Robert Leslie: Feeding the Beast
However, Aperture is not the only Mac-based software that gives Leslie an advantage over the competition: Mac OS X lends a helping hand, too. “Tiger has so many fantastic features, but I make particular use of the Spotlight search tool”, says Leslie. “It lets me find every version of a file, anywhere on my Mac, at any time. Dashboard is another cool feature. I use a widget called Transmit that makes for one-click file transmission to FTP servers. It doesn’t get any easier than that”.
Leslie admits that he was a fairly late adopter of digital capture, but this has given him a unique perspective on technique in relation to RAW shooting and his use of software. He expects to do most of the work on camera, but in this most fast-paced of environments, Aperture’s intuitive RAW processing tools certainly help him cope with the unpredictable elements of event work.
Leslie’s mantra is to put good capture in and then use Aperture’s non-destructive editing environment to optimise the captured data. “People need to get used to how a basic RAW file appears straight off the camera”, he says. “Photographers have almost been tricked into thinking that the type of colour and contrast that a particular film like Velvia has provided in the past is ‘normal’. The key is having tools available to interpret the RAW files to your style”.
When he embarked on his career almost 20 years ago, Leslie’s first published images were for producer Brian Eno, and in 1993 he worked on the ‘Secret World’ tour for Peter Gabriel. The mid-nineties saw a photographic detour into ‘abstract still life’ imagery, creating CD covers and a series of award-winning brochures that were published in France and the UK.
Leslie expands: “Around that time, I was experimenting a lot with high-speed fibre optic strobes, aquariums, bursts of air, with perfume bottles and jewellery. Due to the rapid movement of the water, I had to shoot acres of film to get a single great image.
“The ‘Splash’ series [see example below] started out as an experiment, but I went on to work for Vogue, Cartier and Lanvin with this type of work. Now with the ability to shoot tethered with Aperture, I can see the result of each shot immediately, without waiting for the lab and the cost of endless Polaroids”.
“This Splash shot was risky”, says Robert, “since it involved freezing (with strobes) an air bubble and firing the shutter when I thought it happened to be mid-frame”.
So speed really is key in this area of photography. But speed is nothing without control. What makes Aperture so important is that it puts the photographer firmly in charge of the process, no matter the time of the day, or night. “Before Aperture came along”, says Leslie, “I would spend the whole night editing after an evening’s shoot. Now I actually get some sleep”.
