The Book
Forty years into a passion, in the depths of a fortuitously commodious cellar, reside an assortment of cases brimming with Kodachrome and Velvia slides, sleeved negatives of mixed and sometimes exotic format, shoeboxes full of prints (some faded into pale hues of pink and brown) and amateurish albums by the dozen: analogue memories all. Do I revisit any of them? Rarely, but they're there if I wanted to do so, physical and mostly still 'workable', the youngest of them vintage ca.2000.
The new Millennium swept in with no little fanfare, trailing something relatively photographically new: digital hardware, with a bewildering variety of pre-iPhone, image-capturing media.
Imagining this to be another fad that would soon fade, but as a nod to progress, a 2MP Nikon Coolpix 950 was acquired in Singapore and literally 'contorted' into service: I never looked back from that point at a collection of fine hardware, some expensively acquired, which, not long before, had been considered state-of-the-art; a sometime-valuable investment rendered all but worthless overnight.
Media cards were of relatively small capacity and expensive at the outset but thousands of images were recorded, viewed on the camera back's small monitor and occasionally transferred onto a PC's hard drive, from where they might emigrate to external storage media that has meantime corrupted or is long-since defunct. Some images may have been considered good enough to print but printer ink and paper prices negated the advantage of expanding card capacities, early output quality often questionable.
In a nutshell, not much survived from 2000-2005, so there's a hole in the pictorial record that disappeared with discarded PCs and their drives or on discs that no longer register content, unless you're into hieroglyphics and electronic abstracts.
But technology is refining at a breathtaking pace and increasingly there's a way of replicating the old albums on a more lasting if rather old-school basis, THE BOOK.
(Stephen King probably hit the nail on the head when he wrote: "Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries")
After some five years of experimenting with printing and binding in a variety of unsatisfactory formats, the switch from PC to Mac introduced Aperture and its book-printing service into the work flow. Apart from intuitive post-processing software that was in itself a pleasure to use, the 'Buy Book' button at the end of a book's construction and the swift delivery of the end-product was an almost instant success. With the exception of very minor alignment flaws that really don't warrant criticism, I've had no cause for complaint. Every major photographic outing since the Mac took over the desk has been preserved in book form.
Disaster, however, stalks the technically inept and while I saved pdf's of the dozen or so books produced to date, an OS update some months ago very efficiently despatched, to I know not where but strangely selectively, all but one of the Aperture templates from which I could easily print book copies again. And if Apple has a help desk, it's been less than capable of saving my publishing bacon: yes, it's good to know that those templates are out there somewhere, but while I know that Mars has its place in the night sky, I still haven't identified it.
Aperture Books have a variety of templates which are infinitely adjustable to taste and requirement: within a maximum of 100 sides, varying sizes, hardback or soft, with or without a wrap-around dust-cover; offering a selection of background page colours and suggested formats that can all effectively be over-ridden or adapted. A personal style can easily be developed after a couple of initial, experimental attempts although, not being cheap, advance planning and checking of presentation and content are a must before sending to print. The first attempt now being almost four years old, no deterioration in print or colour is detected and while not aware of any guarantees of longevity, the books look robust enough and come in a well-fitting 'jacket' or sleeve that keeps the dust-cover protected from scuffs and tearing.
The spines are solid, surviving some hard knocks, the dust covers seemingly coated with something fairly resistant, the hard main covers a dull gloss....
Paper is thick and of good quality, the print sharp and clear....
It's a regular, traditional book, not of the thick, lay-flat variety favoured by some 'book' services....
The blacks are dense....
Detail under magnification good....
With full-page bleeds possible....
Having earlier tried all-white and all-black backgrounds, I find that whether for colour or for B&W, alternating the background colour of facing pages gives the presentation a certain freshness....
The books don't get any special treatment but seems to retain their colour and shape and wear quite well....in 'Oliver Twist', Charles Dickens wrote that "There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts". That's certainly true of Aperture Books, but one hopes that what's between the covers is also of at least passing interest.
For some years, Apple and Adobe have battled for the post-processing lead with digital photographers with their Aperture and Lightroom offerings although there are countless other applications, many being excellent alternatives. Sadly, after a lengthy period of Aperture development inactivity, for reasons best known to themselves Apple have decided to change their photo direction, probably to concentrate on the larger consumer rather than enthusiast market and have shelved Aperture. It's still there and there are alternatives, but if it does ultimately close, the book service will be missed, at least in this little corner of the world.