Granted, this isn’t the first time Kanye has asserted his dominance over his new wife.

Back in October, Page Six reported that Ye has ordered Censori to “never speak,” in addition to requesting that she abide by his wardrobe suggestions.

“Kanye has a set of rules for Bianca, which includes never speak and wear what he wants her to wear,” a source told the outlet. “She is also required to eat certain food items and to work out even though Kanye doesn’t work out.” The insider added that Bianca “has no mind of her own anymore.”

Weeks later, the couple was rumored to be taking a break following an intervention orchestrated by Censori’s friends and family. At the time, someone close to the situation told Page Six that Kanye and Bianca had been living apart since mid-October, with Censori’s family questioning whether marrying the rapper was the right decision.

The split didn’t last long, as Kanye and Bianca were seen partying together in November, before the former celebrated the latter’s birthday earlier this month with dozens of Instagram posts.

The dernier cri of photography is that everything that was old is new again. It’s evident in the work of people like Terry Richardson. Despite how much we’ve cancelled him, the look of direct flash is something that people buy into every few years. The work has gone on to shape the looks from growing powerhouses like Lanna Apisukh and Amy Lombard. But some things are absolutely timeless — like the classic style of Elliot Erwitt. Like a Filson bag, it consistently works and touches our emotions in a way that’s just enough to put a smile on our faces. Some of his work around photographing dogs is the root of a powerful lesson in photography.

The Power of Substiution

One of Elliot Erwitt’s lengedary photographs can be seen here at this link on his website. It’s the adorable photograph of a bulldog in someone’s lap completely blotting out the human’s face. It looks almost like the person being photographed in half dog and half human. That’s how our mind thinks of it at least — and the fact that it’s in black and white further adds to this. There is no color in the frame, so you clearly cannot tell the difference between where the human begins and where the dog does.

Our mind immediately thinks that something is amiss here. The idea is neatly summarized by Brian Dilg in his book, Why You Like This Photo. Specifically, the reads, “When something expected and important is subtituted with something similar but surprising, the principle of substituoion makes us do a double take.” In many cases, it actually just makes that you gaze at the image for longer than a fleeting moment. This is a powerful technique to get people to stop scrolling past your photos on social media where they’re bombarded by so much other stimuli.

An Awareness of the Moment

“When something expected and important is subtituted with something similar but surprising, the principle of substituoion makes us do a double take.”

Brian Dilg

To achieve this kind of understanding, we have to train our mind to be in the moment. Street photographers learn to develop this skill very well. We’ve explained how many street photographers work in the past; but Willie Velazquez is a great modern example of someone who understands the moment as it is happening before him. Certain documentary photographers also are in-tune enough with the moments in front of them to be able to snap the images they need. However, it’s a skill that many photograpehrs these days are lacking because we shoot at 120 frames a second and just decide that we’ll cull through the images later on.

Shooting film greatly helps with curbing this — so too does curbing the brain drain that social media gives to us all. Social media these days feels like television felt like in the 1990s and the 2000s when we sat in front and mindlessly scrolled through channels looking for something to watch. When there was nothing riveting on, we probably found other things or mindlessly watched something else. Eventually, it all just became background noise for us. This too was part of the brain drain; and we can strengthen our minds against it by studying images and looking at prints.

Shoot Like Elliot Erwitt

Of course, Elliot is known for more than this. The great Ibarionex Perello reviewed Kolor for us a while back. And overall, we just have to ensure that our work isn’t boring. There are ways to too that, and it involves getting in touch with your emotions. If you don’t feel anything from an image, the kindest thing that you can do is throw it out if it can’t be salvaged. Some fruit trees are just not worth how much work you have to put into them.

Cyme makes macOS software for photographers, including Avalanche and the photo cataloging app Peakto. Whereas Peakto helps photographers organize their photos across multiple locations and apps, Avalanche allows users to migrate their photos from one editing app to another easily.

Thanks to Avalanche and the way customers use it, Cyme can see how users transfer images from one app to another, reflecting which apps photographers use to edit their images. Avalanche is available in different versions for specific editing applications. For example, Avalanche for Lightroom can convert any Aperture, Capture One, Luminar, iView Media Pro, Apple Photos, and Google Photos catalog to Lightroom while retaining edits, metadata, and folder structure. There’s also Avalanche Unlimited, which costs more but works with each supported target app.

There are limitations to the data set, of course. While Cyme knows how many versions of Avalanche it has sold for each target application, it is only available for Lightroom, Capture One, Luminar, and Apple Photos. People use other apps, like DxO PhotoLab and ON1 Photo RAW, for example. Plenty of people never change their editing app of choice, so there’s no need to purchase Avalanche.

These caveats aside, it is possible to discern general trends among photographers using sales data from 2021, 2022, and 2023. These trends align reasonably well with anecdotal evidence PetaPixel has gathered chatting with photographers about their editing apps in recent years.

Notably, a higher proportion of customers are buying Avalanche for Lightroom each year, meaning that these users are switching to Lightroom from a different photo editing application at relatively higher rates. While the Lightroom user share has gone from 29.4% to 46.8% from 2021 to 2023, sales of Avalanche for Capture One have dropped from 16.4% to 13.1% and then to just 8% last year.

As for Avalanche for Luminar Neo, it accounted for 19.4% of Avalanche sales in 2021, three percentage points more than Capture One. The appeal of Luminar Neo’s intriguing AI-powered and computational features lost a lot of steam in 2022 when sales dipped to 6%. They were at 4.7% last year.

The trend among macOS users switching from one photo editing app to another using Avalanche is that people gravitate more toward Lightroom than any other photo editing app, which isn’t too surprising. However, the increasing rate at which users switch to Lightroom, which has long been the most popular photo editing app, is surprising.

In Cyme’s full breakdown of Avalanche sales data, the company recaps what arrived in 2023 on each photo editing app.

Lightroom’s AI-based masking tools continue to improve, and as much as it ever has been, Lightroom is now a viable alternative to using Photoshop to edit photos. Many photographers can do everything they need within Lightroom, from importing, culling, editing, and printing images.

As for Luminar Neo, Skylum has been getting involved in generative AI technology and making some interesting choices concerning a move to a subscription model. Once supremely popular, Capture One has also gone all-in on subscription pricing and finally launched Capture One on iPhone this year, although the app isn’t great.

Cyme also tapped into its Peakto user base to learn more about photo editing software preferences. Among surveyed Peakto owners, photographers own an average of about four photo editing and management applications. DxO Photolab, Pixelmator’s apps, Affinity Photo, and ON1 software received high marks from Peakto users.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos. Data and figures provided by Cyme.

When architect Amy A. Alper was asked to design a new home on a Glen Ellen property destroyed by the 2017 Northern California wildfires, she felt that the new building should reference its surroundings and the property’s past, but also look toward the future.

“Sadness over the loss (of the previous home on the property) would be overcome by the idea of connection, expressed in a variety of ways,” she explains. Like Alper, the owners wanted the property to represent its “poignant history,” as well as “a renewed future.”

The recently completed Glen Ellen estate has an exterior of stone, Corten steel and cedar that, according to Alper, expresses “another kind of connection” and “anchors” the building to the property’s working vineyard as well as the agricultural history of the region.

Beyond a connection to the past and the surrounding landscape, Alper and the property owners also wanted the new home to foster “emotional connections.” This idea is expressed in the reconfiguration of the home’s entrance, which is now a central feature of the building, and welcomes family and friends through a tower covered in a patchwork of Corten steel. And, compared to the previously much smaller home, there is now ample room to entertain and house guests.

The interior of the building also takes inspiration from the natural setting. Toasted-oak cabinetry matches the golden grassy hillside. Veiny marble slabs in the shower mimic the “movement and soft textures of the grasses and trees outside,” according to Alper. Charcoal tile floors connect to the scorched gray tones that remain amid new green growth. Lots of windows allow light to flood the rooms, giving the home a bright and airy atmosphere. 

Click through the above gallery for a peek inside the Glen Ellen estate.

Amy A. Alper, Architect, alperarchitect.com