Yann Arthus-Bertrand: Talent, Humanity and a Zest for Technology
The photographs of Yann Arthus-Bertrand are among the most famous in the world — as a naturalist photographer, he produces sensitive surveys of the world and those who live in it. Photographs of his fellow Frenchmen and women, horses, lions, cats and dogs. Photographs of the Earth too, taken by Yann as he flies overhead. His “Earth from the Air” shots, like the ‘Heart in Voh’ in the French New Caledonian mangrove forest, have been seen the world over; and his books adorn coffee tables from Cannes to Calcutta. Today, he works digitally, and has recently started using Apple’s Aperture software to help him realise his digital dreams.
Plumbers, bakers, policemen, prostitutes, designers, the President of France, old bulls and young calves — all have posed against the same background: a simple square of brown canvas that makes all his subjects equal. The photographer is admired by his subjects, who love the way he sees them. This year, as he has done for the past 15 years, Yann Arthus-Bertrand hung up his huge canvas at the Paris Agricultural Show to photograph the proud people who take part in this annual celebration of the French way of life. A familiar scene. Only this year, things were different for Yann: for him the show was an all-digital affair for the first time.
Digital photography represents a huge leap in the technology behind taking, enhancing and delivering photographs, a leap made easier for Yann by a cutting-edge Apple installation. Opposite his iconic canvas sits a MacBook Pro, hooked up to a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display. Yann is using a Wi-Fi-enabled Canon camera, which sends the photos directly to the MacBook Pro, letting him see the results immediately. The files are then transferred via an AirPort Extreme network to a post-production station, where his assistant Erwan Sourget imports the photos into Aperture running on a Power Mac G5 attached to dual 30-inch Cinema Displays for maximum screen real estate.
“In the studio, digital has changed my life completely”, Yann says. “I can see what I’m doing immediately. I spend less time doubting. But with Aperture I feel the image immediately. Before, I used to take three or four photos to get one good one”.
He continues: “I really like the Loupe tool. With digital, I used to find it hard to tell whether a photo was in focus or not. But with Aperture, I tend to see even better than with a transparency. The sharpness of the image, that’s important”. Erwan confirms: “Yann is always concerned about taking blurred photos and thinks the Loupe tool is great. Now we can be more precise. For example, we can see whether a horse’s ears are standing up and shoot it again, while it’s moving, if necessary”.
Aperture makes the whole process less cumbersome; for instance Erwan can carry on working whilst importing images, generating real gains in productivity. On site, Yann and Erwan can also edit quickly using Aperture’s ‘annotation’ system. The real sorting is carried out by his photography agency. “Aperture is great for sorting photos”, says Yann. “It really has transformed the way we work as a team”. Yann’s team have found Aperture very user-friendly and useful — they can vary inputs and do time-saving searches by date, keyword, caption or other metadata. And for Yann, archiving is vital — one week at the Agricultural Show or three days in a helicopter means more than 2,000 photos to process.
“With digital, I used to find it hard to tell whether a photo was in focus or not. But with Aperture, I tend to see even better than with a transparency.”
Yann Arthus-Bertrand wants “to show the Earth as it is”. His aerial photography reveals a magnificent Earth, where clearings draw hearts in the tropical forest, where salt marshes become palettes of pastel colours and where bundles of cotton picked in the Ivory Coast become a display of cauliflowers — this is an Earth that speaks to people’s imaginations and an Earth that Yann wants to protect. He “bears witness using photography”, accompanying each photo with a caption that provides information, explanation and a warning when the subject of the photograph is threatened. He is, he says, trying to “question, instruct and move — because we are not properly protecting what we have come to know and love”.
