DEJA TWO-VU

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.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE

I am amazed at the nature of photography, it seems that for the average person with a camera what results is a pot that either looks better in the photo or much better in person than the photos displays. I understand there is an art, a discipline to photography but let's face it, most of us are just not great photographers. Case in point is that I recently saw a yuteki temmoku pot by Kimura Yoshihiro that was just not that interesting, than I got to see the pot in person, what an incredible difference. In the original photographs the surface looks flat, almost lifeless and with just the hint of any color variations, in hand the surface is alive, in movement like a cosmic dance. The "oilspots" are each composed of a number of colors from black rings, rusty partridge feathers, hints of blues and greens and even hues of silver graded neatly in size from large at the top and growing ever smaller down the pot. I tried my best to capture the actual surface in a photo and came about as close as I can with my camera and tungsten bulbs what a difference a photo can make, now I know why  there is the old adage about pictures but it really should say,  "a good picture is a worth a thousand words".

"Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communication, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution."   Ansel Adams (1902-1984)