To all those people I’ve annoyed with my behaviour or upset with my attitude — I’m really sorry.

But I’m so bloody happy right now! I’ve just come back from Sixpiece — a one day only exhibition of images submitted from the mass photo shoot at Kirkstall Festival. 33 photographers submitted images to what will probably become the start of an amazing archive images recording the festival and it was amazingly curated by  Rachel Barker and Lauren Pissochet and supported by Ken Stratford (along with both East Street Arts and Kirkstall Valley Community Association).

Some days (well most of them) I’m too busy dealing with the future to enjoy what’s happened — and the last 18 months have been an absolute blast. Exposure Leeds has been amazing and the fact that we’re now moving this to a structure that will hopefully allow it to flourish but what has been amazing is how this little social enterprise has allowed me to flourish.

This probably isn’t such a deal to others but tonight I walked up to an MP and introduced myself; and he turned around and congratulated me on all I had achieved. I doubt he really knows anything much about Exposure Leeds — and he probably says the same to loads of people he meets. But, I introduced myself to an MP!

My little bit of world has changed shape so much lately and I can’t help but be proud of all that the group of amazing individuals that is Exposure Leeds has managed to do. As the group moves from loose form into a properly constituted entity and starts to set in place elements that will ensure future stability and continuity I hope to review the first year and a half — but one thing is for sure; when I look back at what we’ve achieved I’m always amazed at how we’ve done so much, made so many good links and given a wonderful energy to so many people.

And for those of you out there who are part of it — every last one of Exposure Leeds’ members is a true star in my eyes!

Before I start, let me state that I’m not a fan of the page turner. But my issue wasn’t about the use of the metaphor, rather the crazy concept of passing a pdf through a convertor script and expecting the reader to interact with two A4 pages reduced to the size of their monitor. If you plan to get someone to engage with your content — make it easy for them to access and read!

My initial statement would have been dangerous a few months ago — back then my work was in providing variations on the theme of the Flash-based pageturner. However, I’ve moved on, but I actually like the concept of using containers to manage chunks of well designed editorial content. And  the use of this visual device to indicate a movement from one portion of text to another has established itself over hundreds of years and, despite Microsoft’s patent, will probably be prevalent online for a few years to come.

Why?

That’s simple — people love print. Absolutely love it, and most people I come across would — everything else being equal — prefer to receive information direct to paper rather than screen. In fact I suspect if web content could be delivered directly and instantaneously to paper then my job role would be very different.

However, the truth is that we cannot send content to sheets of paper and so we rely on electronic devices to display this rapidly updating information and, because of this, content providers aim to make this as simple a transition as possible.

Of course a web purist will say that the visual page turn isn’t appropriate online. But, what on earth is wrong with transitional metaphors? Change is always a lot easier to deal with when it has some home comforts!