Steve Jobs was truly one of a kind, a luminary of often unmatched caliber, may he rest in peace.

Steve Jobs paid the same attention to detail in running Apple that we aspire to pay to our images.  You may ask why I think Steve Jobs changed photography, and the reason is Steve Jobs was the catalyst behind the invention of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and adoption of the mouse, which gave birth to Photoshop.  Thomas Knoll, one of the developers of Photoshop along with his brother John, owned one of the original GUI computers and with their love of imaging, they developed Photoshop, which was initially intended to be a tool for the manipulation of photographs that were digitized by scanners, and at the time, this was very rare.  Photoshop 1.0 was released for the Macintosh and was not released for the PC until version 2.5.   As technology developed camera manufacturers were determined to eliminate the interim step and eventually developed digital sensors that were then able to take digital images directly. The existence of Photoshop allowed for the professional manipulation of digital images which enhanced the uptake of digital cameras.  Were it not for the vision of Jobs in bringing the Mac to fruition none of this would have been possible  Incidentally Jobs did not conceptualize the Mac but he was the driving force behind its bring brought to market because it was a shelved project).  Were it not for Jobs’ photography may have never moved out of the darkroom and onto the desktop.

Steve Jobs paid the same great attention to detail to an entire company that we pay to photographs. He returned to Apple, post Scully,  to take it from an almost broke company to the most valuable company in the world.  During the time that he rejoined Apple again to his eventual departure Steve’s keynotes introduced many great products:  the MacBook Air, the iPad 2, and  IOS5, iCloud, OSX Lion at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June this year which was his very last appearance on stage.  It should be noted that while these products are all technology-based, their underlying mantra was appreciation of art and design.  Steve was a minimalist and this showed in the ease of use and his approach to design of Apple products. he also had great appreciate of the arts, it is said that the achievement that he is proudest of is bringing The Beatles to iTunes.  When you think about it, Steve’s approach was not to crunch numbers and do all the business stuff, it was to make computers and other products that were easy to use for the average person to make their daily lives simpler and more enjoyable.

I think Steve’s biggest and best Keynote ever was the Stanford Commencement Address he delivered in 2005, some say he had a premonition of his passing but I say it has inspirational words in it for all of us, whether we are photographers or not (if you are at work and can’t view the video here is the transcript).

Tim Cook’s announcement of Steve Job’s death:

Team,

I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being.  Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor.  Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

We are planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon.  If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences in the interim, you can simply email rememberingsteve@apple.com.

No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.

Tim

For 30 years Steve directly or indirectly influenced technologies that have changed our lives and he inspired and produced technologies that had never been imagined.  Steve also turned advertising on its head with revolutionary commercials such as the ’1984’ piece originally released during the Third Quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, you can still see his influence on the Super Bowl today.   Even The White House was moved to make a statement on Steve’s passing within a few hours of it becoming public knowledge.

For us personally, every time we used a supplementary device to interact with our computers be it a mic or a mouse, every time we see a GUI, every time we get that critical piece of information from our smartphones we should remember Steve’s advice:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” or “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. Everything else is secondary.”

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Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011, may he rest in peace.

Please share your thoughts on Steve Jobs’ contribution to your life and any inspiration that you’ve received from this great visionary in the comment section below.

Jeremy

Jeremy is a consultant, educator and photographer based in the Caribbean. He shoots an eclectic range of material, but his favorite subjects are urban and seascapes, people and aircraft. He mixes his love of technology and travel with photography. Following a brief post college hiatus he picked up a camera again in 2003 and has been shooting ever since. You may view his work on his website