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A picture of Karolina Szczur

Karolina Szczur

Designer, developer, photographer (&yet)

in designer, developer, mac, photographer

Who are you, and what do you do?

Hello! I'm Karolina Szczur and I'm a designer, developer, photographer and wannabe writer working with my friends at &yet.

You can find me sharing and chatting on Twitter, speaking at conferences and occasionally making silly faces on Meatspace.

If I'm not working in front of my laptop with bad posture and poor eyesight, I'm running around shooting pictures and hanging out with people that are dear to me.

What hardware do you use?

Last year I switched to a 15" MacBook Pro Retina with 700GB SSD, 16 gigs of RAM and 2.8 GHz i7 processor. This machine is a beast. Since I travel a lot I don't really have a fancy office, but as a part of my home setup I do use a Macally Bamboo Stand to prevent overheating and so I can alter wrist position from time to time. I also have a delightful, very comfortable bag(pack) from Hard Graft - might be one of the best accessory buys of my life so far.

When I'm on the go I defer to my 64GB iPhone 5 and latest generation iPad Mini Retina. Both in protective cases, from Hard Graft and local makers Cinnamon Cocoon.

Music is an essential part of my life so I've spent a significant amount of time to find just perfect headphones - Bowers & Wilkins P5.

For photography I shoot with a full frame Canon EOS 6D with either a 17-40mm f/4L or a 50mm/1.4 lens. I do own two film cameras as well, a Polaroid Supercolor 635 and an old Zenit 122. Unfortunately analogue photography is quite time consuming and it got way too costly so I don't do it as often as I used to. I carry my gear in a Hard Graft bag (see a pattern here?).

And what software?

I've been running OS X Yosemite since the first beta was available. My life wouldn't be the same without a couple of tiny utility applications like Alfred, Caffeine, f.lux and Bartender. Dropbox and Google Drive are my backups. I share pictures and files through the blazingly fast Cloudup. Two other apps worth mentioning are Sunrise as a native calendar alternative and 1Password.

Design-wise I have been a Photoshop user since version 4, but currently I find myself using primarily Sketch. I share and get feedback on my work through LayerVault. Photoshop and Lightroom remain in my tool belt for photo editing along with beautiful VSCO film filters. I manage fonts in Fonts.

I write code in Sublime Text 3 (with the super handy GitGutter extension that tracks your changes in Git) and push it to GitHub. My terminal of choice is iTerm 2 with the Fish shell and tmux for terminal multiplication (say no to ugly tabs!).

For messaging I use a combination of iMessage, Twitter and Google Talk (in the Flamingo app). My cross-device Twitter client of choice was always Tweetbot. Team communication happens on our baby product - And Bang. For video chat I stick to another product of ours; WebRTC-based Talky.

When it comes to reading: Reeder, Instapaper, and since Readmill unfortunately died, iBooks are my jam.

I write in IA Writer, its lesser known but still awesome competitor Byword, or directly on Medium. Simplenote works perfectly for short notes. I really dig Markdown too.

Rdio and SoundCloud are feeding me music all day long. I listen to podcasts through Instacast on iOS.

What would be your dream setup?

While I love the screen real estate, power, and speed that the 15" MacBook gives, it can be quite cumbersome to travel with, especially if you pair it with a DSLR. I'd like to have something more lightweight - a 13" MacBook Air Retina would be perfect. I'd pair it with one of these Ona bags - they are just gorgeous.

For a home office I'd definitely like to invest in Herman Miller's Aeron chair (Eames Lounge chair is another thing I dream about), a wooden desk and a high quality display. I'm still on the lookout for a good sound system - Sonos would be my choice, probably along with a Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntable.

One day I want to have a real photo studio of my own. I also wouldn't mind a teleporter.