So here we are, it’s that time again. Another year has almost come and passed. 2017 was a HUGE year of firsts for me (I mean, you can see that here if you like, just make sure you come back), and even if 2018 wasn’t as huge, I still accomplished several new things.

Unlike last year, I only averaged a shoot every 1.85 weeks this year, but I still was able to create some quality work and capture some quality times from my friends and clients.

The year started almost immediately, I was at a company meeting for my day job and was challenged with a team of my peers to make a series of images. I’m not sure if I ever actually shared this with anyone since most of my work is portraits and not abstract works, but I still liked how this one turned out.

I was hired to shoot some photos for one of my cosplay clients, and after wrapping I just wasn’t done yet. I had built a very simple and basic lighting setup against a blank wall and asked Kat to step in for a few shots after she finished with a shoot of her own.

I still love how these turned out, and I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve ripped myself off with a similar lighting plan on several shoots after this one.

It also just occurred to me that I never posted any of the final images from the shoot I was hired for. Unless one or two made it to Instagram.

The final images that were delivered to the client were drastically different than this one, mostly because their vision was something very specific (even if it wasn’t really my cup of tea in the end). But I’m still very thankful that I was allowed to experiment on some final images after we shot what was needed.

A short time later I had the chance to shoot New York Burlesque Royalty Nina La Voix while on a business trip. I was happy that she took the time to respond, and actually took a chance to meet up with me in my hotel room for a shoot. We captured a couple of different set-ups that day, but I still love how this image came out.

Zachary reached out to me again to document some photos for what would become the second of his Talon’s Grasp series. We shot this book cover almost exactly one year to the day that we shot his last cover in 2017.

And of course it wouldn’t be a shoot that involves Zak without some out of context snaps that actually end up looking pretty good.

Where would I be without Dom inviting me to shoot concerts that he books when they come through town. I didn’t get to be at as many as I would have liked to this year, but I still love the photo of JD from Grendel as well as the below photos of Ghostfeeder’s guitar player (I never did catch his name) and Peter Turns Pirate frontman Neil.

I need to partner with Dom and make sure I can schedule my time around more of his shows. They are always a good time.

Around this same time I was given the chance to work with Tru Facade and take some of her first burlesque performer photos. She has grown so much over this last year, and I am so happy that I was able to be there at the literal beginning.

In a first in a LONG time I was invited to be a part of a few different art shows. Kate AKA Artetak did a great job at stoking my ego by actually wanting me to be a part of some of the great shows she has held this year.

But of course where would I be without my subjects. Big shout out to Roux for playing ghost in my entry to the “Occult” themed show, and Kali Fornication for being willing to be tied up by a bunch of random cables for my “Sci-Fi” entry.

Put on your best “monster truck voice” because, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. I met Sunday when she came along for a birthday brunch of mine this year, and knew that at some point we had to work together. Sunday has a great look, and I’m so happy of the work we made together. Can’t wait to shoot more.

I’d be completely lost if I didn’t mention my local Atlanta burlesque family, I didn’t do as much work for them this year as I would have liked to, but that doesn’t mean that 2019 won’t be different. I’m working on a few special things…so stay tuned.

I spent a week in Germany this year for Photokina. This is the second time I’ve been out of the country, but I am already seeing a trend. When in a place where I don’t speak the language I seem to let street art speak to me on behalf of the people who live there.

Sometime I’d love to spend a period of time in Europe just walking around taking photos of stickers and spray paint. Maybe the occasional bicycle as well.

I had one of my blog posts picked up by two international photography blogs (so you don’t have to). I’m still riding the waves of this since it hit me basically out of nowhere. I’m so entirely thankful that two publications thought so highly of me, and I hope that I can leverage some of the contacts I made during this process to get the opportunity to try and review more products next year.

Also (and I’m sure I’ll be posting about it later) keep your ears open to hear my goofy voice on a podcast in early January.

For Halloween I partnered with Courtney from Courtney Walters Makeup to turn her partner Taylor into a spooky skeleton. I loved this shoot, it was so simple yet so expressive. And of course I love how excited people get when I turn their living room into a makeshift studio.

Courtney and I will be collaborating on a few different projects in 2019, so please stay tuned for that.

Keep your eyes peeled for a stand-alone blog post of this gentleman right here. LA Comedian and Podcast host Rivers Langley.

We squeaked in this shoot on the friday before Christmas and I was able to finalize everything while I had some downtime at home. I should be getting that post up pretty soon, so I’ll save my comments for then.

And of course, where would I be without my friends who love the work I do so much that they ask me to be a key part of their special moments:

Jessica and Thomas

Erin and Preston

Jesse and Rachel

I want to make sure that I give a big Thank You to everyone I have worked with or have talked about working with this year. And also a huge thank you to all of you who follow this blog (or at the very least catch updates as they come through your social media feeds).

I don’t want to put the cart before the horse but I’d like to say that big things are coming in 2019 one way or another, and as always I’d love to see you all there for the ride.

From me to all of you and yours, Happy Holidays and a beautiful new year!

A Brief Pre-Ramble:

I’m no stranger to the iPad. In fact it once caused me not to get a job at an Apple store shortly after college. I was asked in an interview, “What do you think of the new iPad,” and I answered honestly (mistake number one in a job interview I would learn):

“I’m not sure how I feel about it, it doesn’t really do what I would want it to do.”

I didn’t get a call back for a second interview. Little did I know this would be the start of my rocky relationships with tablets.

In 2012 I bought refurbished a 32GB “New iPad.” With its retina screen I told myself it would be the perfect portfolio alternative, and I could make myself look so cool by bringing a digital device to a client meeting, instead of a printed book.

“Who prints photos anymore? Clients will see me as cutting edge!”

That device currently is sitting on the floor next to my bed, unable to be updated past iOS 9, with a dead battery. I rarely use it anymore because of how slow it has become. And it certainly didn’t win me any clients. I think I may have used it professionally once or twice to have someone digitally sign a contract or a model release.

When the first iPad Pro was released I found myself holding it and thinking, “Well…it sure is big,” before using the newly launched apple pencil to crudely draw a penis on it and handing it back to my friend. I still didn’t see a good use for what was essentially a laptop without a keyboard.

Flash forward to 2017, where I found myself standing at the counter at my local Apple store looking at the three size options in front of me for “Pro” level iPads. I was sold (or so I told myself). I just needed to know what size fit me best. After a few hours of going back and forth with the demo models, I eventually decided to walk away. It just didn’t hold up to the experience I was getting from my laptop.

When the 2018 Apple announcement of the NEW IPAD PRO came through, I once again found myself enamored with the idea of getting a laptop replacement. I studied the keynote, watched every review video, and made an appointment with myself to visit the apple store as soon as possible to play with one myself.

The idea that now this tablet was “more powerful than most PC laptops” and (would be) capable of running a “full” version of Photoshop really intrigued me.

via GIPHY

The Tech Specs:

To be fair, a lot of this section is pulled directly from Apple’s sales literature on the new iPad, and I will try my best to keep things brief here. This isn’t anything you can’t find for yourself with a quick Google search.

Liquid Retina display
11 or 12.9-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit Multi‑Touch display with IPS technology
2732-by-2048-pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi)
ProMotion technology
Wide color display (P3)
True Tone display
A12X Bionic chip with 64-bit architecture
Neural Engine
Embedded M12 coprocessor
USB-C
10 hour battery life
New Apple Pencil with magnetic charging

I sent this photo to several people who knew how much I was dreading this purchase.

After another agonizing hour going back and forth with price and specs, I decided to pull the trigger on the 12.9” model with 256GB of storage, with the new Apple Pencil. $1,380.24 retail after estimated Atlanta taxes.

To be fair, I had a friend hook me up with an Apple friends and family discount, which brought my price down to a little under $1200 after tax. Even with the discount, this is a pretty large chunk of change to throw down on something that I didn’t even know if it would fit into my workflow properly.

Once the device was delivered to me an hour later, I rushed home and completed the setup process and began playing with my new toy. I was determined to make it work for me.

Pros:

Just about everything with the design of the device:

The 12.9” screen is gorgeous, and combined with the True Tone Technology and night shift I found it very easy to use in a variety of lighting conditions. Never did it blow out my eyes when used in the dark.

The new Apple Pencil is very responsive and feels great in hand. The new magnetic charging system makes it a great way to store and charge.

Battery life is pretty good. Apple rates it at 10 hours, and with moderate usage I was able to only drop down to around 50% before it was time for bed.

The refresh rate still makes me very happy. It feels snappy when I swipe between pages on the home screen, or between pages in a book or magazine. I am impressed at how smooth everything is.

All of this packed into a device that is a great size that fits comfortably in my hands.

And I’ll be the first person to say I have tiny girly hands.

iOS 12:

For the most part, I am very happy with the latest version of iOS. When used on the iPad Pro it does a great job at coming VERY close to a desktop class OS. For the average user who is looking for a laptop replacement or substitute, it makes for a pretty good argument against competing products.

USB-C (Kinda):

Apple choosing to move to a standardized charging/syncing solution is super smart. No more proprietary cables (for the most part), and if you are ok with dongles of varying sorts you can basically connect this device to just about anything (even if that connection can’t exactly do anything…more on this later). Even though I didn’t get a chance to try it, the ability to mirror to a 5K display was an impressive demo.

Cons:

Price:

Lets talk about the elephant in the room straight away. This thing is not cheap. And for a similar pricing point you are already into 13” Macbook territory. This makes the decision much harder when comparing side by side. Yes, technically you get more storage with the iPad, and that new processor supposedly is nothing to laugh at. But what you lose is RAM, and a FULL operating system (And at least for me, Capture One).

USB-C

For all the great things that the iPad pro can do with its new port, there is one HUGE thing that it can’t do. At the time of this writing the USB-C port cannot be used to interface directly with an external hard drive. This is a huge bummer because in order to be competitive with a traditional laptop, I can’t really get around needing expandable storage.

But, you say, “The cloud! Can’t you use the cloud?” And my response to this is a decided “Yes and No.”

I downloaded the WD MyCloud app onto the iPad. It’s the same app that I use to manage my personal cloud from the go on my phone. And while I was able to eventually download a file into the iPad for editing, it was far from an elegant experience.

While iOS 12 can support plenty of different RAW files, it can only read them while in the Photos app, unless specifically coded into each individual app. Even in the Files app you can’t see any thumbnails by default.

I sure do hope I remember that SPECIFIC file name for the file I want to edit.

Now, once you download the file to your device, you can see a thumbnail just fine.

Too bad I’d have to import all of these into my camera roll first before I can see them.

Now I suppose this could be solved by a product like a Gnarbox (Shameless plug, lets talk Gnarbox, send me one of those 2.0 units for me to play with please?), or the Lacie DJI Co-Pilot, since they have a computer of sorts built in for processing (RAW previews), and generally can interface with other apps nicely. But by that point you are spending ANOTHER $299-$499 on top of the storage you already spent which further makes the argument for a traditional laptop.

The one thing I didn’t try was Tethering.

Photo shamelessly stolen from Apple’s support page.

But unless I’m using the Lightroom app I don’t think this will work for me as intended as well. From what I have seen, connecting a camera basically just opens up the photos app and downloads files from the SD card on the camera. Not a direct tethered shooting solution that I am used to from Capture One.

I suppose you could also use the USB-C SD card reader, but then you are once again having to load every file directly onto the internal storage of the iPad itself. And then moving them back off for long term archiving brings up a whole other conversation.

I think that the lack of USB-C mass storage support is something that Apple could (and hopefully will) fix in an upcoming version of iOS. This two-way data movement and storage would change a LOT of my feelings about the iPad Pro as it stands today.

Lack of “Desktop Strength” photo editing solutions

This is one “con” where I think things are ALMOST there. A “full” version of Adobe Photoshop will be coming next year, but Lightroom CC already has a large user-base and supposedly does a pretty good job. I’m still not sold, I don’t like Adobe’s charge per month model. It’s just not for me. And all of it adds to the overall cost ($120 a year). There are some cheaper (and single purchase) options available however.

Affinity Photo has long been the Photoshop analogue that many photographers have fallen in love with. At the time of this writing, however, Affinity Photo hasn’t been updated in over a month, and likely hasn’t been optimized for these new processors yet. I fully believe that the next version of Affinity will work just fine and will be a very speedy piece of software.

But for me, I found it to be a touch clunky and certainly when I was doing some basic retouching there were several times I had to wait 15 seconds or so while the app crunched the data.

For those who aren’t familiar with the Affinity Photo UI

Affinity isn’t a bad option at all, and I think that part of my problems with it were just in learning a new piece of software. And once I got rolling I feel that things went rather smoothly. With the exception that it took me over an hour to retouch the above file, and even then I’m not 100% happy with the results. But I’ll let you guys judge for yourselves.

Backup and Archiving Workflow

My final gripe comes after you export the files out. By default most of the apps I have played with wanted to export everything back into the camera roll of the iPad itself. Which then of course leads to duplicate files and space being eaten up by final deliverables.

I found a way to move things manually back to my WD Cloud, but it wasn’t elegant and took some experimenting with to move everything over. Then I was still left with having to delete the file manually to free up space on the device itself.

Conclusion:

I like the 2018 iPad Pro, I really do. But I’m not IN LOVE with it.

Ok, I’m lying. I do love it. I think it’s designed well, I think the screen and pencil are both great, I think the audio on it is some of the best I have heard across any device. I like the idea of having iOS on a larger screen, that is still light enough to carry around one handed. I like all of the potential that comes from multitasking.

From an Apple fanboy perspective, I really do love this device.

I even used the Squarespace blog app to type some of this post!

But from a photographer standpoint, it falls short. For me. My workflow just can’t accommodate the iPad Pro as it currently stands. But it’s so close!

With a few simple changes (USB-C Mass Storage, RAW Support in the Files app, and more Pro “Desktop Level” Apps from the likes of Adobe, Capture One, etc) all of which could potentially come at a software level without the need of additional hardware.

For day to day web surfing, email, notes, and other media consumption I love what has come from this latest generation of iPad. This makes me excited for what is to come with lower-spec devices that I would likely use more frequently.

I was at a meeting today and loved using the iPad to take notes on, and I loved being able to quickly surf the web and find info I needed. I really want to have this device in my life, but unfortunately…I’m probably going to return it.

I’m going to give it through the weekend to grow on me a little more, maybe do some more playing around to see if I can better fit things into my life. But at this moment right now, I just can’t justify paying $1200 for something that I can already do (arguably better) on my already paid for Macbook Pro. Thankfully Apple has a 14 day return period, because I would hate to have to try and re-sell this on the open market.

Maybe I’ll just wait a while and snatch up one of these one they hit the Refurbished section of the Apple store, or maybe grab one of last year’s models at a killer deal.

…Or there is always next year’s model…

Top Photos of 2018 - An UNEXPhotography year in review!

I bought the new iPad Pro so you don't have to!