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In Memoriam: Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
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Jerome Marot

Well-known member
So Steve Jobs is dead at 56. It is a terrible thing that we lose a such beautiful mind at a time when Apple can be tempted to cash on their achievements. But this is not a place to discuss the future, only photography.


There are 3 thoughts I have about Mr Jobs and photography.

The first concerns beauty. Everyone who unpacked a Macintosh computer knows how much Mr Jobs was concerned about aesthetics. Everything had to participate to the experience, from the packaging down to the innards of a computer that no customer was supposed to see. We know this, but what we may not know is that Mr Jobs had the same concern in his private life, striving for the beautiful and the simple.

As photographers, we should also strive for the beautiful (not the pretty) and the simple. Mr Jobs always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do, but the things you decide not to do. In a picture, the most important decisions are not what your chose to include in the frame, but the things you decide not to include in the frame.

Going into Steve Jobs' house, you would see that he had almost no furniture in it. He just didn't believe in having lots of things around. Can you find the beautiful and the simple by living in clutter? Maybe there is a teaching in that: can you portrait the beautiful and the simple with complicated tools? Or should we strive for the beautiful and the simple in our instruments as well? Some cameras, of any type, are paragons of industrial design. Some people think that they need more features, more powerful systems, more optics, bigger computers and software. Do we want to carry lots of photo stuff around? How can we reach simplicity with that? Shouldn't tools be beautiful and simple as well?

The second thought concerns Mr Jobs photographic legacy. Since I fancy myself doing hi-fi recordings, I will make an analogy with high end audio here: high end audio is dead. There is simply no public left for it, except dinosaurs: no-one is ready today to sit in a carefully arranged room in front of a pair of speakers to recreate the experience of a live concert. People listen to music on headphones, or have a small system near their desk. And people use iPods. It is not that the iPod cannot do high-end hi-fi if you connect it to a pair of speakers in a carefully arranged room, it is that people are not interested in the carefully arranged pair of speakers. Exit hi-fi, enter the iPod.

I'll be tempted to say: exit the print, enter the iPhone. Just as people lost interest when audio reproduction had evolved to almost perfection, people lost interest when digital photography overtook what people needed. Who needs 80 millions pixels when the major distribution channel for pictures is a 1920x1024 jpeg? Enter the iPhone, a small camera, tons of software to manipulate the data and express yourself in the constraints of a limited size jpeg and the means to post it immediately where the people you know will see it. Digital photography had come of age.


The third thought came to me when I saw Mr. Jobs portrait on Apple's website. I don't know who took that picture, but what great work! There are few great portraits of men and even less of the elderly. But this is a masterpiece. Go see it yourself: http://www.apple.com/
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member

Indeed, and the story behind that picture is worth telling:

Jobs didn’t look immediately at Watson, but looked instead at the set-up and then focused on Watson’s 4×5 camera “like it was something dinosauric,” Watson recalls, “and he said, ‘Wow, you’re shooting film.”

“I said, ‘I don’t feel like digital is quite here yet.’ And he said, ‘I agree,’ then he turned and looked at me and said, ‘But we’ll get there.’”

Jobs gave Watson about an hour–much longer than he ever gave most photographers for a portrait session. [...] I said, ‘Think about the next project you have on the table,’ and I asked him also to think about instances where people have challenged him.

“If you look at that shot, you can see the intensity. It was my intention that by looking at him, that you knew this guy was smart,” Watson says, adding, “I heard later that it was his favorite photograph of all time.”

As with many other things, he was right about digital photography — he went on to turn the iPhone into one of the world’s most used cameras.


From pdnpulse.com, last paragraph from petapixel.com. The picture can be seen in color on softpedia.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
From a reviewer of Apple Gear

I read this an interesting commentary on Steve's uniqueness:

In 2005, Steve Jobs gave the commencement address to the graduating students at Stanford. He told them the secret that defined him in every action, every decision, every creation of his tragically unfinished life:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

That advice is good for us too! :)
 

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
Hi Asher,

I read this an interesting commentary on Steve's uniqueness:

In 2005, Steve Jobs gave the commencement address to the graduating students at Stanford. He told them the secret that defined him in every action, every decision, every creation of his tragically unfinished life:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

That advice is good for us too! :)

The problem with all these great advices is that they are offered by wealthy/powerful/successful people who can afford to live by them. There was another famous one by Jobs. He said that every morning he would ask himself this question: if this was the last day of my life, would I still want to do what I am about to do? If the answer would be no for three times in a row, he would then know he should change things. It all sounds fantastic, but which one of us middle class people can afford to do just that?
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
Hi Asher,



The problem with all these great advices is that they are offered by wealthy/powerful/successful people who can afford to live by them. There was another famous one by Jobs. He said that every morning he would ask himself this question: if this was the last day of my life, would I still want to do what I am about to do? If the answer would be no for three times in a row, he would then know he should change things. It all sounds fantastic, but which one of us middle class people can afford to do just that?


That is not the problem. Steve Jobs started poor and he became rich by following that advice, so he can advise poor people to do the same. It worked for him.

The real problem is that there are probably 1000 poor Steves who followed that advice at the time, only one got to be Steve Jobs. The other failed. Everybody can follow the advice to do what they dream at any time. You could do it. Say, for example, that you dream to be a famous photographer, you could sell all what you have, go take the pictures you really like and try to live of it. It won't be easy, but it was not easy for Steve Jobs either in the beginning of his career. He was really very poor.

But you have 999 chances out of thousand to fail. That is the risk. And only the successful people are invited to Stanford to give the advice to do what you dream. That is the bias in the statistics.

No risk, no gain.

Most people chose to take less risk and indeed end up with less gain.
 

Cem_Usakligil

Well-known member
That is not the problem. Steve Jobs started poor and he became rich by following that advice, so he can advise poor people to do the same. It worked for him....
.....

No risk, no gain.

Most people chose to take less risk and indeed end up with less gain.
That is why I specifically mentioned midlle class. It is easier if one is poor, one hasn't got much to lose. The consequences of the risks will be lower. As you wrote, 999 out of 1000 will eventually fail, so the risk is quite substantial to middle class people who have established lifestyles with mortgages, etc.
 

Mike Shimwell

New member
Most people chose to take less risk and indeed end up with less gain.


I didn't know Steve Jobs, so it is hard to comment on him as a human being.

However, based on your suggested statistic, which may very well be light on the failure side, whilst most do end up with less gain than SJ, they also end up with less pain than the others who pursue the dream to the (often very) bitter end.

There was a thread on Rangefinder Forum about why good photographers are so good and not many people really wanted to accept my view that they made real sacrifices and commitment to succeed. Probably as well as having talent and there being others who never made it to public attention.

Last holiday I saw a gig by three musicians I had never heard of. They are far from housegold names, but they are all amazing players. Search for Aaron Jones or Alastair McCulloch as examples. There is some great youtube footage of Aaron Jones here and here.

Mike
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
However, based on your suggested statistic, which may very well be light on the failure side

It is not a "statistics", it simply relates to the expression "1 chance in 1000". It may just as well be 1 in a million or 1 in a 100.

There was a thread on Rangefinder Forum about why good photographers are so good and not many people really wanted to accept my view that they made real sacrifices and commitment to succeed. Probably as well as having talent and there being others who never made it to public attention.

And luck. Don't forget luck. It takes talent, commitment, sacrifices and luck. Steve Jobs himself recognized that without some events which were beyond his influence, his life would have been very different.


Last holiday I saw a gig by three musicians I had never heard of. They are far from housegold names, but they are all amazing players. Search for Aaron Jones or Alastair McCulloch as examples. There is some great youtube footage of Aaron Jones here and here.

Not my style of music and the recording is particularly bad. But yes: the world is full of very talented musicians who never get famous. I know quite a few myself. You can try that youtube link, this is one of my recordings (unfortunately, youtube reduces it to mono). Or you try that one.
 

Mike Shimwell

New member
Yes, luck of course plays a huge, and usually unacknowledged part.

Your recording is much higher quality than the amateur links I posted, but as you say YouTube is not the best source for music. I enjoyed your posts though.

On another topic, I'm in the process of puttting in s mudic streaming sytem based on the sonos kit, though with external DACs. I'm currently wondering on the best way to digitise my vinyl collection - do you have any experience of the best kit/approach

Mike
 

Anna Lee

New member
No risk, no gain.

Most people chose to take less risk and indeed end up with less gain.

I like this two sentences. Where there is risk, there is failure, but if you don't try to risk for your dream, you will not catch it forever. The middle class dare not to risk because they fear to lose, success like the people who dare to risk, even if he is 1 in 1000.
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
I like this two sentences. Where there is risk, there is failure, but if you don't try to risk for your dream, you will not catch it forever. The middle class dare not to risk because they fear to lose, success like the people who dare to risk, even if he is 1 in 1000.

Definitely, yes. Coming back to Steve Jobs, he said himself that being forced to leave Apple was beneficial, because he would not have created Next and Pixar if he had stayed. He would not have been free to take the risks.
 

Tracy Lebenzon

New member
On another topic, I'm in the process of puttting in s mudic streaming sytem based on the sonos kit, though with external DACs. I'm currently wondering on the best way to digitise my vinyl collection - do you have any experience of the best kit/approach

Mike


I use a couple of packages to digitize my LP collection, one is by Roxio and the other is made by Audacity, which iirc, I got from download.com. I use a record player made by Pro-Ject called a Debut 3. It is a fairly good turntable/stylus combination with a direct USB interface. The combinations have helped me make hundreds of very good recordings.

I don’t have anything to add about Jobs. I don’t know anything about him, and am not one to follow the cult of the celebrity, but he certainly was successful and died too young!
 

Don Ferguson Jr.

Well-known member
Upon being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs put off surgery for nine months against the advice of his doctors while he tried to treat the disease with a special macrobiotic diet -- a decision he later regretted, his biographer said.

When asked why he didn't have the surgery right away, Jobs said, "I didn't want my body to be opened," according to an interview with the biographer, Walter Isaacson, that aired Sunday on CBS News' "60 Minutes." By the time Jobs was finally operated on, the cancer had spread to the surrounding tissue, Isaacson said.


http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/23/tech/innovation/60-minutes-steve-jobs/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
So sad.
 
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