More than anything, this space is a conduit for Jorge to share and reflect on things pertaining to the web, life, current events, photography and anything of interest. Feel free to or learn more about him.
Perhaps Apple doesn’t consider purchasing Apps an investment that needs too much consideration because it seems to be the only acquisition that doesn’t offer an “Add to Wish List” option like TV shows, movies or albums do. Sometimes buying Apps can result out of impulse but there is some consideration there. It would be nice if I can place Apps in the same basket as every other digital medium that iTunes offers. I’m just saying.
It is incumbent upon you to make sure you are getting what you want at the moment you take the picture. It would be best for you to spend more time thinking of the quality of your pictures and less time thinking about the quality of your pixels.
The parameters of your vision are more important than the expertise you have with levels and curves or whatever you get involved with after you take the picture….I wish you to see not how clever you can be, but how observant you can be.
No one can recall everything they come across and there’s been times when I’ve been shopping and see brilliant color schemes on marketing posters or clothing tags that I wish to take inspiration from and apply in a new context. I took photos but rarely did much with them later to extend the concept.
In comes Color Scheme. This beautiful color tool for the iPhone with the ability to create and store palettes created from scratch, or generated from a photo or auto-generated using its built-in color schemer. By far an invaluable tool for any type of designer. Perhaps not as exciting as playing games but mixing colors has become a new thing for me while waiting on line.
Leander Kahney has put together a showcase of Snow Leopard’s beautiful icons. The are all quite simple in what they represent and communicate effectively their function. As a Mac user, you can’t deny that they are exquisitely made and the impression they make is lasting.
Call me shallow but an application’s icon is the very first thing that attracts or pushes me back from using the software without even knowing what it does yet. Consider it a form of sifting through the growing number of applications on the market and the same principle is often applied towards iPhone Apps.
Having recently declared his departure from Apple where he worked on the iPhone Human Interface Design Team for the past 4 years, icon and interface designer Mike Matas has equally proven that his artistic skill is not just limited to work accomplished on a computer. He’s also quite the accomplished photographer with an exquisite eye for seeing beyond the mundane and extracting the best out of any situation.
I really don’t consider myself to have a photographic style. Not that most of my photos don’t have a style to them, they do, but that style really comes from whatever it is I’m taking a photo of, not me forcing a style on it.
I don’t approach taking photos by going “let me take a photo of this in my photographic style”. I try to really embrace and exaggerate whatever emotions I get out of what I’m taking a photo of and turn that into the style of the photo.
One style I try to be careful when using is the “vintage”. You know, black & white, screwed up white balance, the Polaroid look, stuff like that. It’s a really easy trick to take an ordinary photo, mess with the white balance, maybe give it a thick vignette and voila! it looks like a nice old photo.
I really try not to use that stuff unless it acts as a sort of character in the photo and helps tell its story, rather than just having it literally look old. Screwed up white balance, black & white, the Polaroid look, these did not used to be styles, they were just the way cameras took photos back in the day, whether you liked it or not. It’s only looking back threw the lens of nostalgia that it becomes a glorified style.
I think the same thing is gonna happen with grainy digital artifact filled cellphone photos of today, in 10 years once cameras have grown out of all that people will look back and get all nostalgic about the charm of the digital artifact filled cellphone photo and start using that too as a style.
So that’s just a long way of saying I try to take photos that look like they were taken today, using modern technology, so in 10 years, they will be nice old photos with all the faults and charm of todays modern technology.
I currently use a Canon 5D Mark II with these lenses:
I’d say 90% of the time I am either using my wide 16-35mm or standard 50mm.
I also have a couple Low Pro camera bags, my favorite is the Primus AW. I traveled for a month last summer all over Europe with nothing but this backpack. It’s got a great specialized camera compartment in the bottom half with a little door on the side so you can quickly grab your camera without taking the whole thing off your back. The top half of the backpack leaves room for what other non camera related stuff I need with me. The back of the bag has a exposed sleeve where I carry my 15” MacBook Pro and the bottom of the bag has is a built in hide away rain jacket.
Currently I’m using iPhoto and Photoshop’s RAW editor. I think Photoshop is one of the most important and unacknowledged parts of photography these days. When I’m shooting I almost always just throw the camera into the automatic settings, not worrying about color, exact exposer, flash, or any of that. When I’m shooting I just focus on getting a good composition that’s in focus.
If I can get that then I can do the rest at home. It’s one of my favorite parts of doing photography, sitting there with a photo and tweaking the colors, the lighting, the contrast until it looks the way I saw it when I went to take the photo or until looks the way I wish it would have looked when I took the photo. It’s something cameras just can’t do on their own. Photoshop is where the serious art happens.
I’m really happy with the Canon 5D Mark II I got in January. I’m sticking with that for now.
I would not call it my proudest photograph, but it’s one I really like personally. I was in the back of a giant prop propelled Chilean military Hercules C130 cargo plane over the Drake Passage on my way to Antarctica. I had got up to go the restroom, a propped up outhouse in the back of the plane.
Climbing over crates of supplies the plane was brining to Chilean scientist stationed on the content I passed by this officers who was drinking tea from a thermos and light from one side by this little window. He had this amazing look on his face that I read as “We are on our way to Antarctica, one of the coldest most isolated places on earth. I have a family back home, what am I doing here?”.
I didn’t have my camera on me but the whole things was so perfect and wrapped up for me so ended up going back and grabbing my camera and asking him if he minded if I took his photo. I love when photos just present themselves like that, where you don’t have to go looking for angles and stuff like that to try to make something out of nothing.
Jorge Quinteros © 2007 – Today About Archives Subscribe Back to top ↩
