Backstage Kokoro
A "behind-the-scenes" look at selected images in my Kokoro project —
Content, photographic notes, EXIF data, creative process, miscellaneous commentary, and original digital captures. And now with additional audio comments about selected images!
From Kokoro #061 - Longquan Swords
We live in an age of competing — and to a large degree, exclusionary — media, defined by the choices made by the viewers. As a photographer, when I am working on a project, I now just assume that I will need to produce and finish that project in several different media in order to appeal to various audience segments.
This Longquon Swords project was originally produced as a printed, handmade chapbook. I like it; it looks great. But I know that as a printed device that I have to sell it in order to pay for the materials — and that implies it will reach a much smaller audience than it could in a digital form. So, here it is now as part of Kokoro.
Old school thinking would propose that this is inappropriate; that I should decide which is the best medium and stick with it; that other presentations would be a compromise in quality precisely because they are not the "best" medium. That way of thinking, however, denies that today's audience is segmented by media — there are print lovers, tablet mavens, book collectors, etc. The very concept of "best medium" is subject to the whims of the various audience segments. I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea that my content is the core of what I produce, and the medium (or media) of completion are simply the means by which I make that content available to different audiences.
Original digital capture (downsized for the web)
1/8 sec at f / 8.0, ISO 400, Panasonic DMC-G1, LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6, 24 mm
New! Additional audio comment about this image
We live in an age of competing — and to a large degree, exclusionary — media, defined by the choices made by the viewers. As a photographer, when I am working on a project, I now just assume that I will need to produce and finish that project in several different media in order to appeal to various audience segments.
This Longquon Swords project was originally produced as a printed, handmade chapbook. I like it; it looks great. But I know that as a printed device that I have to sell it in order to pay for the materials — and that implies it will reach a much smaller audience than it could in a digital form. So, here it is now as part of Kokoro.
Old school thinking would propose that this is inappropriate; that I should decide which is the best medium and stick with it; that other presentations would be a compromise in quality precisely because they are not the "best" medium. That way of thinking, however, denies that today's audience is segmented by media — there are print lovers, tablet mavens, book collectors, etc. The very concept of "best medium" is subject to the whims of the various audience segments. I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea that my content is the core of what I produce, and the medium (or media) of completion are simply the means by which I make that content available to different audiences.
Original digital capture (downsized for the web)
1/8 sec at f / 8.0, ISO 400, Panasonic DMC-G1, LUMIX G VARIO 14-45/F3.5-5.6, 24 mm
New! Additional audio comment about this image