![“Aperture allows me to edit, organize, and deliver [my photos] faster than I ever could with any one program or combination of programs in the past.”](http://images.apple.com/pro/profiles/abaya/images/header1.jpg)
Craig Abaya: Shooting Stars
Neil Young performing at the 2005 benefit concert for the Bridge School, a school for students with severe speech and physical impairments. Photo by Craig Abaya.
“I like freezing a moment,” says Craig Abaya. “I like capturing that emotion. It’s almost like you’ve created a niche for this one instant. And in this day and age, when we have such short attention spans, it’s nice when you can savor a moment.”
A concert photographer, as well as a filmmaker, designer, musician, and teacher, Abaya has been behind the lens for more than 20 years, capturing the emotions of superstars like Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Gene Simmons, Pete Townshend, Tony Bennett, and Paul McCartney. In the beginning he froze those instants on film. Now Abaya captures them digitally, sorting, editing, and storing them with Aperture on a PowerBook G4. “It’s just a fantastic tool,” he says about Aperture. “From a recent two-day shoot, I have upwards of 800 photographs in my library. Aperture allows me to edit, organize, and deliver them faster than I ever could with any one program or combination of programs in the past.”
Coming Up
Abaya grew up in San Francisco, playing music, taking photographs, and making movies. “In my house, not learning an instrument was not an option,” he says. “You learned at least one instrument. So I was a musician first. Then my brother got me into photography when I was 10. When I was 12, I sold some of my more valuable comic books to buy a Super 8 film camera.”
The media master rode digital media trends, learning every piece of software and equipment that could create an image, graphic, movie, or sound on a computer. He learned to build websites and held seminars and taught classes in web design and digital publishing. In the late ’90s, San Francisco State University’s College of Extended Learning asked him to run a new web design intensive program. Now he’s the director of Digital Media & Entertainment Programs at the school.
Abaya became fascinated with media — film, audio tape, and, later, video. He studied film at San Francisco State University but ended up creating his own degree program before he left. “I’m much better at creating a space for myself than trying to fit into spaces that already exist,” he says. “I took four programs and created my own degree called ‘Multimedia.’ Back then, there was no such thing as multimedia, unless you’re talking about a cassette deck and a slide show.”
Concert photography was a crucial part of Abaya’s life. “My motivation to do photography was fueled by being a professional musician,” he says. “I’ve been playing professionally since I was 17. I’ve always loved shooting concerts.” Still, as the years passed, the photographer became frustrated with film. “I didn’t enjoy the creative process of the darkroom because of the tediousness and the time,” he says. “Now, with digital photography and Aperture, my post-production work is more enjoyable and less time-consuming.”
On Tour
When he’s shooting at a show, Abaya is observant, quick, and above all, precise. He acquires his shots carefully, snapping the shutter only when he knows the shot will be perfect — or as close as he can get it. “I take a shot, look at it right there, and delete it if it’s not right,” he says. “I can change the camera settings and take another shot. I’m always fighting for simplicity. I evaluate the shots in front of the stage because I don’t want to have to delete them in post.”
The photographer’s perfectionism is deeply engrained, the byproduct of shooting with film. “It comes from a film frame of mind, where you want to get the shot as accurate as possible,” he says. “You don’t want to have to fix it later because you’ll be dealing with lower quality. That’s why I shoot RAW. I don’t shoot JPG because there’s a perceived loss, even if you can’t immediately see it. With RAW, the picture is as good as it can be.”
Abaya captures RAW images with a Canon digital SLR and pulls them into his PowerBook G4 using Aperture. He adds metadata and keywords to each shot so he can pinpoint them later using Aperture’s search tools and organizes his shots by date and event for easy reference. Once they’ve been sorted and stored, the shots are ready for tweaks and adjustments.
Norah Jones at the 2005 Bridge School Benefit Concert. Photo by Craig Abaya.
