★

★

Client: Seniman Coffee, THCR Roastery
Art Direction: Will W., Rodney G., David S.
Production & Editing: Will W.

★

★

★

There’s only one way for manufacturers to improve displays and gain a competitive advantage. They need to make the displays “deeper”; able to show a wider range of color. It’s also clear from Apple’s work that they see smarter displays, with things like True Tone technology, as a way to distinguish themselves in a crowded market.

Apple is in a unique position with regard to color management. They own a technology called ColorSync that first saw the light of day in 1993 with System 7.1 on the Mac. It’s also been integrated at a system-level for all of the OS X releases. It’s a very mature technology that recently made its way to mobile in the iOS 9.3 release.

On the other side of the coin, Android has no color management. Companies like Samsung are going to find it impossible to pull off something like True Tone and DCI-P3 without the aid of color management.

The 9.7″ iPad Pro display is truly remarkable. One week in, even the iPhone 6’s display is pale in comparison; less refectlections, better dynamic range, eye-soothing white balance, simply great. I can’t wait for all of these trickle down to the Mac’s display line.

★ blog.iconfactory.com

The more important innovation, however, was aesthetic. It is hard to describe exactly the look of a Tri-X picture. Words like “grainy” and “contrasty” capture something of the effect, but there is more, something to do with the obsidian blacks produced by the film and with a certain unique drama that made the rock photography of the Sixties and Seventies so powerful and distinctive.

Ilford was the black and white film of choice for many shooters. I, however, have always preferred Tri-X for its subtle, silky rendition of the images. ISO 400 film shot in ISO 800, and pull-processed back to ISO 400 was my secret development recipe then.

★ 1843magazine.com

★

I find that when using the HB Pencil in Procreate, I get something that is very, very close to what I feel when I’m drawing in my sketchbooks. But of course now I’ve got layers and many colors and a perfect eraser to work with. And endless pages. I love it. I’m drawn to it. It’s wonderful. You should absolutely try one if you haven’t already.

Myke Hurley, an avid note taker & self-professed pen geek, penned this:

In my testing, I used the Notes app and two other apps—Notability and GoodNotes. With these I was able to freely write on the screen, at practically any size I wanted, and I got the results I would have normally expected from pen and paper. The Pencil was able to keep up with me, and I was genuinely surprised at just how small it would let me write. Without a shadow of a doubt the Apple Pencil and the iPad Pro is a comparable and comfortable solution for digital note taking. I will definitely be using this going forward.

I have yet to read on how the iPad Pro + Pencil combo would work from a photographer’s point of view, and hardware availability aside, there’s a software side to this that can make, or break the Pencil’s true potential.

As of this writing, Astropad seems like an ideal compromise to bridge the software gap to a photography-centric use case for a photographer like me: masking & local adjustments. I don’t use Photoshop, and I limit my editing to what’s available on Aperture Adobe Lightroom, which mostly are masked adjustments.

★

Between 1945 and 1950, Stanley Kubrick worked as a staff photographer for LOOK magazine. Only 17 years old when he joined the magazine, he often turned his camera on New York City.

Classic shots from the legendary filmmaker.

★ americansuburbx.com

★

With the wrong interviewer, this could’ve been a recitation of PR-friendly softball questions with perfectly designed, talking-point responses that would’ve gone nowhere and benefitted no one. But Apple PR doesn’t want that any more than the audience does.

Or it could’ve been boring questions about hardware rumors that no Apple executive would ever answer. I’ve never seen another interviewer that didn’t waste time on these dead-ends that, in their wildest dreams, might answer questions relevant only for a few short months or years.

But John Gruber is better than that, and we all know it, including Apple.

Watch the show on Vimeo

★ marco.org

With the world’s first back-illuminated 35 mm full-frame CMOS image sensor with 42.4 megapixels2, the Sony α7R II takes image resolution, sensitivity (up to ISO 1024003) and speedy response to new heights. The Fast Hybrid AF system’s dense extra-wide focal plane phase-detection AF coverage keeps a subject in sharp focus entirely throughout the frame, while 5-axis image stabilization reduces blur which otherwise tends to affect handheld shots. High resolution is further enhanced by 4K movie recording featuring full pixel readout without pixel binning. With so much insight packed into such a compact form, it’s clear that there is more to life than meets the naked eye.

It’s a much bigger update than the name suggests. The α7R II is the real beast that its predecessor were not. I’ve been weighing in to get into the full-frame mirrorless bandwagon, this seems like the perfect camera to start with.

★ sony.net

Powered by awesomeness.

★ daylight.id

★

★

Yosemite compatible update will be released, but we should start packing and find a new home.

★ loopinsight.com

★

★ ippawards.com

> The writing is on the wall, and has been since before Aperture 3 shipped: Aperture isn’t a priority, it’s not a battle ground where Apple is fighting to own the market, and it’s slowly wandering into obscurity and irrelevance. And if you depend on your tool and workflow to turn out the best possible images, then Aperture is no longer the solution. It’s not for pros or serious amateurs any longer, it’s for people who’ve outgrown iPhoto.

I have, very slowly, started using LR4 on my side projects. Though I have not fully trained myself to unleash the power, but it has shown promising result in my final image quality.

But the subtler look & feel that I have managed to achieve with Aperture over the years aren’t that easy to be recreated in LR4; even when I have decided not to recreate, but fully adapt to LR and let it develop a brand new look & feel, I could never be happy with the results that I’m getting.

If there’s a time where I can call it a switch, it would be this time: If there’s no new announcement regarding Aperture at the WWDC Keynote later today, LR will be replacing that lens icon on my dock.

★

Sting:

> It’s not a level playing field. It never is a level playing field, and you come into life understanding that. It’s not about fairness. It’s not really about talent, you know. It’s… circumstance, it’s luck, it’s destiny. I don’t know what it is, but the best people deal with that.

Success in art is a delicate topic that will haunt any living artists, one that can make or break the spirits of those who are pursuing a career in art, including my self.

Near the end, Sting summed it up quite nicely, emphasis mine:

> Real musicians…, there’s a _spiritual component_ to what they do. It’s got nothing to do with worldly success, their music is much more of an _inner journey_. Any other success is just cream on the cake. There’s this idea that you can go on American Idol and suddenly become a star, but you may bypass the spiritual work that you have to do to get there, and if you bypass that, then your success will be wafer thin.

This is a wonderful film. Great editing, good music, awesome photography, on top of it, is a nice tribute to the artists inside of us all.

★ twentyfeetfromstardom.com

[John Stanmeyer](http://stanmeyer.com) won World Press Photo of the Year for the above image, he describes it as follow:

> Have been asked countless times today what this photograph, Signal, means to me. While standing on the shores of the Red Sea that evening in Djibouti City, it felt as if I was photographing all of us — you, me, our brothers and sisters — all desperately trying to connect to our loved ones. In this tenuous period of human migration where despair and hope simultaneously intertwine, we seek to find comfort, a sense of balance, a desire to be home, reconnecting to something stable, reassuring. This photograph of Somalis trying to “catch” a signal is an image of all of us as we stand at the crossroads of humanity, where we must ask ourselves what is truly important, demanding our collective attention in a global society where the issues of migration, borders, war, poverty, technology and communication intersect.

Iconic shot of our generation, rightful win.

★ worldpressphoto.org

Oscar-winning actor/director Philip Seymour Hoffman—©Victoria Will.

Mike & I disagree in many topics — which often includes our liking of particular photographic products — except for this brilliant tintype print, he literally picked the words out of my mind, in particular, this part:

> The picture cuts to the resignation of a human being overwhelmed by addiction, such that it’s almost more a portrait of that than it is a portrait of the person. I interpret it as the look of someone who thought he had won his fight against the wolf of addiction but who suddenly finds himself right back in the battle again, as deeply as ever.

Rest in peace, Philip. (via [The Online Photographer](http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2014/02/the-last-photographs-of-hoffman.html))

★

Go play in the rain,
Do crazy things,
Say no to easy things,
Maybe, say yes, to new things, even they sound stupid…

For the new year is coming,
And Christmas is here.

Have a great one, all.

★

> You can store a total of 50,000 photos through Shared Photo Streams (5000 photos per stream, 100 streams), and because Photo Stream doesn’t use your allocated iCloud Storage, you can store all these photos completely free.

When you create a new Shared Stream, keep pressing next to skip the sharing part and your photo will be posted on a private Photo Stream with an incredibly generous limit.

On the side, I’m also experimenting with [Backup to Flickr for iPhoto](http://www.bohelay.org/iphotobackup-en) to see how the new Flickr can work as a private cloud photo storage too.

★ bendywalker.com

> When importing photos to an iPad using the Camera Connection Kit, photos are saved directly to Camera Roll. If Photo Stream is enabled and you are connected to a wireless network, you could potentially reach any of the limits listed above. To avoid this, disable Photo Stream when importing photos to iPad when using the Camera Connection Kit.

> When importing large numbers of photos to either iPhoto or Aperture, you could potentially reach any of the limits listed above if you have selected Automatic Upload in the Photo Stream preferences. Both iPhoto and Aperture will pause uploading to Photo Stream when the maximum has been reached. Uploading will automatically restart at the next hour, day, or month, depending on which limit was reached.

The ever-insightful [John Gruber](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/11/23/icloud-photo-stream-):

> “[…] last I heard, significant improvements to Photo Stream were slated as a 2014 thing, not a 2013 thing.”

1000 is fairly a small number for a device like the iPhone 5 & the 5S. I’m guessing the reason why Apple had this limits in the first place was to control scaling on their infrastructure. Now that people has grasped the concept, it’s time for them to lift the limit and make iCloud photo a full-blown feature.

★

> One of the things I’m looking forward to trying when I get my Sony A7 is to see how well my Nikon lenses work with it via a lens adapter and what it means in real-world shooting. In particular, I’m looking forward to pitting the bodies head-to-head with the same glass and seeing what happens.

I wonder if the A7 will start something like the Canon 5D did with DSLR videos: cross-system lens adaptability. And if it becomes a reality, there will be a spike on third-party lens adapter production.

★

New to me: He was 71 years young, and he was a [shutterbug](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/lou-reed-photographer-1817676.html).

★ jdd.io

What you see above is an image — 100% cropped from its actual size — from the iPhone 5s. I thought the iPhone 5 was awesome, but this is an entirely new level of excellence one can expect from a mobile phone camera.

★ apple.com

User [daywalkerdha](https://discussions.apple.com/people/daywalkerdha) shared a fix, but I’ve included some extra steps to ensure its effect:

> 1. Close all running apps, unplug the power cable.
> 2. Disable automatic graphics card switching while in battery-mode (in System Preferences).
> 3. Reboot, and reset the PRAM (Hold Option-Command-P-R keys, continue until second startup time).
> 4. Connect the power cable after the boot sequence finish.
> 5. Enable automatic switching again.

You can also try [resetting the SMC](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US), or [update Nvidia’s CUDA Driver](http://www.nvidia.com/object/macosx-cuda-5.5.24-driver.html) if you want to be thorough, but [daywalkerdha’s](https://discussions.apple.com/people/daywalkerdha) solution worked perfectly for me.

*Update:* The same problem reappears in Yosemite (build 14A261i), and the same fix seems to have worked accordingly.

★ discussions.apple.com

★

★ worldwidewill.net

I recently lost my Canon 80-200 ƒ/2.8L while I was touring Mongolia, and I only wish that this came sooner and more widely used. You can find my list of gears [here](https://www.lenstag.com/u/will).

★ lenstag.com

[Macworld, Aug 9, 2007](http://www.macworld.com/article/1059212/lightzone3.html?page=0):

> If you long for simplicity in photo editing in an un-bloated piece of software, give LightZone 3.0.6 a try. Its unique visual approach to editing, time-saving Styles, and well-designed help system will aid the learning process. At the speed at which major enhancements are being released, I can’t wait to see version 4.

At the time of that writing, LightZone was a $200+ citizen of the photo editing elites, it has recently became [a freeware](http://lightzoneproject.org).

Darktable

That brings us to [Darktable](http://www.darktable.org), a “virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers” whose user interface reminds me of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

[Mark Myerson wrote](http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/graphics/darktable-the-free-lightroom-and-aperture-alternate/) a pretty comprehensive review of the app which I pretty much agree about.

I have yet to try LightZone, since it’s still [on beta for the Mac](http://lightzoneproject.org/node/348), but Darktable is available for the big three OSes.

★

★

★ edkashi.com

> James Nachtwey is no longer affiliated with VII and is currently managing his professional affairs through his own studio.

April 10, 2013:

> It’s very tough to leave this great, talented team, but I feel the need to pursue new creative projects that will combine my experience and passion in many different parts of the photographic world,” says Mayes in a press statement. “It’s been a privilege to work with the world’s greatest photojournalists for the past five years, and what I’ve learned from them has been invaluable and is instilled in me for a lifetime.

The old agency way is phasing out.

★ bjp-online.com

★ worldwidewill.net

★

You can learn a lot on how to be better in whatever you do from reading [Ebert’s pieces](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/). He transformed a genre of writing synonymous with arrogance, hatred, and extreme judgment, into an elegant voice of wisdom that goes beyond movies.

Ebert was much more than a movie critic. He was a voice of a generation.

[Someone wrote](http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/05/tech/social-media/roger-ebert-social-media/) that when he lost his ability to speak, [he found his voice in Twitter](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/06/tweet_tweet_tweet.html):

> My rules for Twittering are few: I tweet in basic English. I avoid abbreviations and ChatSpell. I go for complete sentences. I try to make my links worth a click. I am not above snark, no matter what I may have written in the past. I tweet my interests, including science and politics, as well as the movies. I try to keep links to stuff on my own site down to around 5 or 10%. I try to think twice before posting.

He’s a regular participant in the [New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Content](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2011/04/roger-ebert-wins-the-cartoon-caption-contest.html), and [I discovered that he also had a passion for drawing](/2010/07/roger-the-sketcher/) that nobody seems to care about.

The man just kept surprising me, even after his departure this week. He did not win Oprah Winfrey’s heart, but he won the [Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Pulitzer_Prize), the first ever awarded to a critic. He swore not to marry before his mother departed, and [he soon married Chaz](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/07/roger_loves_chaz.html), the woman of his life, shortly after his mother died.

This is the kind of actions real heroes do. They need not to scream on a battle well-fought, but people marched upon his victory on his exit.

So long, Roger.

★ salon.com

The app uses a single library file (versus projects based file in Ulysses 2), so you would have to [export your old U2 files and import them to U3](http://www.the-soulmen.com/board/comments.php?DiscussionID=561&page=1#pgbottom).

★ ulyssesapp.com

★

★ macperformanceguide.com

A [Kickstarter project](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tentblogger/pressgram-an-image-sharing-app-built-for-an-indepe) for now, and it will be a [free app if funded](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tentblogger/pressgram-an-image-sharing-app-built-for-an-indepe#faq_52379).

★ blog.pressgr.am

★ thenextweb.com

★

But for now, its primary products — the pro plugins collection — are still in the pipeline, and has [just got a huge price cut](https://plus.google.com/105020366195257635597/posts/GYMHJEaBYef).

★ niksoftware.com

Software should empower you, not distract you. It’s a tool, and like any good tool it should feel like a part of you. Once you know how to use it, the software itself should fade into your subconscious.

— Jake Savin