Reading · Beyond The Frame

I have been taking photographs for a long time. It started as a hobby, and I have now worked as a photographer for more than ten years.

I did not become a photographer through any official route, if such a thing still exists, so I had never written a book about photography.

There seemed to be no need for one. Type “how to use light in photography” into your phone and you can find the basics. There is not much point in me repeating it.

But this year I started writing a newsletter, and it made me think that ideas and perspectives drawn from actual experience might be useful. I began to want to write a book about photography.

So I put what is in my head into the form of a table of contents. I may cut some of it, or add to it. General advice will be kept to a minimum. The center will be my own experiences, and what I have come to think through them.

Do you like photography?
I hated photography. Photography meant being photographed. It was not hate. I just did not know how to live with it.
Becoming a photographer
My first digital camera at thirty. A point of contact with society. Social media turned it into a job.
What makes a photographer
I stopped caring about titles. Turning back for a photograph. Not a state but a stance.

About cameras
Fujifilm’s legendary lens. If I started over, still a prime lens. Shoot in RAW.
Practicing photography
Shooting the same place again and again. Shooting with a friend. Shooting alone. Turning off the lights in the room. The flowers of 2020.
Light and shadow
Light falling through a gap between buildings. Going back the next day, or the next year. Why am I drawn to shadow?
Composition
In the end, the subject goes in the center. Cropping afterward. Choosing what to keep.
Learning from outside photography
Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows. Looking at the Rakuchu rakugai zu folding screens through a monocular. Hiroshige’s framing. Films and museums.
Photographs that stay with you
Returning, rising early, waiting. Waiting for a place to empty. Waiting for someone to appear.

What not to photograph
I still cannot answer the question, “What do you photograph?” What I do not photograph becomes clear over time.
What to look at
On the road. Train windows. Things seen but overlooked. The laundromat theory.
Give up on photographs no one else could take
A photograph unlike anyone else’s is impossible. A signature in photographs. How you have lived.
Photography’s sense of time
Looking at the present from a little way into the future. Ordinary photographs gain meaning. No need to rush a concept.
Skilled photographs and good photographs
Skilled and good are different things. Photography is like conversation. The day I handed my wife a Leica.
Manners for the person holding the camera
The asymmetry between photographing and being photographed. Sharaku, the artist who vanished after a year. New Year’s sunrise at an observation deck.

You select twice
Once when you shoot, once when you look back. Enjoying the second time. Building a system for your library.
Color and processing
Blue, green, orange. Editing without quirks. Before buying a preset, try editing on your own first.
Putting words next to photographs
Photographs go with words. The sound of idling engines at dawn. A vending machine at 3 a.m. When you cannot shoot, words remain. Snow and cherry blossoms.
On sharing work online
From wide and shallow to narrow and deep. Crowded places, and a place to come home to. “The guy who let social media go to his head and went independent.”
The practical side of keeping photographs
Assume the data will disappear. Local and cloud. The ultimate backup is paper.
Selling a photobook
Making a photobook. Selling it. Photographs making their way out into the world. The work of human hands.

When photography becomes your job
You enter places you could not otherwise enter. You meet people you would not meet. “What is the most beautiful black?”
The people who get the work
It is not about skill. Whether you are someone who can stand in that place. Muscles built by commissioned work. People not suited for it.
On keeping a day job
Full time and part time. If you can keep a day job, keep it. Free time does not mean you will shoot.

Family photographs
Photographing what a child does, not the child. The tagasode folding screens. An old album at my wife’s family home.
Photography and happiness
The hot pot theory. Too much to do to be bored. So the world does not change me.
Why photograph
Photographs trigger memory. “Well, it was never something I disliked.” The motive does not have to be noble. Self-love will do. After you die, every photograph becomes a good one.

My ideas may be wrong. But I also think there is no right answer in photography. I said I might write it. The truth is, I have already started.

If you have thoughts, let me know in the comments.

The photography book I might write

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