shoot?

Kids, families, births, product, and I've just started styling and shooting for prints I’ll be selling on my blog, which I'm really excited about!


How do you shoot it? Canon 5D Mark ii with a Canon 24-105mm f/4 zoom lens and Canon 50mm f/1.4 fixed lens. And my iPhone. 


First camera? My first camera baby was a Rebel XSi with a 50mm f/1.8 fixed lens. 


Favorite recent shot? How did you get it? Why do you love it? 

This photo of my seven year old. It's so hard to get a shot of her looking at the camera and not making a goofy face, so I really love this one of her smiling. I got it by making a burp noise ;) 


Tell us all your photography secrets. Okay, one will do. I practice composition with my iPhone constantly. It's hard to bring my big camera on certain adventures with my kids, so using my iPhone is a great way to capture on-the-go moments. And then editing with the VSCOcam app makes them look good. 


What do you love besides your work? I love traveling, reading, crazy good TV, food, adventures with my family, and being ridiculous with friends. 


Who was the last person to take a photograph of you? My husband. 


Best thing to come across your mailbox of late? My best friend sent me a hilarious and slightly inappropriate postcard from London.  

If you could send a Pixinote to anyone, dead or alive, who would it be, and what would be on it? 

My dad, who passed three years ago. He was so supportive of my photography and I think he would've loved this shot. It would say "I love you and I miss you everyday."  

You can follow Abbie’s adventures with her three kids through the big city and beyond on Instagram, or on her blog, or send her a Pixinote at *Abbie.  

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Dog Is My Co-Pilot

A few months ago, a member of our West Coast team spotted this guy waiting patiently for his pilot to return.

Shortly after, I spotted this pup hanging out in a Vermont parking lot.

Is there anything that turns a day around more than a dog taking himself so seriously? Maybe one who wiggles like a slinky. Here’s the thing about photographing people: we blink, we stress over our angles. We have moods and bad hair days. Dogs, though, radiate an enviable self-confidence and presence that  can improve any photograph you take. So if you ever have one of those days where people are just too much, one of those days when what you really need is some four-legged, silent charm and you can’t get close enough to an actual dog, here are a couple of our favorite dog photographers.

Theron Humphrey and Maddie

Photographer Theron Humphrey rescued his dog, Maddie, and then took her on a series of adventures cross-country. She seemed to like it. 

Maddie is seemingly comfortable anywhere, literally and figuratively. Most of Humphrey’s photos highlight her ability to balance and cram herself into anywhere a far-less inhibited being would scoff at (drawers, behind a potted plant, in a crack between the couch cushions not large enough for a dog half her size).

Theron captures their adventures by car, sidecar, and couch at http://thiswildidea.com and also has an amazing series called “Why We Rescue” that might just drive you to your local animal shelter. You’ve been warned. Follow Theron and Maddie on instagram here. 

The Dogist

You can always count on The Dogist, photographer Elias Friedman’s catalog of dogs in the streets of New York City, and the world, to capture the essence of what makes dogs well, the best: their charm and wit, their beauty, and ability to smile with their eyes with more conviction than a supermodel. 

Their sometimes ridiculous names. Hello, Goober. And Pippi Longstocking.

If you want to fill your feeds with doggie joy, you can follow The Dogist on Instagram, Tumblr, or Facebook. There’s a book coming out soon, too.

Literary Dogs

If reading’s your thing, Amy Hempel’s stories are always full of dogs, good and bad, breaking readers’ hearts and inviting themselves to play baseball. In partnership with Jim Shepard, Hempel edited an anthology of poetry by writer’s dogs. It’s called Unleashed, and half the proceeds go to help animal welfare agencies.

Remember, it is totally cool to take photos of dogs in cars. Or dogs on your block. Or shoved between your couch cushions. 

Who among us wouldn’t be happy to find a Pixinote with a dopey dog face on it in their mailbox? By the way, my Pixiname is *Danielle if you’re so inclined.

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New season, new adventures. Where will you go this fall? #shareyourjourney #noteworthy

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The Art of Words

When you write a Pixinote, you’ve only got three lines to say what you need. This week, we’re looking at visual artists who choose their words—or letters—carefully and make them pop, sometimes with a little help from electricity, sometimes, with a postage stamp.

Tim Etchells

Artist and writer Tim Etchells works in neon and in text. His 2010 installation, Red Sky at Night, attached hand-cut letters spelling “hope” to helium-filled balloons. You can guess what happened to those balloons by day’s end. But, the next morning, hope does rise again, via new balloons. In neon, check out How Love Could Be, which borrows its statement/question from a 1961 Motown song, and the permanent London installation in LED lights, A Stitch in Time.

Jung Lee

Korean photographer Jung Lee takes her neon out into the natural world, which makes for striking juxtapositions of nature and text. Over on Cool Hunting, the artist discusses the limitations of language, how she chooses her words, and the story that always lies behind them. 

Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer might be the OG typography artist. She’s been making people think with her truisms since the 1970s. Often projected onto public buildings, etched onto plaques or benches, or worn on clothing, Holzer’s provocative lines are free of visual distractions, and pack a punch of humor, intelligence, and depth. Some of her truisms, such as “Protect Me From What I Want” and “Abuse of Power Comes As No Surprise” have become part of the cultural vernacular.

Lenka Clayton & Michael Crowe

Since 2009, Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe have been working on their Mysterious Letters project, with the goal of sending a handwritten or typed letter to every house in the world. That’s right, every house in the world. They’ve completed 2,700. Only…well, a lot to go.

Clayton, amongst various other text-based projects, makes typewriter drawings. Did you ever think you’d see a campsite made of symbols found on a keyboard? An elephant (oh what, sorry, that’s just a boy in an elephant suit. My bad. So easily fooled.)? A quilt? The world’s most meta-Rorschach test? Almost-purchased fruit? Hotel keys? We’re never looking at a keyboard in the same way again.

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(Re) Connection Matters

We live in an age of tremendous possibility for connection. Here are some incredible stories of re-connections in our neighborhoods, our mailboxes, our workplaces, and of course, our social media worlds:

1. Two sets of identical twins switched at birth, raised as fraternal twins in very different circumstances, and reunited in Bogota two decades later, at of all places, a butcher shop.

2. I have a twin! And she speaks in a French accent! Anais Bordier and Samantha Futerman are identical twins raised in New Jersey and France, who never knew the other existed, and who reconnected through YouTube and Facebook. The women share their incredible story of reconnection in the documentary Twinsters.  

3. Katy Olson and Lizzie Valverde aren’t twins, but were, like Bordier and Futerman, adopted into different families. Many years later, the sisters’ shared passion to tell stories brought them to the same writing classroom, far from home, where they discovered more than a few coincidences. 

4. Sometimes, connections are made through woofs, not words. This story of military working dogs and their handlers’ enduring connection is a powerful story of trust and service. This June, legislators proposed the Military Working Dog Retirement Act of 2015, which seeks to reunite retired service dogs with their handlers back home. 

5. Of course we love this story about friends reunited by a long-overdue piece of mail. A postcard took 24 years to arrive, but it did bring them back together faster than social media could.

Have a great story of reunion or connection to share? Send it our way: [email protected].

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Don't let the feed swallow your last bits of summer. Pixinotes are memories you can touch. #leaveapapertrail #noteworthy

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Our t-shirts are here. Want one? Simple: send 5 Pixinotes, and we’ll send you one. When you trade #pixilove for t-shirts, everyone wins.  

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Less FOMO, more YOLO. Shoot now, send later. #leaveapapertrail

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When you've already made the moment, how do you make the memory? #leaveapapertrail #noteworthy

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Hey there Pixies. *Danielle here. I’m collecting stories about the magic of sending and receiving Pixinotes, about how you’ve taken ordinary and extraordinary moments and made someone’s mail a lot better. If you’ve had your day made by a #Pixinote, or made someone else’s by sending one, and are willing to share the story behind your Pixinote, please drop me a few lines at [email protected] or tell me how to get in touch in the comments. *Danielle

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Who in your life needs some #pixilove? Some who is there for you, who feeds your soul?

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Have a moment this weekend that made you think of someone you love? Let them know by sending peace, love, and Pixinotes.