Storehouse - A Visual Storytelling App

Over the last few months I have been publishing many of my photo stories via Storehouse, a new interactive and visual storytelling app for the iPad. It is a unique and highly intuitive application for quickly assembling a documentary photo story using images from your camera or iPhone and then adding in blocks of text and headers to annotate the story.

The speed that you can create a visually appealing and professional looking story is incredible and suits a photojournalist who need to create short, sharp, focused stories with relevant imaging.

I have created 60 stories to date using this app and a summary of these stories are detailed below and also in the summary story on Storehouse: https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t9ozu-my-storehouse-stories

Temples

Angkor Wat https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t9rij-angkor-wat
Kinkaku-ji https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t4rb7-kinkaku-ji
Kiyomizu-dera https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t7rx1-kiyomizu-dera
Fushimi Inari Taisha https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t4rwm-fushimi-inari-taisha
Prambanan http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t1of1-prambanan
Borobudur http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t9oc1-borobudur
Trees of Ta Prohm http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y0s9-trees-of-ta-prohm
Lost City of Angkor http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y7hy-lost-city-of-angkor
Prasat Preah Vihear http://www.storehouse.co/stories/z2r7-prasat-preah-vihear
Koh Ker http://www.storehouse.co/stories/z604-koh-ker
Beng Mealea http://www.storehouse.co/stories/z30r-beng-mealea
Angkor Thom http://www.storehouse.co/stories/z70g-angkor-thom
Preah Rup http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y30n-preah-rup
Preah Khan https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t5r4h-preah-khan
Kbal Spean http://www.storehouse.co/stories/28f7-kbal-spean
Emperor Jade Pagoda http://www.storehouse.co/stories/i47a-emperor-jade-pagoda
Boudhanath http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y859-boudhanath

Cemeteries

Northampton Road Cemetery https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t0ewd-northam-road-cemetery
Cimetière du Père-Lachaise http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t9r0l-cimetiere-du-pere-lachaise
Cimetière du Montparnasse http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t8r0v-cimetiere-montparnasse
Kwong Tong Cemetery http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t0o8e-kwong-tong-cemetery
R.I.P. http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t7o73-r-i-p

Dance

Balinese Dance http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t0rhw-balinese-dance
Flamenco http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t9o9p-flamenco
Tango http://www.storehouse.co/stories/i67d-tango

Travel

Hot Air Balloon Trip https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t4eao-hot-air-balloon-trip
Colourful Colombo http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t4e3s-colourful-colombo
In Bruges https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t2eef-in-bruges
Big Noise, New York http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t7rf6-big-noise-new-york
The Roof of Borneo http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y25f-the-roof-of-borneo
A Walk in the Park http://www.storehouse.co/stories/z0ns-a-walk-in-the-park
Bungamati http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y35l-bungamati
Liu San Jie http://www.storehouse.co/stories/22qa-liu-san-jie
Giant Buddha of Leshan http://www.storehouse.co/stories/27qp-giant-buddha-of-leshan
Juzhaigou http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y005-jiuzhaigou
Cruisin' http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y23o-cruisin
Lí Jiāng http://www.storehouse.co/stories/z0ue-li-jiang
Grande Dune de Pilat http://www.storehouse.co/stories/i38x-grande-dune-de-pilat

Architecture-Urbex

Villa La Rotonda https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t1r7g-villa-la-rotonda
Sainte Chapelle https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t5rmg-sainte-chapelle
Shih Chung School https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t0r9o-shih-chung-school
Graffiti https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t0r3k-graffiti
Lost Legacy http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t5olj-lost-legacy
Bukit Nanas http://www.storehouse.co/stories/i97u-bukit-nanas
Blue Mansion http://www.storehouse.co/stories/c1tl-blue-mansion
White Elephant http://www.storehouse.co/stories/l67i-white-elephant

Documentary

Jolly Coppers on Parade https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t7e4y-jolly-coppers-on-parade
Sowing The Seeds of Love https://www.storehouse.co/stories/t2rv7-sowing-the-seeds-of-love
Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t3ozc-hill-tribes-of-northern-thailand
Take Me To The River http://www.storehouse.co/stories/i48d-take-me-to-the-river
Heartache & Hope http://www.storehouse.co/stories/c28f-heartache-hope
Toil http://www.storehouse.co/stories/w1oj-toil
Fairy Lochs Memorial http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t5tng-fairy-lochs-memorial
New York Easter Parade http://www.storehouse.co/stories/i78g-new-york-easter-parade
Pudu Prison http://www.storehouse.co/stories/y4v7-pudu-prison
Dhobi Ghat http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t2oko-dhobi-ghat
The Last Tin Dredge http://www.storehouse.co/stories/t3lx-the-last-tin-dredge

End of an Era - Aperture to be Discontinued

The news today from Apple that their pro photo application Aperture is to be discontinued will be a huge disappointment for many pro photographers who rely on this robust library management and post-processing application for their workflows. ...... me included.

Apple have decided to discontinue both Aperture and iPhoto and replace this with the new application Photos which will be realised as part of the iOS 8 release in the fall 2014 and OSX Yosemite release early next year. The new Photos application will be geared to link with iCloud and be integrate with iOS applications. Aperture has not had a major update since 2010 when Ver 3.0 was realised and iPhoto has also not been upgraded since 2011.

The new Photos application was first previewed at the recent WWDC 2014 and will be realise as part of the iOS8 realise this fall and the OSX Yosemite release in early 2015. It is very much geared up for cloud-based storage of photographs thereby giving access to images by all OSX and iOS devices for managing and editing. However the focus seems very much on camera photos ...... not much mention of serious pro photograph needs.

An Apple spokesperson stated:

"With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture. When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X."

Current Aperture users don't need to worry, the program will get updates to work under OS X Yosemite. Still, active development of the app will end.

Apple has also stated that while they have decided to discontinue Aperture they have no intention of abandoning pros and will continue to develop both Final Cut Pro and Logic. I find this statement rather contradictory ...... "no intention of abandoning pros" and yet they are abandoning pro photographers!!
Included with the reports was a new picture of the OS X Photos application, as seen above. From the picture, it would appear that the application has a "prosumer" layout. The app is also shown with a darker user interface, which is different from the predominantly white app shown off at the Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month, as shown below.

However what does this mean going forward to the many pro photographers who have committed workflows and numerous Aperture plug-ins?

Questions To Ponder

1. For pro photographers using Aperture to manage, catalogue and post-process multi-terabyte photo libraries how can an iCloud based system be practical? 
2. Can the replacement Photos application come anywhere close to the power of the current Aperture application for image management and post-processing?
3. Will the Photos application have the capability to use the current plug-ins which were an integral and 
4. important part of the Aperture workflow?
5. The Aperture application had a powerful book publication facility  - will Photos have this facility?
6. Will Photos have the ability to retain the non-destructive virtual adjustments of the Aperture files?

Alternatives

The obvious replacement application for many photographers would be Adobe Lightroom .... but there are others which may be worth a serious consideration once you have chosen to totally abandon Aperture and don't want to be drawn into the Adobe Creative Cloud environment:

Phase One Capture One Pro 7
ACDC Systems
DxO Optics Pro 8
Corel AfterShot pro

For me I am not going to rush into any transition from Aperture. It is being supported through to OSX Yosemite and my workflow on the current Ver 3.5.1 is stable and meets all my requirements right now, so unless I get a new camera that is not supported by Aperture then it should be ok to continue to use on the Apple platform for some time.

However I will be starting to review alternatives and the Phase One Capture One Pro 7 is looking like a favourite at the moment ...... more on this later as I sort through these apps, test them them and weigh up advantages/disadvantages.

One Asia - Celebrating The Images of Asia

Michael Yamashita inspired all the attendees at the One Asia "Images of Asia" Conference at Suntec in Singapore 23rd - 24th October with his wonderful stories of his 30 year career in photography. Michael is a renowned National Geographic photographer who has specialised in many Asian based stories. In two sessions he highlighted many of these stories and material from his books with some wonderful photographs and illuminated the background involved in the picture planning and setup.

Steve McCurry was meant to have also been at the event but unfortunately cancelled at the last moment leaving Michael to take the main headline spot.

Other photographers presenting included James Whitlow Delano, Manuel Librodo, Goh Kim Hui, Lester Ledesma, Gunther Deichmann, Michael Aw, William Tan, Evan Wong, Francis Lee, Yeo Wee han, Diego Garcia, Jeffrey Kong, Ralph Haering, Felix Goh, Nelson John, Andy Yeo and Aaron Wong. The event was organised by Asian Geographic magazine.

James Whitlow Delano

Andy Yeo, Asian Geographic PASSPORT Expeditions

Lunita Mendoza, Asian Geographic Editor

Customised Canon with bling!

Celebrity Photographers

Photo Competition Judging

Photo Competition Exhibition

 Adobe stand with attractive software offers

Canon IPF 8300 demo

 One Asia Registration Desk

Photo Competition Exhibition

Photo Competition Exhibition

 Michael Yamashita in action

Graffiti

Graffiti (singular: graffito; the plural is used as a mass noun) is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property. Graffiti is any type of public markings that may appear in the forms of simple written words to elaborate wall paintings. Graffiti has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. In modern times, spray paint, normal paint and markers have become the most commonly used materials. In most countries, defacing property with graffiti without the property owner's consent is considered vandalism, which is punishable by law. Sometimes graffiti is employed to communicate social and political messages. 

To some, it is an art form worthy of display in galleries and exhibitions; to others it is merely vandalism. Graffiti has since evolved into a pop culture existence often related to underground hip hop music and b-boying creating a lifestyle that remains hidden from the general public. Graffiti is used as a gang signal to mark territory or to serve as an indicator or "tag" for gang-related activity. The controversies that surround graffiti continue to create disagreement amongst city officials/ law enforcement and graffitists looking to display their work in public locations. There are many different types and styles of graffiti and it is a rapidly developing artform whose value is highly contested, being reviled by many authorities while also subject to protection, sometimes within the same jurisdiction.

I came across these great examples of graffiti on an old abandoned building at the bottom of Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman in Kuala Lumpur.

This art form has livened up the drab run-down walls of the buildings and created a large canvas for young artists to exhibit their creativity and artistic talents.