In this day and age I sometimes feel odd about taking out my camera on a plane - particularly during takeoff and landing - but being somewhat bold can result in some amazing images.

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The course is available at http://dslru.com/courses/D1004 along with ten other courses, all priced free or inexpensively.

Don't forget, too, that you can enter DSLRU's launch contest to win free software from Nik. Registration at DSLRU is FREE.

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Other classes are available for as little as $0.99. Drop by, sign up, post in the forum, and peruse some of the classes. It's been a long time coming, but it's here now and we're pleased to make it available to everyone.

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The clinic is a golf school, specifically one organized by Dave Wedzik, with Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett. Thirteen students were signed up, with one observer. Another instructor or two was there, and I was there to take photos (and, when not doing that, to listen, observe, and to help by recording some swings).

First, notwithstanding how great it is to be in the presence of someone (two people) who have done a lot to revolutionize the golf swing swing, several things stood out about the day.

1. One of the golfers was missing both of his legs from the knees down and his right arm from the elbow down. Dave walked up to him, stared down at his legs, and deadpanned. "I can't teach you… you're a lefty." The guy was amazing, inspiring, and humbling in equal doses. Particularly when you realize he can beat 3/4 of golfers in the U.S.
2. One of the student, a kid named Andy, is basically a scratch golfer with a "horrible short game and terrible putting" (in his words). He's been golfing for two years, but seriously for only just over six months. Dave and I talked about how quickly he's able to assimilate things into his swing because it's very easy for him to "clear the machine." Incredible.
3. Every golfer improved. Every golfer probably shaved two strokes off his scores, at least, from the swing with which he came to the school. Wow.
4. The weather couldn't have been better. Well, from a golf perspective, anyway. Obviously as a photographer I'd have taken an overcast day, but I don't think they get many of those in Scottsdale.

Aperture 3's brushes are incredible. I spent about a minute retouching this photo primarily to brighten the golfer (the same Andy as above) and to enhance the sky and ground colors a bit (targeted color adjustments brushed into the proper areas):

Adjustment brushes rock in Aperture 3. Nice job, Apple.

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One of the main goals? To populate the forum. The forum is 100% free, so if you're looking to get in on a new photography forum, this could be a place for you to quickly become "one of the old timers."

There's no obligation to buy anything at this point (nor will there ever be).

We're going to officially launch when we're comfortable with the feature list and bugs. I don't know when, but sooner is preferred over later, obviously!

P.S. If you're interested in selling any courses, you really want to get in touch with me. As with the App Store, it should be good to "get in early" and claim some potentially valuable courses.

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One thing that makes me somewhat concerned: that Apple seems to view Aperture as an upgrade from iPhoto and is actively trying to push people that way. Simplicity is good, but I also don't necessarily need a "dumber" Aperture, so I hope that's not what we've got.

I also don't see myself using Faces or Places very much at all. But that's me, and the types of things I shoot are limited, and I tend to organize and name the albums and photos fairly simply and to remember those names, too.

Update: in no particular order, some thoughts…

The Good

Brushes look great. At first I thought they were, well, a poor imitation of what you can find in Lightroom, but if you watch this video ("Using Brushes to Apply Adjusments") the real power is exposed. Sweet. Selective desaturation, baby!

Additionally, the brush tool itself - with the solid outer line and the dashed inner line - is great.

Slide shows look nice. I've never printed a book, but I hear it's nice.

GPS from iPhone photos is nice. I doubt I'll use it much, though, because I see little value in adding 10,000 little pushpins within a 30-mile radius.

Color labels? Flags? I'm not sure how much I'll use it, but I like the option. Might be a good way to code things outside of using the actual ratings.

Search seems to be expanded and includes some nice new tweaks.

I don't have to rush to see if Rivet is broken. That's someone else's job now. Bwah ha ha ha!

I love that I can now apply an adjustment preset when I import. I like Definition of about 0.5 as a starting point for a lot of images. Now I can do that every time.

The Bad

Not giving me a serial number immediately after I buy. Booo. The trial wants to create a demo library - I want to upgrade my existing library. I realize it's tough to email a code while shipping a DVD, but maybe Apple could just email a code to you and not put one in the stupid box.

Checkboxes to select the images to import? Ugh. The target is so much smaller. What was wrong with dragging to select like in Aperture 2?

The path navigator in full-screen is also a menu? What?

Keywords still don't really seem to be hierarchical. Adding "Baleen" from the path "Animals > Mammals > Whales > Baleen" should make the image show up in searches for "Animals" and "Mammals" and "Whales."

I don't like that I can't apply an adjustment ("Recovery" for example to every image I've selected. I still have to use the stamp tool (or something equivalent).

The Indifferent

CURVES!?!? We don't need no stinkin' curves! OK, I don't care about curves, but I'm glad the tool exists because it'll help quiet some of the people who love their curves and couldn't figure out how to work with the tools Aperture provided in prior versions.

I should try to remember to create different libraries rather than use the one massive one I've been using. I'll have a library for my photography, one of the kiddo, and one for golf (product shots, tournament photos, etc.).

Faces, Places. Again, I just don't see myself using them much at all. Is this something professional photographers really care about?

I will not import my iPhoto library into Aperture. iPhoto is for snapshots. JPEGs. Pictures Carey takes.

Facebook and Flickr. Eh.

Plugins have to be 64-bit to not require a re-launch. That's good in the long haul, but bad right now.

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The official site is and will be at dslru.com, but for now udslr.com - the old name for the site - has a simple sign-up page.

We're working hard on this and think it's shaping up quite nicely.

Users in this beta will not only get a sneak peek at the site, but we'll ask three things of them primarily: a) point out any bugs you find, b) suggest possible feature enhancements, and c) seed and use the forum with some good topics and discussions.

We don't have well defined plans in place for any sort of "prizes" or "compensation" right now, but we'd like to take care of our "early adopters." It may not be in February or March, but sometime we'd like to thank them - particularly the good ones.

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The domain name will eventually be dslru.com of course.

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