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Blog under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Sep
29
(2006)
Playing with Aperture
Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: aperture, apple, photography, software.
I got a copy of Aperture this week, just in time to get to play with the new 1.5 update. I'm really impressed with the application. It blows iPhoto out of the water.
I was trying out some of the new features, and thought I'd see if I could tweak one of my favourite photos of Evan to make it "pop" a bit more. On the left, the original, "in camera" image. On the right, a version with white balance correction, and an application of the new "Spot & Patch" tool to remove some blemishes.
Evan – tweaked (before and after)
The tweaked image definitely "pops" more. Might be a bit too warm, but I was just messing around with Aperture. I'm realizing a couple of things:
- shooting in RAW is awesome (I went for a walk around campus today, shooting RAW for 90% of it. what a difference…)
- I have huge gaps in knowledge/understanding of photography. I'm having fun slowly learning, but man, do I have a long way to go.
King jokingly suggested I should quit my job to be a photographer. If that would pay the mortgage, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I bought a copy of Aperture at the beginning of the year, and despite living with it on a 12″ PowerBook for 6 months, I’ve never regretted the purchase. I’m finding as I’ve got to know my camera (a D50), and using it in manual mode 99% of the time, with Aperture I’m getting much better results.
The switch to RAW is particularly great one – shooting to JPEG always felt slightly wrong to me, like I was throwing data away before I even got to see it.
Little children getting their blemishes removed, what is the world coming to? Perhaps in the future we’ll have glasses that remove blemishes and wrinkles from people’s faces so everyone looks young.
Is that a good idea? As for becoming a photographer, hmm. I wonder how long that job is going to be around?
There’s actually a camera that removes blemishes, even makes you look thinner, all in-camera. That’s a bit over the top…
As for the job of “photographer” – it’s been around for 150 years. I don’t think universal access to cheap photography tools will change that. If anything, it might increase the appreciation of what it takes to take/make a good photo.
Everyone has a video camera, and the resulting accumulation of 50 trillion hours of birthday party shaky cam footage hasn’t reduced the demand for real cameramen etc…
I could go for the thinner. What I actually wonder about photography is not whether it’s going away, but whether photographers are becoming ubiquitous…? Home videos can’t become commercial videos, they don’t have the budget… but photography is the photographer and the camera, that’s is… The view doesn’t cost anything. But I guess you have to have enough free time first to learn the craft, and then when you practice it you have to be paid enough to make a living… so that keeps the pay levels decent enough for those who choose to go in it… I guess its sort of a supply demand curve for work… If there is too much supply it causes a drop in the demand or the pay, and that causes people who can’t afford the life style to leave. However a while back some freeland writer who wrote for mags including Rolling Stones was complaining about the fact that he was getting paid not a penny more than when he started and taking in inflation, quite a bit less.
Photography died in the ’50s when cheap point-and-shoot cameras took off. Everyone could take a picture. Wait… It didn’t die, it just got more common/popular…
but, yeah. I couldn’t imagine actually making a living off of taking pictures. it’d sure be cool, though…
What I really mean is… I can not accept defeat…
No seriously though, how about 3-D pictures?? When will 3-D holoscapes replace photography?
they might add to it, but I don’t think they’ll replace it. a simple 2D photograph is a powerful thing. daguerrotypes from the mid 1850’s are as powerful (or moreso) than any 3D hologram, because they’re a snapshot in time (literally and figuratively). It’s not about technology, it’s about story telling. As stuff gets invented, it just adds more ways to tell a story – but the old ways don’t get forgotten, they get refined.
2D beats 3D in some areas, because it lets multiple viewers share the same perspective. With a 3D holograph, everyone sees something slightly different…