In the Blink of an i

Life is full of moments: good, bad, happy, sad. Full of colour and breadth or detail and depth. We have a personal and unbreakable connection with a memory but we make our own judgement of an image. Thanks to the phone camera in our pockets, we are all photographers and this makes us individually responsible for capturing the most incredible moments.

I used to be a dedicated SLR photographer. Having pursued an education in photography (if not a career), I had progressed from several film-based SLR’s to the digital variety. I loved the feel of a full-sized camera, the perceived quality and the flexibility the lens selection and manual controls offered.

The reality was, my eldest daughter Olivia began life with a set of ‘perfect’ photos. I would painstakingly photoshop food from her face and unwanted toys, pieces of furniture or poorly shaped friends and family from my photos – just to aid composition!

By the time my other daughter Hattie arrived on the scene, I had ditched the cumbersome D-SLR and replaced the full digital darkroom with the iPhone in my pocket.

This was a revelation.

I moved from the selection of perfection, to a lifetime of moments. Rather than hoping to capture something whenever I had my camera, I would take 100 casual shots for one visual memory – and that is why I’ll never turn back.

I find being able to photograph the unexpected a far greater reward than a staged set piece. You know when a smile is real, because the rest of the face wasn’t expecting it.

That doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop being a ‘proper’ photographer at heart, or a designer. I love to create, so the moments I capture are the ones I’d like to see – and I have a critical eye. Most shots are edited in Snapseed or Black and many never reach a public audience.

It has never been easier to share great photography with the world. That doesn’t mean I haven’t got myself into trouble trying to do just this during my world travels. I was detained at gunpoint in Beirut for snapping architectural photos where I shouldn’t, I ventured into the most dangerous parts of Moscow to capture street lighting and walked back out – thanks to ignorance rather than travel awareness and I have taken risks for great automotive shots by hanging out of a few car windows, off-roading a Bentley GT and many more.

Smartphone technology moves on every year, but I still use an iPhone 7 Plus. The phone isn’t slow, the battery life is acceptable, and the camera is great. Do I need a new phone? No. Would I like one? I’m an Apple fan, so of course.

Will an iPhone 11 Pro make me a better photographer? Absolutely not. It will deliver greater detail and perform better under lower light conditions. But a phone doesn’t make a moment…

…we do.

You can find all my photo highlights on Instagram if you’d like to follow the journey.

E3: The Blockbuster Generation

Hollywood is rejoicing as cinema-goers flock back to the big screen this summer. In recent years the movie theatre experience looked as if it was going the way of the music business, but now the 2015 summer of excess is serving up the blockbusters.

The current box office takings merely provide the warm up act to this winter’s releases where we’ll see the long-awaited extension to the Star Wars franchise following on from James Bond’s November action in SPECTRE.

I have a point to make here, relating to the millennials amongst us (the kids born this millennium) and my time spent at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in LA this week. Having sat through Avengers: Age of Ultron last month, I came away feeling a little despondent and wondering which came first… the story-less all action ADHD blockbuster or the constantly distracted audience?

I had an interesting conversation in the back of a cab last year. I was heading to the airport having just delivered my TEDx talk in Athens, before jetting off to LA for the next big adventure.

I say the talk was interesting, but I mean ‘challenging’. My esteemed car-sharer was a seasoned TED speaker, with years of experience in the field of human behaviour. He held the view that kids today are bombarded with too much information, especially of the digital variety. He believed that mobile devices should be strictly rationed as they cause more problems for kids than they solve.

I told him that I agreed in principal but ‘all things in moderation’ is a better approach than insisting on a non-digital solution. You don’t filter the noise out by turning it all off, you learn to live with it, categorise it and make use of it.

I’d be the first to admit that my kids don’t lead a normal life. The very nature of my job exposes them to a new piece of tech hardware or delivery platform on a regular basis. They are a fabulous sounding board for the reactions of the next generation of consumers as they’re quick to dismiss and not afraid to speak their minds. They have none of the social or business diplomacy to worry about – it just works or it doesn’t.

They’ve been fascinated by and indifferent to various smart watches and VR headsets over the past couple of years and it’s easy to see that a constant supply of digital watch faces will appeal more than garage door openers and short-form film and games are perfect for VR.

At E3, the audience is hungry for new games, but still prefers the familiarity of a sequel and will happily immerse themselves in a single game for hours on end if the content offers enough variety and a continual challenge.

Minecraft is already huge but Microsoft demonstrated a whole new level of immersion at E3 – on HoloLens. If you’re not familiar with this new platform, it’s Microsoft’s foray into the augmented reality market. projecting seemingly real content into the wearer’s field of vision. I’ll be getting hands-on today and will update this article in a few hours.

So where does this leave our kids? Lost in a digital world of shock and awe, content and distraction? Yes, all of the above and it’s brilliant.

I saw the Disney movie Tomorrowland a couple of weeks ago and I loved it. It touched a creative and technological nerve and moved me to write this article. It’s not an explosion-a-second blockbuster like Age of Ultron as it manages to combine an all-action adventure with something subtly cerebral.

It’s a film with a message. Don’t lose your sense of wonder, investigate new technology and be creative with it. Use it to push boundaries, not live within them. We wouldn’t have reached the moon or built electric cars without a commitment to improve the world in which we live. We can also have fun whilst doing it!

It’s our responsibility to encourage kids to live with and use technology to their advantage, rather than distance themselves from it, and a brighter future.

Oculus: Leading the VR Gold Rush

There’s virtual gold in them there hills and it’s time to think seriously about where you stand. Are you in or out?

The road to VR nirvana is paved with poor quality content, low res visuals and people claiming they’re the world’s greatest storytellers because they’ve ‘been at this for years’. Well, I’ve got news for you, the future for VR and AR belongs to those with both technical know-how AND creative vision.

If you’re thinking about “seeing how it goes” or if “this VR thing will take off”, think again. We have been gifted an invaluable assessment period in the development of VR and for the past 18 months, this exciting new platform has been in a very public beta.

Designers, developers and ‘tech explorers’ have had access to a number of head mounted displays (HMDs), including the original Oculus Rift (funded by a $2,437,430 Kickstarter campaign) and subsequent DK2 (118,930 global shipments), the Samsung/Oculus Gear VR and numerous Google Cardboard budget headsets for a while.

A few visionaries are starting to put their money in the right places. Recent funding rounds have hit the headlines for JauntVR, NextVR, Reload Studios and self-funded ‘The Void’, a VR theme park. The most notable move came last year when Facebook bought Oculus, the company credited with starting the current resurrection of the Virtual Reality market.

The Oculus PR machine has been busy again today, revealing the final consumer-friendly Rift headset, input controllers and some of the launch titles. I tested the latest developer edition, Crescent Bay, at CES in January and that was a big step forward. Oculus have upped the game yet again with the consumer Rift but it’s not available to test until next week. More to follow…

It’s a stunning piece of kit with accurate head-tracking, a wireless X-Box controller, freestanding desktop motion sensor, built-in 3D stereo headphones and it’s light, very light compared to rivals.

Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey also previewed ‘Oculus Touch, a pair of hand controllers used for more accurate input for digital interaction. They won’t be available when the main headset launches in Q1 2016, but should follow before 2017. Rift Pre-orders begin later this year.

But that’s not all as you’ll still need a PC to run the VR content. Officially, the Rift isn’t for Mac at launch but there have been VR titles in development for Mac since the original DK1 headset arrived in 2013 so they’ll still work, just not through the official Oculus store.

Next week, I’m at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) where the tone will be set with a heavy focus on Virtual Reality as Oculus, Sony, HTC, Samsung, Sulon and Microsoft will all push VR headsets to the frontline in preparation for a very busy 12 months for consumer releases.

It’s these next 12 months that are so important for creative thought, innovative development and targeted investment. If you really want to make an impact, start planning, designing and building now. If you want an unprecedented investment opportunity in a guaranteed platform before it hits the market, it’s time to make your move.

There will always be room for software production houses but in these early days of VR, the spoils will go to those willing and able to push boundaries and do so with quality in mind. I can’t stress strongly enough how exciting this new dawn of VR is.