Admittedly, I am not a photographer, basically I am
a guy with a white or black backdrop, a bulb and a simple digital camera which
does 99% of the work, in other words, I point and shoot. Possibly the only way
I get half way decent photos is that I take the time to take lots and lots of
photos, for some pieces I have taken well over a hundred shots and end up with
perhaps 30 or so on a good day. That leads me to this illustration, a 2-Vu of a
piece that recently came my way, a wonderfully rustic and casual Kondo Seiko kohiki
chawan with the most relaxed posture I have seen in some time. I was struggling
to get the camera to focus correctly on the white surface and switched to black
to see what differences it would make and here are the results. I was a bit
stunned by how different the photos are using all the same settings and
lighting between the black and white backgrounds and after fussing around for
some time, each show the chawan in an entirely different light. The black
background played on the shadowing and disappearance of the form as it moves
away from the central focus while the white back drop clearly picked up all the
the keshiki, activities in the slip and glaze and the hues of color on the
otherwise, stark white chawan. Both tell a unique story but at a certain level
the stories are as different as MOBY DICK is from A TALE OF TWO CITIES, though
I like both photos from what they say, I think I prefer the photo of the bowl
bowl behind door #2.
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