“Maybe, these days, the question isn’t “What is a photograph?”; it’s “What is reality?” touts David Pogue, an NY Times’ celebrated technology columnist in his personal tech column.

Pogue enlisted 14 things we do to and for our photographs; in reality, we do much, much more than what he suggested; just like how we care our pets to the ends of manicures & fashion, enough is never enough.

Particularly, I was (have always been) intrigued by this very topic in photography. Photography itself, is a fabrication of reality formulated by the lights and optics in a manmade device called camera; in the digital age, the projected image that we see on-screen is an illusion of digital signals with millions of color combination as the result of a complex computional calculation, interpretation & manipulation of analog data.

In simple terms, what you see on-screen is a projected digital reality of an analog objects.

Coming to the heart of the matter, competitions, awards & public recognition are the most sought-after prize a photographer could hope for, so important to some, they would go to the length of unethical manipulation of reality, breaking the holy-grail of ethics for those who are the eyes & ears to the public to win the hearts of the public. Such incident happen today when World Press Photo winner, Stepan Rudik was disqualified for altering the content of his winning image. World Press Photo:

“The content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed.”

What remains is our moral capacity to say enough is enough, leave it to the eyes of the people to see, or judge for themselves for the reality they want to believe. There are things that you can change, adjust; that is us and the way we can cope with the moment and our vulnerable ego, I often found that when I don’t get the image I want, it simply isn’t meant to be, great things happen when we just surrender and let the event unfold naturally. Our alteration before or after the image was capture would only devalue it.

From the archive: One summer in Shanghai, circa 1999 © Will Wiriawan

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As the sky changes and the swallows cue the dawn— watching over from my 6-story high window, the flat-lined profile of the city’s landscape pokes to the horizon as the sun rises. A hint of the boats’ diesel engine and its horn signals the beginning of a busy day along the banks of the Kapuas River, where the city’s ethnic Chinese, Dayak & Malay inhabitants are warming up their hands to embrace the biggest celebration of the year, celebrating the last day of the Lunar New Year in the form of a festival called ‘Cap Go Meh’.
(… to be continued)

I have just returned from a trip to Borneo’s Jewel, West Kalimantan Province’s Capital—Pontianak; where for the first time of my life, I learned how this nation came about. It’s a humble city with a big pile of historical record in its belly, I am still attempting to process all the information I gathered during the 6 days I stayed there, during which, me & my camera were breathing along this city of 500.000 souls, eating, walking & celebrating nature’s indigenous creation of people & its way of life.

Stay tuned for massive influx of pictorial flood & wordy rumble of this amazing place, people & culture; meanwhile, an Indonesian Na’Vi, Statue of Little Barry, Indonesian Forest and its inhabitant—the tigers, are part of the 36 brilliantly curated recent scenes from Indonesia that will be an appropriate prelude to the excerpt above.

Happy March, everyone!

Pontianak Sunset—from the Kapuas River. March 1, 2010, 5:46 pm. © Will Wiriawan.

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© Fritz Hoffman/National Geographic.

National Geographic is one of the few publications on earth that photographers & writers can drink and cheer about in the same room without getting into a fight.

Photographed by Fritz Hoffman, with words by Brook Lamer, the magazine’s March issue of ‘Shanghai Dream‘ caught my attention for its bold and unusual full double-spread feature photo; closeup shot of the cities’ three iconic architecture: The IFC Tower, Jin Mao Building and The Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

The three construction wonders were topics of brainstorm, political debate and social gatherings even before the first brick was planted, my alma-mater, China’s Top Architecture School, Shanghai Tongji University were involved in the design, engineering even the construction of all three towers; I was a student when The Oriental TV Tower started construction, finished when I took a leave from school.

Nearly 10 years since I left Shanghai, it’s nice to see the three finally can stood together in one page from such an extraordinary point of view; and for the next couple of months during the World Expo 2010 — you can finally enjoy a clean, frozen state of construction-less Shanghai, a perfect time to visit this flamboyant city of constant changes.

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This is a followup from my quick thoughts on Aperture 3.

When I first opened Aperture 3, I noticed a couple of changes with the UI, I didn’t know what it was yet, but it was something fundamentally big.

First, the splash screen was gone. No more was the Apple Pro-apps-styled white sheet with launch status indicator, but a dialog sheet welcoming us to the Aperture Trial with ‘Authorize, ‘Buy’ and ‘Continue’ button. The buttons are slightly bigger than the ones in Aperture 2, the dialog sheet & the button renders in a different, yet familiar manner. I’ve seen it before, I’ve felt it before. And what comes next put all pieces together.

When the main UI appears, I noticed the main toolbar icons are bigger, it looks more ‘candy’ than its predecessor — less elegant, potentially more functional I thought — the candy color & the size and the spacing makes it feel less ‘Pro’, the effectiveness & usefulness of this change will have to be proven over time and I’m not ready to make any conclusion this time, and than there’s the sub-toolbars, it’s also bigger, though not much more, but it retains its predecessor’s style (spacing & ratio), which makes it less foreign & more effective.

What’s with all of that? Why did Apple go to such lengths for Aperture 3? I knew it’s a full 64-bit app, I knew its Cocoa, but then I remember a blog post I read from Daring Fireball:

In short, there are new APIs and features in Mac OS X which are only available to 64-bit apps, and because there are no 64-bit Carbon APIs, 64-bit apps implicitly means 64-bit Cocoa apps.

Being one of the latest edition of Apple’s Pro App, I never thought Aperture as a Carbon app, its UI is different than other Pro App and it’s beautifully crafted to the level of comfort I don’t even see in Mac’s native Apps. So out of curiosity, I decided to do some digging.

Following this one, I fired another tweet addressing Jason Snell & John Gruber:

@jsnell Was Aperture 3 ported from Carbon to Cocoa for full 64-bit support. Was Aperture 2 Carbon+AppKit? /@gruber’s http://bit.ly/cUZ7fz

Later, I went over to Apple Discussion Board and found a similar topic was in discussion where posted a claim that Aperture was Cocoa from day one and disputed that claim quoting Gruber’s article with this note.

A few hours later, someone responded to my claim, and (sort-of) confirming my theory. William S. wrote:

Apple shipped betas of Carbon64 prior to WWDC 07 but pulled out at the last minute and moved to Cocoa64. They officially say Carbon doesn’t support 64bit, for some operations, but it can be used (and is not considered deprecated) safely for 64bit programs. Read here: http://zathras.de/angelweb/blog-adobe-on-carbon-64-bit.htm

. . .

But I digress. And I think you are write. Previous version of Aperture were not true Cocoa based programs. Aperture 3 has been fully rewritten in Cocoa64 and to my knowledge, doesn’t have an ounce of carbon in it.

It’s interesting to see how Aperture has become one of the first Pro app to be 64-bit and full Cocoa, all of their Pro apps and most of their Pre-Snow Leopard native apps are also Carbon; they have rewritten Finder and all Mac OS X system apps except DVD Player, Front Row, Grapher, and iTunes have been rewritten in 64-bit.

I can’t vouch for everyone here, but my early experience with this new, Cocoa flavored Aperture 3 has been great, responsiveness has improved and everything feels natural despite the huge overhaul on the code base, it’s not an easy job maintaining the look & feel of an App after a total architectural reconstruction, and for all its worth, Apple deserves a pat on their shoulder.

There’s still no official word from Apple, nor affirmative citation if Aperture 3 was ported from a Carbon code base, to a full Cocoa code base for its 64-bit-ness, discussion is still going over at this thread, feel free to jump in.

Aperture 3 Tech Specs.

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In the wake of more and more digital adaptation in photography, some camera manufacturers joint forces and developed the so called ‘Real-Full-Frame-Digital-System’. The reason? To compete with the winning companies, Canon & Nikon who lead the charts in worldwide acceptances of their ‘cropped’ APS-C/APS-H digital format before ‘full-frame’ really came to the market. Here’s their story about the Four Thirds and (did I mention they also came up with) MICRO Four Thirds?

I didn’t buy it then, I still don’t buy it now, and I will never buy it no matter how hard they argue. Here’s why:

© Steve Huff

First, you have that beautifully rendered machine against a blurry background, that clears your eye off any distraction or disturbing objects. On the right, you see the same machine with disturbing lines and distractions on the background that your eyes see and from the memory that you register earlier, you still can identify the same object but with extra information that your brain needs to process, that distraction is what degrades the aesthetic quality of any picture, the quality that anyone with a camera should achieve and maintain with the highest standard.

More details & comparison photos after the jump. (Thanks, Steve!)

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