Daido Moriyama

Simple in concept and presentation like good things often are. The closest I’ll ever get to going on a photo walk with Moriyama. Money well spent.

El título cumple las expectativas del libro; Moriyama habla, a través de un diálogo, sobre su manera personal de hacer fotografía, al tiempo que emite un par de consejos y sugerencias para quien desea hacer fotografía callejera. Le pongo cuatro estrellas porque en dos semanas de uso la pasta se despegó del lomo de las hojas.

Si te gusta el trabajo de Daido Moriyama, este libro es una excelente opción para entenderlo mejor y apreciarlo de otra forma. El libro llegó en tiempo y en excelentes condiciones.Decidí comprar este libro porque me gusta mucho la fotografía de calle y aquí hay muy buenas fotos para disfrutar y aprender mucho. Recomiendo ampliamente que adquieras este libro si te gusta la foto de calle y en general.

I'm a huge fan of Daido Moriyama, not only as a photographer but also as an inspiration for my own work. I know he works with compact cameras, once film and now digital, but I was really interested in his method. How he processes his work, how he approaches the edit and print stages, how he adapts to different cameras, anything to do with how he takes the photos themselves. I understood "How I Take Photographs" to mean that this would be that kind of book. A technical manual for those who love Daido's distinctive style.In reality, there is very little writing in this book. Most of it is vague second-hand accounts from an interview between Takeshi Nakamoto and Daido himself. To make matters worse, the "interview" is extremely dated. It took place sometime between 2006-2008 with some postscripts up to current day. In one section, Daido talks about the recent emergence of digital cameras and his plans to migrate away from film. I realised then that this is an extremely old interview repackaged and resold as a guide to photographers. Daido's advice is also very vague and non-specific. It seems like this is one of many interviews Daido has dealt with over the years and he didn't seem too interested in talking much about his method. He rehashes bits and pieces from other interviews and gives vague advice like "how to shoot near water" or his views on "postcard photography". Nothing in-depth.Very little technique or method is conveyed in this book other than a basic run through of Daido's approach to photography (filling entire rolls of film every 100 meters at a furious pace). Each chapter consists of 6-8 pages and that's it. I didn't feel like I learned much of anything by the end and it took me only an hour to read everything. I'm a slow reader too.The non-written parts of the book are filled with Daido's photography, all of which relate to each chapter's title, such as photographs all in Ginza or all near water or taken from moving cars. Thing is, these photos honestly look like they're throwaways. Very few of the photos included made me stop and gasp like I do with Daido's other work. It seems like they included a series of "snapshots" that wouldn't pass the quality test elsewhere to illustrate the vague points of each chapter. I didn't feel inspired by any of the photos included here and was more confused why they take up so much space in this book. It's always a pleasure to see a photographer's work, even his rejects or lower quality shots, but this was too much and for too little purpose.Ultimately I'm unsure of why this book is coming out now. This is a very old interview peppered with subpar images and pretty much zero useful advice for any photographer. Maybe I went into this project with the wrong expectations but I feel that with such a specific title HOW I TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS there could be more effort and detail here than Daido's half-answers to Nakamoto's questions. I can't give one star as I still like some of the photography included here but I'd give the written portion one star, the photography two stars.

Make no mistake: this rather slight book provides a good way to get to know Daido Moriyama, his kind of photography, this methods and ideas. Moriyama's ideas, like his photos, are not subtle or deep... but they do have an immediate impact. There are some very stark, direct suggestions contained in these pages: just get outside, choice of camera is irrelevant, you have to be driven by desire... This is a comprehensive collection of Moriyama's precepts but probably not much more than you will get from one of the digests published in various magazines recently. All of the insights it contains could be written on the back jacket.Worth having but don't expect too much. The Japanese original of this book was published in 2010!