Some thoughts.

One of the more charming moments in ‘The September Issue‘ which I wrote of yesterday occurs during the studio session where actress Sienna Miller is being photographed for the cover.

In a documentary otherwise focused on hard headed business people there is a moment all photographers and creative people will identify with. The Hasselblad digital files have been moved to a Mac and everyone is gathered around the monitor while the technician flips through the images (using grungy old Photoshop, of all things). Some object to this, others to that until suddenly one image elicits a collective ‘Wow’ from everyone. It becomes the cover shot, albeit after much post processing – a shadow added here, a filling removed there, a skin blemish corrected, and so on.

I found myself thinking how this scene will change once tablet devices like the iPad are mature. The photographer will be banging away. The images are sent wirelessly to a half dozen iPads in the hands of the various parties in the studio – the art director, the lighting man, the make-up man, the client, the editor. There will be no need to import, load in Photoshop or whatever, or to reshoot. Everything will be done in real time. Indeed, once EVFs take over from flapping mirrors in studio gear, everything will be visible on the group’s iPads before the picture is even taken. The speed of turnaround is greatly improved, the results will be better and the whole experience will move into the twenty-first century. The incremental cost is modest, the savings in a business where time is money will be significant.

A device for creative types

Another anomaly in the documentary is that the whole issue of the magazine is still proofed using hard copy – the pages are assembled on large tables for repeated scrutiny by the editor and her staff. 16th Century technology. It will not be much longer before a few dozen iPads will replace the time consuming paper copies which take ages to make and a flip of the finger on each will permit editorial decisions between alternatives, with change easily made by a couple of nerds in the back office. Press another button and it’s off to the press which, of course, is an electronic copy of Vogue for distribution to iPads everywhere. And the world’s forests will be saved. Probably not a good time to load up on forestry stocks. The cost of one hundred iPads to a publishing powerhouse like Vogue magazine – call it $40,000 after bulk discounts, or about the cost of one Hasselblad – is trivial. That’s probably their weekly entertainment bill.

By the way, the prints used by Anna Wintour to critique the layout of the issue are considerably smaller than the display area of the iPad, as the documentary shows time and again.

The iPad and devices like it will storm the creative world as the ultimate feedback device, even though it may be originally targeted at the couch potato set for feedforward only.