Journal - Gabriel Ponzanelli

Massimo Vignelli makes books

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:13:59 +0000

Beautiful video about Massimo Vignelli's approach to book design. I love seeing how people do their craft and it's particularly inspiring to see the care and patience he takes. Inspirational.

The video was created by Pentagram for the “What Will You Make Today?” campaign from Mohawk Paper.

Your Aperture Library on an iPad

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:59:50 +0000

Derrick Story wrote about a clever way to get your Aperture Library on your iPad using Plex. It's a pretty cool find.

Aperture and Fujifilm x100s RAW files - Follow up on pink rendering issue

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 05:25:36 +0000

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Aperture was rendering pinks from the raw Fujifilm x100s files in a weird way. I mentioned it looked overly saturated. I asked Rob Boyer about it and he wrote an article explaining how to fix it. I've been testing Rob's suggestion and while it does help, I still can't get it to look natural.

In the image above you can see four versions of the same image (click to see at 100%):

Upper-left is the RAW file as interpreted by Aperture
Upper-right is the RAW file with the Colour adjustment as suggested by Rob.
Lower-left is the RAW file with Rob's suggestion, plus additional adjustments (lowered black point, increased exposure, reduced vibrancy, increased saturation, and s-curve).
Lower-right is the JPEG as rendered by the Fujifilm x100s.

As you can see, the JPEG and all RAW versions are very different. I prefer the JPEG as it's closer to reality and the pink doesn't look as psychedelic. As much as I try, I just can't get a better result in Aperture from the RAW file. The colours in the piñata shift drastically with any change, but even just looking at the pink without worrying about the others, I found it impossible to get it close to the JPEG.

The photograph was shot with an aperture of 2.8 with the focus point on my daughter's eye. The background and foreground are out of focus, and the piñata is quite soft. This makes it harder because there's no clear separation between the pinks.

Here are a few close ups of the photographs (again, click for 100%). They're in the same order as above:

RAW as interpreted by Aperture

RAW with Rob's fix

RAW with a bunch of adjustments

JPEG from Fujifilm x100s with no adjustments

Notice the difference in the other colours, especially the red bit at the right. That last one, the out of camera jpeg, is the closest to the real thing. I'll continue to experiment.

Chicago Sun Times fires photographers to replace them with iPhones

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 11:40:43 +0000

The New York Times writing about the Chicago Sun Times firing it's staff photographers a couple of weeks ago:

The Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire full-time photography staff ..., including a Pulitzer Prize winner, in a move that the newspaper’s management said resulted from a need to shift toward more online video.

The shift toward online video makes sense. Paper-based newspapers are a relic of the past and the devices we all have are perfect for video. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops almost beg to display video. Hell, some will even watch video through their glasses. But more importantly, I assume most news "readers" today prefer to watch a video than to read a long essay.

But I don't believe that "people want to watch online video" is the main point in this case. The real issue is that content consumers, in general, don't like to read long texts anymore.

People are getting lazy. Facebook, Twitter, et al have gotten us used to quick fixes. A few bursts of 140 characters is frequently all people want. An article with more than 250 words is often considered too long.

This is exactly why this doesn't make sense to me. A photograph with a caption can be very engaging. A series of photographs can tell a compelling story. And people want stories. The Boston Globe wouldn't be publishing The Big Picture if nobody showed up to see the amazing photography.

Of course, I don't know the full story. I have no idea what's happening inside the Chicago Sun Times that would suggest this was the right decision. I can only comment from the outside, but from here it seems like a really dumb move.

And then reading (yes, I still enjoy reading) that they plan to replace the photographers by "training its remaining staff to take photos with iPhones" just makes me want to bang my head against the wall. What the hell are they thinking?

What's the plan here? Turn the Chicago Sun Times into YouTube?

Colour grading in Apple Aperture with VSCO Film presets

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:40:15 +0000

What a cool idea. The guys at AO Creative are using Apple's Aperture and the VSCO Film presets to colour grade video. It looks awesome.

They explain how to do it in the VSCO blog. I have to try that soon on my own video.

VSCO Cam for iPhone (and fix the download error)

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:11:56 +0000

VSCO recently released their new iPhone app called VSCO Cam. It replaces the previous VSCOCam app, which I onwned and really liked. When I say replaced, I mean exaclty that. The previous version is no longer available or supported and this is a brand new app.

While the previous one was a paid app (from memory it was US$.99), the new one is free with in-app purchases. If you own the old one and have it installed, you get a bunch of paid filters for free when you download the new one. This is a nice touch from VSCO.

I've only started playing with it so I can't really review it yet. I need a few weeks of heavy use before I feel comfortable writing about it. I did purchase the full pack of filters and I'll be spending some quality time with it. So far, I really like it.

One thing I noticed when I bought the filter pack is that it kept giving me an error in the middle of the download. The error message said only "There was a connection error" and all I could do was start the download again. I tried multiple times and always got the same error.

Frustrated, I tried again and watched the phone through the download instead of just letting it do it's thing. That's when I realised the download took so long that the screen went dark and the iPhone locked. If you purchase the full filter pack, it's about 108MB and I assume the app can't download in the background.

So, to fix the VSCO Cam download error issue, just go to the Settings app, then General > Auto-Lock and set it to Never. Then start the download again. It'll take a while, but it'll finish fine. Then go back and set the Auto-Lock to whatever you had before.

Hope that helps others having the same issue. I'll write a proper review soon.

Apple Aperture in "Better Together" in the App Store

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Thu, 30 May 2013 23:20:46 +0000

For some reason, seeing this really annoyed me. Just because Aperture has access to Photo Streams doesn't make it an app "to connect Mac, iPhone & iPad" as the Better Together section in Apple's App Store suggests.

It is under the iCloud category, so I guess technically it's correct. But there's nothing connected between Mac and iOS as far as Aperture is concerned other than publishing and downloading Photo Streams.

Putting Aperture in the same group as Byword, iA Writer, Day One, MindNode Pro, and even Apple's own iWork apps (Keynote, Pages, Numbers) is misleading in my opinion. All of these have a Mac app and an iPhone or iPad app (most have both) that are truly connected. The data is in iCloud accessible to all apps, no matter the device. This is certainly not the case with Aperture. Before version 3.3, there was a cool indie iPad app called Pixelsync that allowed you to sync Aperture projects with your iPad and update the metadata there. Although not perfect or full featured, it did its job well. Back then I did consider Aperture and Pixelsync "Better Together". Unfortunately the changes in Aperture 3.3 broke the app and made it difficult to access the library.

Today, there is no iOS app that works "Better Together" with Aperture. So, the above image annoyed the hell out of me.

I just want Aperture for iPhone and iPad.

We're for real

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:31:30 +0000

It's Not About the Nail

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:54:31 +0000

Written and directed by Jason Headley.

Fujifilm x100s colour rendering experiments

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:35:42 +0000

I'm still getting to know the Fujifilm x100s. It's an awesome camera that feels great in my hands. I'm especially loving the viewfinder.

As part of becoming truly familiar with any new camera, I tend to shoot everything in front of me using almost every mode and possible combination. Last weekend I shot friends and family at a mother's day barbeque we had at the beach. I'm shooting in RAW+JPG at the moment so I can study both files and eventually decide what to settle with.

One particular thing that caught my eye is the way the x100s renders colours in both RAW and JPG. And the way Aperture interprets the x100s RAW files. In particular pink.

See the images below as an example (right-click to open in new window to see larger versions):

That's the RAW file rendered in Aperture with no adjustments. The colours are extremely saturated to the point that they almost look radioactive (at least what I imagine a radioactive colour will look like). The pink is blotched and detail is lost. I'm not sure if this is Aperture or the Fuji file itself.

In contrast, look at the jpeg of the same photograph:

It's also a bit oversaturated for my taste, but it's not as radioactive and shows much more detail.

I can correct the RAW file in Aperture, but I'd love to see how the file is rendered in Lightroom or ACR. I might just have to install them to run a test.

UPDATE: The experiment continues here.

PIXELMATOR 2.2 Blueberry - Mini review

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:11:08 +0000

Pixelmator got an update a few weeks ago to version 2.2 called Blueberry. I didn't write about it at the time because I wanted to have a chance to play with it for a bit first. It was only a point update, so I wasn't expecting much. In my view, it's a mixed bag.

Let's start with the good stuff.

The new Paint Selection Tool is a welcome addition to the tool set. It makes the selection process much faster and is, for the most part, accurate enough. Obviously, it's not as powerful as Photoshop's multiple selection tools (for those wondering), but that's ok. It gets the job done and is a pleasure to use. This is my favourite feature of the new version.

The Light Leak Effect is fun to use and the Instagram crowd will love it. It's like Instagram on steroids with endless possibilities to customise the effect, so it's easy to create your own look. Personally, I don't think I'll use it much because it's not my style, but it's really nicely implemented and fun to play around with.

Pixelmator is still a normal buy-a-license kind of app, as opposed to that BS Adobe is doing with their subscription-only model. Sorry, had to vent on that one a bit.

Now with the not so good.

Most of the other new features are for graphic designers, not photographers. I fear Pixelmator is heading down a "let's be Photoshop and Illustrator combined" road. I believe this is a way to be kinda ok at both, but not great at anything. That's not a good place to be.

What I liked about Pixelmator was that it felt like a true photo editor for photographers. Sure, version 1 was buggy and it was missing many features, but it was heading in the right direction.

Now they're all excited about their new shape tools and vector features. They even "sneaked a feature" that turns Pixelmator into Vectormator. What. The. Hell?

Sure, the designer features are good and work remarkably well. But seriously, how many photographers add squares and butterfly shapes to their photographs? Text, maybe. Sometimes. At the very end of the process. I still think text should be at the bottom of the feature list in an photo editor for photographers.

Where are features like non-destructive adjustment layers? Or real PSD and TIFF support? Or 16 bit? Or a Liquify Tool?

They actually hinted that layer styles were coming in 2013 back in December 2012. Whilst that would be awesome, their communication back then suggested they were putting their efforts into non-photography related features. I even said I felt they were going to "follow the Photoshop path and become a bloat trying to please everyone".

I have to say I'm slightly disappointed with Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry. It seems Pixelmator is no longer a photographers application. The question will no longer be photographers asking "how good is it as a Photoshop replacement" but it'll be web designers instead.

Still, I'm hopeful. And for $15 bucks I still think everyone should buy it. Maybe if enough of us support the developers they'll have an incentive to add the features photographers want.

Photographer: Peter Belanger on shooting for Apple | The Verge

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Sun, 12 May 2013 09:39:14 +0000

Peter Belanger is the photographer behind some of Apple's most notorious product images. His client list is pretty impressive, including Nike, Harman Kardon, Square, ebay, and Pixar amongst many others.

The Verge published an interesting article about him in which he briefly describes his process for lighting complex product shots. It's worth a read.

A Visual Compendium of Cameras

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Wed, 01 May 2013 00:32:14 +0000

PopChartLab has a pretty cool 18" x 24" poster called A Visual Compendium of Cameras:

A meticulously illustrated catalog of 100 landmark cameras, culled from over a century of photographic history, depicting both professional and consumer models and tracing photography's history from the first models to today's digital wonders.

Yours for US$27 for the print only or $112 framed. Unfortunately, I couldn't find shipping prices to Australia on the website. I guess they'll show after I've put in my credit card, so no-go for me.

Gallery Show "Sculpture" by Joseph Linaschke

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:15:17 +0000

Joseph Linaschke's recent series of nudes titled "Sculpture" is beautiful. The images look almost like marble sculptures and have a very poetic feeling about them. I'd love to see the prints in person. They must look amazing at the huge size he's printed them. Some are over a metre and a half on the long side!

In this article, Joseph explains the post-processing process he followed to acheive the results. Fascinating.

Mexico via ShakeItPhoto for iPhone

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:08:03 +0000

These are from a trip to Mexico about 4 years ago. I was fascinated by an iPhone app called ShakeItPhoto and must've shot thousands of images with it. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated since 2009.

Nabila, from 2008

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 04:06:30 +0000

Found this one in my library and realised I hadn't posted it before.

Full Moon Silhouettes by Mark Gee

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 03:06:34 +0000

Beautiful video by Mark Gee, a photographer & digital visual effects artist based in Wellington, New Zealand.

I tried, but honestly can't think of a better way to describe it than his own words:

Full Moon Silhouettes is a real time video of the moon rising over the Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand. People had gathered up there this night to get the best view possible of the moon rising. I captured the video from 2.1km away on the other side of the city. It's something that I've been wanting to photograph for a long time now, and a lot of planning and failed attempts had taken place. Finally, during moon rise on the 28th January 2013, everything fell into place and I got my footage.

I love it. Via my dad.

Apple Aperture adds compatibility with Fujifilm X100S

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:29:29 +0000

Apple Software Update to add RAW image compatibility for Fujifilm X100S to Aperture 3 and iPhoto'11

I checked for software updates this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see this one. This Apple Software Update adds RAW image compatibility for the Fujifilm X100S (and other Fuji cameras) to Aperture 3 and iPhoto'11. Having just recently purchased an X100S I'm happy to see this.

Project 365 : 2013 - February

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:10:29 +0000

Running a bit late again posting this, but better late than never I guess. The hold up has been on giving them proper titles and meta data in Aperture. I'll write a post with the process I'm following for this year's Project 365 in a future post.

For now, below are the "photo a day" shots I did for February 2013.

In case you missed it, the photos from January are here.

Slow Motion with a Phantom Flex

gabrielponzanelli@me.com — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:50:04 +0000

This video by [Dumt & Farligt] is pretty impressive. I'd love to get my hands on a Phantom Flex.