TokyoLand

Whilst out runnng this morning, training for my April marathon, and listening to my iPod , I heard sandwiched between The White Stripes and Bob Dylan a podcast of my good friend Jason Eskenazi talking on the Studio360 radio show about his time working in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a security guard, and how whilst it was mind numbingly boring a times, it proved to be also mind enlarging and eventually inspirational and educational for his own work and photography. It’s the second time I’ve heard it, and it really struck me this time about what a very well produced little segment it is, the music perfectly fits the conversation, the conversation is well edited from a longer chat it seems. Very enjoyable little pice to listen to, only takes a few minutes.

Jason’s ‘Wonderland’ book is reprinted and available for sale again, along with 100 USD 10″x8″ prints. A bargain.

And whilst your hand is in your wallet, I’m still looking for sponsorship money for my marathon run to help the Sightsavers International charity. It’d be great if anyone could spare a dollar, Euro, pound….many thanks.

As newspapers the world over struggle and close down, it’s refreshing to write of a new one starting up in Scotland- The Caledonian Mercury, named after The Mercurius Caledonius which was Scotland’s first print newspaper, founded in 1660 by Thomas Sydserf. We wish it well.

Sorry for the silence. But anyway, where were we…

There’s a very thought provoking, slightly sad, but very interesting Radio 4 programme worth listening to here on BBC iPlayer, produced by Miles Warde, and follows Miles as he, well in the BBC’s words “Miles Warde presents the story of a group of photojournalists who set out to witness world events. They went to Yugoslavia, Angola, Chechnya, Gaza and Iraq. Two of them were shot dead. A compelling portrait of youthful ambition and the power of photography to change the world.”

In it we hear Colin Jacobson (former picture editor of The Independent Magazine and the man who gave me many a job thankfully), my good friend from all over James Hill (Pulitzer Prize and WPP winner), Gary Calton of The Observer, Martin Beddall of The Guardian, and many others discuss the photography course they were on, and what happened afterwards, and the death of two of their colleagues (one of whom was Paul Jenks whom I never met, but I received an award in honour of many years back).

It’s 30 minutes long, take a listen. And seems to only be available on iPlayer for another 6 days. Listen here.

Firstly, Happy New Year.

Secondly, one of my Romanian roma photographs has appeared on the cover of a reprint of Isabel Fonseca’s acclaimed book ‘Bury Me Standing- The Gypsies and their Journey’.Now you have something to spend all your book tokens on that you got at Christmas.

Anther couple of things….

The reproduction quality of the images in the magazine is great. There’s a beautiful sheen and sharpness, a vibrancy, to the images on the pages. Very impressive. Although the colour images look a tad better than the black and white I think. Well, under this non-scientific non-calibrated god-knows-what-kelvins light anyway.

I did receive an email from the picture editor late one night saying that the ‘publishing sample’ was arriving imminently from their publishers and if I wished to go across town to their office I could check the colours/reproduction etc of my 8 pages. I was told I could pop by the next day, but he also gave his mobile phone number in case I could only make it that night. Incredible huh ? how many magazines give you that chance? Alas, I couldn’t go due to other commitments, but nice to be asked, and it all looks great anyway.

And when they sent me my complimentary one copy of the mag it came in a very cool lime green envelope. Nice. Nicer even than JAL magazine’s red envelope.

So the above spreads of my Romanian roma gypsy photographs, are the final layout and pictures used and published in the current issue of Transit Magazine. (Available to buy now in big bookstores/magazine shops in Japan, or via Amazon.co.jp for those of you who live in the sticks).

If you read the previous posts on this blog you’ll see the comments I made on earlier layout options, and picture options, and you’ll see that the majority of my comments were perhaps read, but ultimately didn’t have too much effect on the final outcome of the design and spread.

The image of the girl against the Alpine landscape was taken out at my suggestion, as it was too similar to the very first colour image of the guy in front of a tree woodland photo-mural. The Alpine girl was taken out, and was finally replaced by Mia and her mermaid. I’d hoped Apline Girl would have been replaced by Yellow Dress Girl, as in pdf Option4 (previous post), but in the end it wasn’t to be. The last I’d heard was that myself and the picture editor preferred the Yellow Dress Girl, but the Editor and One Other preferred the Mermaid picture…I’m not sure who had the deciding vote, but it went for the Mermaid pic. A nice pic, I love it, but the Yellow Dress Girl told more of the rags to riches story in the context of this spread, and the brief I was given.

The title for the essay had always stayed the same, but I wasn’t so keen on the final font choice, the layout of it, or the fact that it overlaps the first black and white image.

I’d suggested keeping the images on the opening spread as the same height as each other, just as all other images on the following pages, but I see they didn’t go with it.

Another suggestion I’d made was moving the map from the opening double page spread to the final spread which has more room and space. The first page is very cluttered and crowded in comparison to the final page I felt.

And slightly annoyingly the captions on the opening double spread say that the men in the images, the black and white and colour, are the same man…when I’d categorically written in an email, in response to their query about this, that it wasn’t the same man.

I tell all these points not as grumbles, or complaints, but merely to illustrate how the spread evolved, and my thoughts on it along the way and on the final published version. It’s nice to get 8 pages of images, used big and fairly well, uncluttered by copious amounts of text, or broken by adverts. It’s good, I’m happy to an extent, but I felt it could have had more impact. Those intial black pages, in Option1, were more dramatic I thought, had more impact, and grabbed your attention. They would have been my choice.

Such is life. Onwards.