My old nemesis, the crevice, strikes again.
I’m currently assembling ULTRAsomething Magazine Exorcism 09 and, quite frustratingly, continue to bump up against a familiar problem — the gutter in the centre of the magazine.
I wrote about this annoyance last year, in an article titled, The Gutter. And now, once again, I’m rejecting one landscape-oriented photo after another, simply because the magazine’s spine swallows some crucial visual information.
I suppose I could extend my entropic capitulation reliance to cover “magazine layout,” but even as a child it bothered me whenever vital photographic information would disappear into a book’s spinal crevice — and those weren’t even MY photos. Which is why, when I designed the layout for So Far So So, I placed most landscape photos on a single page, rather than across a dual-page spread. Any photos that did cross the gutter were either shifted left-or-right to avoid placing crucial information in the spine, or they had no valuable centre content to begin with. But ULTRAsomething magazine, unlike So Far So So, is a full-bleed publication. So there’s no dancing around the gutter.
I remain ever mindful of this while taking photos, but in the heat of the action, it’s not always possible to ensure the photo’s centre remains a barren wasteland. Fortunately, my natural tendency to frame vertically means around two-thirds of my shots never need cross a gutter. But the other third? The ones I take without throwing my arms all akimbo in an awkward effort to rotate the camera? Those remain locked in an eternal struggle with the gutter.
Consider, if you will, the tiny selection of photos contained within this article. When I returned from my annual Tokyo trip a couple months ago, I performed my usual brutal photographic cull — reducing the collection to a tidy little group of selects, which I deemed worthy of future publication. But this week, after sifting through that collection for possible inclusion in ULTRAsomething Exorcism 09, I was forced to reject 30 of them simply because they wouldn’t survive the trip across the gutter. And that’s just two weeks’ worth of Tokyo selects. Imagine how many other selects get rejected for this same reason!
Fortunately, I have a vast collection of photos with which to assemble Exorcism 09, and there’s no guarantee any of these would have made the final cut — gutter or no gutter. But it’s just such a nuisance. And what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t whine petulantly about your nuisances to the rest of the world?
OK. Back to work on issue 9, which I’ll hopefully send to the printer in the next few weeks.
©2026 grEGORy simpson
ABOUT THE PHOTOS:
As mentioned, this collection of photos is but a tiny snippet of Tokyo-only landscape-oriented shots, which I was forced to reject simply due to gutter concerns.
An additional note on the final three “Surveillance” shots: These are part of a series I began shooting, which I hoped would illustrate the disconnect between people’s desire for privacy and the reality of the blanket of surveillance surrounding us all. Ultimately I decided to abandon this because, along with that cursed gutter problem, the concept just seemed too banal and obvious. Also, I forgot I’m not the sort of photographer who actually explores themes. Instead, themes seem to explore me.
REMINDER 1 : Don’t forget to order your copy of So Far So So from the Beau Photo website. Keep in mind that Beau prices products in Canadian Dollars and not U.S. Dollars. I recognize many readers don’t realize how weak and valueless the Canadian dollar is, so remember — that CAD$65 price tag you see is only (roughly) US$47, which, frankly, is a figurative steal.
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