A brief look at some of the great eBooks found in the Craft & Vision iPad app.

It was a series of a few events that led me to discover the Craft & Vision iPad App.

The first was joining 500px and seeing a lot of great black and white portraits posted there. That, in turn, was followed by playing around with the Snapseed iPad App and working with the black and white editor it features.

But that only went so far. It was this holiday dPS deal that featured the eBooks from Craft & Vision that led me to try out the app.

In their extensive collection of eBooks, the first two I gravitated towards – while on a new black and white kick – was “The Magic of Black and White” series (parts I and II).

The App

Although the eBooks on the C&V website are available as PDFs – which means you can read them anywhere – I decided to try out the iPad app anyway since that’s ultimately where I’d be reading these. I’ve been reading PDFs in iBooks and have purchased a few Kindle books for the iPad this past year, so I’ve grown rather fond of carrying my library with me and reading titles anywhere.

The App itself is free, and it lets you browse through the catalog and just purchase the books you like within the App itself. It has it’s own built-in reader – so yes, that’s a third place I know have books on my iPad – but I like the fact that the entire catalog is right there and I’m not searching or browsing through the iBookstore or the Kindle Store whenever something comes to mind.

Each book that I’ve looked at so far is nicely illustrated with striking photos and is very well written. I do miss having a bookmark feature in the App’s reader, but I’m sure that can be added in a future update. These books aren’t terribly long and are typically fast reads, so it’s not a deal breaker for me so far.

Magic of Black and White

Getting back to the two books I’ve purchased through the App in The Magic of Black and White series. In only a day or two reading through them and looking back into my own existing image library, I was inspired to choose a few that already fit the criteria that the books’ author was describing. I still need a little practice, but here are the early results:

Resting

Airplane

And there is always this image I created last year when our son was first born that still stands as my favorite black and white image that I’ve created to date.

Baby Blanket

Of course, these were from photos that I had already taken and not shot with the end black and white result in mind. However, now that I’ve gotten a little thirsty for shots like these, I’m sure one of my upcoming 52 to Two project shoots will focus on shooting a few scenes with a black and white vision.

Your Thoughts?

Have you tried the Craft & Vision app or read any of their eBooks? What’s your take compared to some of the other eBooks or authors you’ve read? Feel free to leave your thoughts below.