In the course of a recent project, Tai-wan Panorama collected numerous photographs of children from different eras. The photos ran the gamut from black and white to color, and from innocent blankness of expression to greater vivacity. But the more I looked, the more something felt wrong. You can almost see breezes blow and dust stir in the clear, sharp lighting of the old black-and-white photos. The children keep their faces and bodies under rigid control, but this very restraint suffuses them with a tightly coiled energy that seems on the verge of bursting forth.

We searched long and hard for similar color photos to set beside the black-and-white ones. Dissatisfied with the results, we had trouble putting our finger on the problem. After all, the subject matter was the same, and cameras, photographic techniques, and film-development technologies have all improved over the years. Why then have color photos lost the "aura" so clearly present in black-and-white photos? Are color photos too recent to have acquired the aesthetically pleasing patina of age? Has the taking of photographs simply become so routine that neither photographers nor their subjects approach the act with any kind of reverence? Or have our airs, our expressions, and even our frames of mind changed to such a degree that the "aura" has been lost?

When I asked people well versed in photography, I was told that it was probably a little of each of those things, but that the key lay in basic differences between black-and-white and color photography. That's the reason many photographers still insist on working in black and white. Their work might not match the old photos, but nonetheless has a texture that far surpasses that of contemporary color photos.

In other words, the medium matters. When it changes, the information and feelings we receive change as well.

Now that publishers are turning books into e-books, developers are working on "value-added" applications to persuade consumers that there's a point to switching from a simple NT$300 paperback to a text that requires an expensive device to read. Some of these applications allow readers to click on and learn more about anything they find interesting in a text. Others enable an e-reader to read texts aloud, so you can continue with your book even after your eyes get tired. Still others enable full text searches, or append expert commentary to the end of texts.

As with color photos, this reading medium is flashy. But it's the relationships between readers and books, readers and authors, and readers and characters that give rise to empathy, identification, and the exchange of ideas. Given that the reading experience is an amalgam of these relationships, does changing one element change the character of the whole?

For those of us who work in the magazine industry, the picture is still more complicated.

In our effort to resist the rising tide of free online content, we have, like the film industry, had to turn to visual spectacle. Today's magazines emphasize a concept familiar to filmmakers: the primacy of image over word. Magazines are now built around visually powerful large images and informative small images. They must explain concepts, both tangible and abstract, with diagrams. They have to provide greater access to their content so users can read it at their convenience. And they must begin thinking about marketing and "value-added" applications in the early stages of content planning and development.

But how do you convey the impact of large, powerful print images on the three-inch screen of a smartphone or the six-inch screen of an e-reader? How do you keep small images intelligible when they are shrunk still further? You have to consider how content will appear in different formats early on in the layout process.

In an age of constant change, in which we can exhaust ourselves just trying to keep track of new trends, shouldn't we instead be spending our energies on the production of tangible content? Why must we let the format drive our creative sensibilities?

We may have left the era of black-and-white photography far behind us, but the color era isn't necessarily more appealing. In the midst of change, we don't always have the freedom to act as we wish. I just hope that we never lose the ability to see the world with clear eyes.