App of the Day: Visuals by Vincent Laforet for iPhone and iPad [Video]

With magazine budgets drying up, it’s getting harder and harder for aerial photography wizard Vincent Laforet to get into the sky. His new strategy: letting his audience be his patron directly with Visuals, his beautiful and innovative new iOS app.

What is it?

Visuals by Vincent Laforet, iPhone and iPad, free with in-app purchases . Visuals is, on one level, a set of Vincent Laforet ‘s aerial photography. However it’s also more than that-an experiment in what professional photography could become in a new post-print landscape. Laforet, a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who has contributed to The most recent York Times, Time, and National Geographic among others, was finding that magazines were increasingly unable to pay for his pricey helicopter shoots. He thought that an app will probably be a manner not only to share his photography but to aid fund future projects in addition. To this end, Visuals serves up nine free photographs and gives a total of 54 for in-app purchase (individual collections are $1 on the iPhone, $2 on the iPad, or you could grab ‘em excited about $5 or $10 respectively), each with information on how the photo was shot (ISO, F-stop, metering, focal length, etc. ) and a video of Vincent explaining a little bit concerning the photograph. Visuals goes far beyond just stuffing some photos in an app to become something so much more rewarding: a show and tell by the photographer himself. And by investing in it, you’re not just buying yourself some nice photos but funding future content for the app in addition-you may read Laforet’s explanation of the model on his site.

Who’s it good for?

People who like good photography; those who are interested by seeing how that good photography may be perserved in our new App World Order.

Why’s it better than alternatives?

Well, fIrst, the images are pretty hard to conquer. Some of the six collections-” Ny Times,” ” Aerials,” ” Man & Nature,” ” Paniolo,” ” Surf,” ” Tilt Shift,” and ” Tilt Shift – Sports” -there’s probably a handful of images you’ll recognizing seeing previously (and don’t mind dwelling on a piece more) and then dozens more find it irresistible which are equally stunning. The Visuals app also goes beyond the call of duty in providing you with some sense of ownership over these photos-you should use them as wallpapers to your device and even (gasp!) share them with friends, a notion that many photographers would probably consider intellectual property suicide. For sure that sharing comes with a couple of paragraphs of small font legalese, but such is life.

How could it’s even better?

Buying the collections once should provide you with access to them on both the iPad and the iPhone, and while the explanatory videos are certainly a very good touch, it’d be nice if there was some method to watch them in thumbnail (or just hear the audio) while viewing the photo itself.

One can grab Visuals within the App Store without charge

We’re always searching for cool apps-for iOS, Android, Windows Phone or whatever else-to feature as App of the Day (yes, apps for other platforms will start stoning up soon!) Once you hit upon one you think that we should always examine, please let us know.

For more apps, have a look at our weekly app roundups for iPhone, iPad, and Android

Video music: Kevin MacLeod

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This post is tagged: aerial photography, free photographs, national geographic, professional photography, vincent laforet