Level 50

As some humorous person wrote on my Facebook wall last year, I think, congratulations you have reached level 49.

It made me smile then and in a funny sort of way it makes me smile even more now.

Not only just reaching level 50 in the game of life, but managing to hang on in there and somehow reinvent myself in the game of photography.

This year is my 35th year as a pro photographer.

I'm actually quite proud of staying in the game as long as I have - though I do have to be careful, as when I tell some clients on the phone how long I have been shooting I think they expect to see some guy holding a Zimmer frame turn up on the shoot.

If you have been following my blog over the years, you may have noticed that my frequency of blogging has somewhat petered out.

I do have an excuse - sort of.

Over the last year I have entered a new genre of photography - new to me anyhow.

My new direction will surprise some people and I will share it with you in the next couple of months - along with a brand spanking new website to showcase my new work - exciting times.

Does this mean I am turning my back on things like the 'Forest' ? 

Absolutely not.

The Forest in fact, is right now touring China and by way of a (slightly) early birthday present this week I heard the news that the 'Forest' has won the grand award of the Qinghai photography festival 

Which means I get this trophy and quite special certificate adorned with red stars and hammers and sickles.

What next? 

Well, lots to tell.

My TV doc will be screened in the coming months....more of that too on the new site.

Why the demise of Apple's Aperture is bad news for all Raw shooters

So Apple have said they are no longer going to develop Aperture, effectively walking away from the   'Prosumer' market going as far as to recommend Adobe's highly featured Lightroom.

Though I have never been an Aperture user I regard this as a very sad, if rather inevitable day.

Inevitable in that I have suspected it sales were tiny and know no one who uses it, and sad in that it is another sure sign that Apple have no interest in supporting niche products which do not have mass market appeal, but if no one was buying it who can blame them?

But there is another reason why this is bad news for anyone who shoots Raw and uses dedicated software such as Lightroom or Capture One.

Any market place or competitive arena where there are strong players tends to make you and I the customers the winners, competition making everyone raise their game accordingly.

I don't suppose the demise of Aperture will make a huge difference to the team over in Denmark at Capture One who's focus is on quality above anything else.

I imagine however the scenes when the news broke of Aperture's demise broke at Adobe HQ the scene may have been somewhat jubilant, seeing a fellow 'big beast' leave the fray, leaving the way clear for them to further dominate the scene, with Apple gone, there is no need for them to watch their rear view mirrors any more to keep an eye on Apple just incase they came up with a game changing feature set.

Happy days for Adobe in particular, but I suspect that in the medium to long term this will be bad news for raw shooters, no matter what software they use, competition breeds success as the saying goes, and I suspect that the pace of development will not be quite so frantic as it was.