350 $ book

[BIG]

200 swords special ...

 

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200228/p2a/00m/0et/011000c

 

Best

[16k]

Impressive!

[Surfson]

Wow, Kirill, are you paying attention?  Time to advertise to the "sword girls"!

[Rivkin]

Well, hopefully that's a more rewarding market, and they probably do read more compared to nihonto experts... But the problem with ALL these books is that they ALL use photographs from DNP. You can have publication rights to each for 100$. Any kokuho. But...

The photographs were taken by museum photographers who could not care less for the fact they photograph swords. Administred by curators who in Japanese museums are certainly not sword people (even in sword museums!), but graduates of general-venue curatorial or art history studies.

 

The quality is abysmal. Only the most brilliant Soshu gets through the foam of poor technique employed.

DNP is what resulted in tons of books publishes, since its actually very cheap to publish a nihonto book with the very top grades. And it destroyed quality sword photography in Japan, at least in "official venues".

 

Kirill R.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Kirill's photography is head & shoulders above any other that I've seen. It's well worth investing in his books.

[Surfson]

All the more reason to get it in front of the sword girls!  And I do have first hand knowledge of Kirill's skills, as he has shot my collection.  

[Rivkin]

Thank you very much, gentlemen, much obliged. To be honest, I still need a bit of luck to produce good images and there are couple more people who use a similar/related technique. This being said, the recent travel troubles for me mean collapse of all agreements to shoot kokuho in Japan, and knowing the Pain that went into making those, I am worried the chances to have it rescheduled some time in the future are problematic...

 

Kirill R.