When I was new to photography, before digital imaging turned the industry upside down, I would often hear one uncertain advise from my mentors: "Break the rules." As best as I could, I respectfully learned the rules and then some, and along the way, I also seriously took their advise to break the rules. I can even remember many instances when I delibrately sought questionable photographic situations where I can practice breaking the rules.

There is just one problem. I actually didn't know how to break the rules. Or even how to bend them just a little bit. My mentors admonished me to keep an open mind, but they weren't exactly forthcoming when it comes to how to actually do it. I was left to my own devices, and to find out for myself, how it is actually done. Only after much gut-wrenching and hands-wringing, through the years, did I eventually learn how to do it right (if there is such a thing when it comes to breaking rules), and so I became confident (and quite an expert too, again, if there is such a thing) at breaking so many rules. If the rule says to do one thing, I'll do its opposite, or some other thing at least. In those happy rule-breaking days, I experimented an awful lot, failing often, but surprised too at how once in a while things turn out to be alright.

When the time came for me to mentor and share the open-secrets of our trade, mostly to those who have been "born" to digital photography, I somehow found myself mimicking and parroting exactly the same (and what seems now to me to be a) judicious advise, to the bright-eyed newcomers to our fold. Somehow, the statement to "break the rules" would invariably spew forth in my talks, discussions and debates, and no one really questioned what it meant. Everyone seems in agreement that it is a good thing. Not one, to this day, bothered to asked me: "How is it done?" In its most enigmatic form, they took it for what it is, and what it may have meant to them, and I often wonder if they realize the breadth and depth of what breaking the rules really mean.

Of course, breaking the rules predicates the fact that we have to first learn the rules by heart, even until they encrust into automatic, unthinking habits. And only because we know these rules with incestuous intimacy can we now only enjoy the freedom to foray towards diversive and experimental directions. In essence, to break the rules is to become a rebel, going off into the often dangerous fringes of conventionally accepted methodologies, and in the process suffering the wrath of those who disagree with such a practice, and accepting the consequences. It's eloping with one's uncertain destiny. It's a very, very bad thing. But it can also be a good thing. A bad thing because it can cause so much havoc into our creative and working lives, and damage the ego and inner psyche, if you are the sensitive artistic type. But it's also a good thing because it liberates us from the staid conventions of the generally accepted photographic styles. It allows us to go beyond the conventions, and to try something else that might just work, and even be better in terms of creative, artistic merits.

Every photographic tool in our arsenal, big and small, including Aperture (and Photoshop), can be used to break out of the usual and help us to create and realize our individual creative and artistic endeavors and visions. In our hands are very powerful cutting-edge tools that makes us more capable to alter and fashion the world around us into images that corresponds closely, and faithfully, to our thoughts and temperaments, rather than the spread of reality that surrounds us. It serves as a brave expression of what is within us when dealing with what is outside of us.

I've seen too many demonstrations, and have endlessly toyed with many of them myself, as to how the enhancement tools built into Apple's Aperture, together with the growing number of editing plug-ins, can change, alter, improve and enhance the quality and characteristics of photographic images. These many tools can help us protect and even recreate the authenticity of images, to compose them as to how we actually remember seeing them, which is useful and functional to photojournalists and purists, but this is in the same vein that these tools can help us cross over into the mysterious realm of creative visualization, which is, on the other hand, useful and functional to fine art, portrait, fashion and advertising photographers. Our tools span the full spectrum, from far left to far right.

While in Aperture we generally aim to speed up our work, escaping the painful stings of a digital workflow, which is probably why a lot of professional photographers are attracted to Aperture in the first place, it is also perhaps the best way to spend so unaccounted time in creative pursuits. From our collective experience, and when necessity dictates, we find ourselves breezing through our photo images, one by one, until we cull and fix the best, quickly and efficiently. Most photographers might stop right there, which is not a bad place to stop. But our mastery of Aperture can lead to something else: the design and development of one's creative vision. Just like Photoshop, or any other editing or post-production software, Aperture is a powerfully integrated tool that can do more than just manage the workflow and fix the pictures. It can serve as an artistic and creative tool. It's current iteration allows you to potentially construct imagination into reality.

Naturally, taking too much liberty to visually alter reality is an exercise frowned by many, many photographers who traditionally uphold the notion of what you see is what you should get, and is what you should only show. Photojournalists, tasked with recording many significant moments of historical importance (such as the recent Beijing Olympics and the upcoming US presidential elections), will be the first, along with their editors, to balk at the idea of wantonly and irresponsibly creating alternate realities. You may have heard, at one point in time or the other, of cases when photographic images that has been passed on as authentic were discovered to be fakes, and consequently, has caused so much controversy that shook our industry to the depths of its soul.

Capturing and presenting reality, maybe with minor, and acceptable manners of tweaks here and there, using Aperture maybe, in terms of exposure, levels, saturation, sharpness and brightness to enhance the image quality, is the divine mandate of photojournalists. The images of photojournalists is subject a single stringent parameters: depict reality. But for the rest of us, fashion, lifestyle, commercial and advertising photographers, we are somehow not constrained by such a parameter. Our mandate is fantasy. We freely exercise our creative freedom of expression. To do otherwise is to be considered bland, unintererting, uninspired. And in our task of creating a near impossible fantasy of flawless skin, beautifully toned bodies, and perfect scenarios, we succeed or fail in our task as a photographer, by the way we construct the final imagery. Our fantastical images has to appear real. And seeing how many images of this kind continues to flood our consciousness, the photography we practice is almost inspirational and aspirational in nature. Ours is a generation of photographers, standing on the shoulders of giants, constructing on top of the works of the great photographers before us, realizing for itself its own vision.

[Note: Photo in screenshot by Dominique James of The Studio and The Playground. Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved.]