Photography, Hello
My favorite place from which to ponder technological change is personal experience. Practice grounds thinking to reality. And with that grounding comes the greatest chance to illuminate the near-now for those others who also love something, but perhaps can't see changes imminent.
I try to keep a sensitive heart about these matters.
When I felt certain inevitable shifts in books, I wrote “Books in the Age of the iPad.” When micro four-thirds blew my hat off, I published the “GF1 Field-Test.” As I finished a Kickstarter campaign with co-author Ashley Rawlings for “Art Space Tokyo,” I wrote up the experience in “Kickstartup.” As simplicity found its way into iPad publishing, I published “Subcompact Publishing.” And after finishing work on Flipboard for iPhone, I made “Flipboard for iPhone, the Book” to help us think about the value of giving form to the formless.
All of these pieces teeter on the edge of a slope leading away from some incumbent mode of thinking — physical only publishing, SLR based photography, traditional publishing, clunky magazines as apps — towards a new mode — digital and physical hybrids, smaller mirror-less photography, sustainable self-publishing, simple and light tablet publishing.
Those invested in the old will rightfully take issue with the new. Because anyone who loves and has invested in a way of doing something will not — and should not — give it up without good cause. But that doesn't mean the changes aren't real.
This is the companion piece to ‘Goodbye, Cameras’ and in usual Craig Mod fashion, it is a piece that satisfies all of the e-senses. I love his writing, his design style, and his point of view. This is a must-read.
I also love (my wife does not love) that we have both done The Hover:
I had the pleasure of trying out a friend’s RX1 (where all these Xs and 1s come from, I know not) last February. Needless to say — I was smitten. In an early draft of “Goodbye, Cameras” I had written the following:
The RX1 is beautiful. Stunning. An ideal of what Panasonic set out to achieve — but fell short of — with its GF1. The RX1 is solidly built with a single, fixed focal length. No zoom. No interchangeable lenses. Just a full-framed, professional grade, pocketable camera with an uncompromising point of view. But at nearly $2,800.00 USD, it’s far from cheap or very consumer friendly. Still, how I have lusted for it. More than the Leica M Monochrom (no matter how hard I try to convince myself, I simply can not justify that Leica price tag).
The RX1 though — my mouse-cursor has hovered above the Amazon one-click purchase button enough times to send shivers down the spines of AmEx executives. But, yet, I’ve never pulled the trigger.