Quantity with Quality
Looking at Life Through Your Lens
What a renowned photographer can teach us about innovation and beauty
This is my next story in a series of articles responding to Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s challenge to produce a short quality article with three take home points each day for thirty days.
I have chosen to use Wikipedia’s main page as inspiration, choosing one topic from the “Did You Know” section as topical encouragement.
Teiko Shiotani was a Japanese photographer whose work established him as a major figure in Japanese photography in the late 1920’s and 1930’s.
Shiontani enjoyed drawing as a boy and received a Vest Pocket Kodak camera when he was 13 that sparked his interest in photography. While he did obtain a larger format camera, Shiontani remained an enthusiast of the Vest Pocket Kodak and used it for many of his most famous works.
The artistic style of the time prized a paint-like effect over sharp detail in photographs. Shiontani and others would remove the aperture limit from the lens in order to allow softening of the focus. Photographers might also wipe prints with oil or deform the printing paper under the enlarger during developing in order to produce distortion in the photos.
One of Shiontani’s most famous photos, View with Weather Forecast, was created using this paper curvature technique and won him first prize in a 1932 The Photo-Times magazine contest.
What We Can Learn from Teiko Shiotani
In August 1925, Shiotani and four other photographers travelled by foot along the northwestern coast of Japan taking photographs as they went. The trip proved to be unanticipatedly harsh with little shelter other than a straw mat and almost no food.
However, many of the photographs Shiotani took from the trip appeared in magazines, and one (above) garnered him grand prize in the first-ever Asahi Camera Company photo contest in 1926.
Shiontani continued to take pictures well into his 80’s, and frequently encouraged his fellow photographers to find beauty in ordinary life. Hundreds of his prints and other materials were donated to the Shimane Art Museum after his death in 1988 and six books featuring his work have been published so far.
Take home points:
- Be willing to starve for your passion. Shiontani’s trip along the coast was harsh but provided him with photographs of never-seen locations (at the time) to be shared with the world.
- Break the rules and be innovative. Shiontani’s willingness to push creative boundaries made him a leader in his field.
- Capture the beauty all around you. Good advice for anyone, not just photographers.
Are you willing to be hungry in order to chase your goals? Are you pushing boundaries and trying new things?
Are you finding the beauty in everyday life?
Teiko Shiontani’s inspiration is timeless, and perhaps even more pertinent today.
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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.