Beta Testing the Future

Full disclosure, I love the iPad. After a great house warming gift from a friend, I’m typing this on a 64GB 3G iPad, rumbling down the highway going 70mph. (Don’t worry, someone else is driving.)

This device has all but replaced my iMac. I only fire my old love up for heavy tasks, such as photo editing, layout and design. All my emailing, Tweeting, surfing, researching, TV show watching and most of my writing happens all on here.

Today though, while bored riding along, I discovered the future of this device for me. Photography.

Chase Jarvis, a great commercial photographer, has been talking for the past few years about how the best camera you have is the one with you. From that thought spawned a photo iPhone app, a book and an online ecosystem.

Today, I’m going to come out and say it. The best computer you have is the one that’s with you. And no folks, your laptops don’t count. Anything that takes too much time that it can be considered a task ruins it. This is something you should be able to do between layovers in airports.

While outside of Temple, Texas at a Shell station, I started taking pictures for fun. It’s been a while since I just played with my camera. The results are the start of a revolution in how I look at photography and, hopefully, how you do too.

43 photos later, I got back in the car. The camera adapter for the iPad had finally arrived and I wanted to test it out. Plugged it in, selected 20 shots, imported and sorted down to ten shots I liked in about five minutes.

Just for the hell of it, I opened up Best Camera, Chase Jarvis’ iPhone app. Within five to eight minutes, I was done. Ten images that I was happy with, just like that. Are they the best images I’ve taken? Of course not. Best images I’ve edited? Hell no. But that’s not the point.

Within 30 minutes, I had taken, sorted, edited and posted photos while driving down the interstate to Austin. Imagine with me for a second the possibilities.

Let’s say that Apple releases an iPad version of Aperture. You’ll have a few brushes, your synced presets from your desktop, your library of photos at your hand. And you’ll physically be editing your photos! I can start selecting and uploading pictures from a wedding while my assistant drives us home. The barriers of communication are falling, the time it takes for you to get information to coworkers and clients is dropping and you have to be ready.

Posting this is just a start, a beta test. I edited the images on an iPhone app and posted this blog using Squarespace’s great iPhone app. But, the results and speed in which I could do it was alarming and phenomenal.

Yes, I’m beta testing. But I’m beta testing the future. What are you testing?

2010

It’s been almost six week since I have posted anything. Usually I get quiet when I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. I fell into myself and am just now getting around to getting out of that. But don’t worry. I’m not getting out slowly.

I’m exploding.

Exploding with excitement and opportunity, love and tingly feelings. It took a five hour drive to Seattle with the windows down, a $200 flight from Seattle to DC, a book, a bag of skittles, a bad glass of white wine, getting retained by TSA, a pretty girl, and some dance club music for me to get to this point. I’ll explain every single one of those in depth in the coming weeks.

From Seattle to the edge of Nebraska, my brain has been playing ping pong with what’s next. Finally, I pulled out my trusty Gowalla Field Notes book and just started writing. 10 pages later, I have nothing left except passion, excitement and determination to make those ten pages a reality in 2010.

Enough rambling. I need to walk around this flight. The guy next to me has terrible body odor and is reading New Moon. Enough said.

Kayla

Sorting through old images and when I looked through Kayla‘s session again, turns out there were more photos I liked. It’s amazing what new eyes and new editing will do for some images. Now I have to look through all of my images all over again and find other ones I like. Good day. I’m posting the last two after I write, because they aren’t portrait photos, just photos I like. I don’t know why.

Addie

Addie was awesome. She rocked the pool like a trooper.

I am so close to getting the editing style I want, but so far away. Right now, I feel like that kid who is just learning Photoshop and so I am making black and white photos, but keeping the eyes in color. Yeah, I’m that jerk.

Help a brother out.

Kayla

Hello internet. Meet Kayla. Kayla is awesome. Kayla is pretty. Kayla is pretty awesome. I went ahead and learned myself some new photo editing processes and such. I like all of them except the last one, which I only like on that picture.

Do you like pretty photos?