It is always with a mixture of melancholy and spring anticipation that I watch the pink succumb to the wind and yet the Sakura have all but dropped. We never did get to throw our own Hanami party this year but I thought I would share a few images from a short evening I spent last week in Ueno park prior to its soggy rain out. Regardless of the rain I had a wonderful evening and I would like to say thank you to everyone who invited me onto their tarps, fed me and kept the beer and sake flowing.
In Pursuit of Mastery
This is professional violinist Shinn Hirayama, a 22-year veteran of the instrument. Believe me when I tell you this photograph sounds beautiful. Hirayama san and I met prior to the holidays, in-between his seasonal concerts of Beethoven’s 9th. We shot his new headshots and a dry run of an upcoming portrait series with his orchestra. Headshots do not normally sweep you up in the moment; yet, as we explored and allowed Shinn to place the bow on the strings something manifested.
My entire vacation this manifestation nagged at me. What felt so special about that shoot? Returning to the images I found standard headshots on white and a start for our project but nothing justifying this need to revisit the film. Then I began examining the images of him playing and his expressions. I tried to remember the silence of the studio, punctuated only by his living notes born of wood, strings, horsehair, and rosin.
Once he began to play he changed. You could see it in every frame. His eyes closed, his expression softened and he drifted into the music. Every time I broke the spell to direct movement or placement I felt I was intruding, stepping in for a dance during the slow jam. I would finish a set, lower my camera and watch; it was a lovely gift to listen to him in the throws of mastery. I think what struck me was his seamless bridge to the connection of his art. It was instantaneous. The bow bounced, his eyes closed and he was there in the middle of creation.
What does that level of mastery look like in my life? I believe that’s the question I was asking myself while on holiday. How do I transcribe that grace into my craft? I know it is poor form to conclude with unanswered questions, but for now this is how I am starting the year. Time to do the work in 2012.
Crushing Xmas
My family is here in Koh Tao, Thailand for Christmas vacation and while the trip is fundamentally very Thai, those of you who have traveled here will know what that means, we are having a wonderful time together and for Christmas Eve I was even able to get away and shoot a Muay Thai match. I have always wanted to shoot one of these bouts and while I would have preferred to shoot with more lighting then a couple fluorescent bulbs, definitely with strobe and in the heart of Bangkok it was still great fun to hear the Yuletide roar of the local crowd go up in response to the dull thud of foot and knee crushing abs and ribs well into the night.
Up again
Finally got up in the plane again for a dusk flight over Tokyo only to discover the winter air is a true trade off between crisp visibility and turbulence. If anyone with experience using gyros or other suggestions for shooting a city at night from above I would love hear from you before I give this another shot. Here are a few images that were not soft, though the noise at 1600 on the 5D Mark II is a bit disappointing.
7,000,000,000
While the world marveled last week on its new population of 7 billion people I decided I needed a way to illustrate our new vastness. This quoted text from Wikipedia seemed like a good place to start.
"The Greater Tokyo Area is a large metropolitan area in Kantō region, Japan, consisting of most of the prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Tokyo (at the center). A 2007 UN estimate puts the population at 35,676,000,[4] " (The current number 37,730,064.) "making it the world's most populous metropolitan area by far. It covers an area of approximately 13,500 km² (5,200 mi²),[5] giving it a population density of 2,642 person/km² - which is somewhat more than twice the population density of Bangladesh. It is the second largest single metropolitan area in the world in terms of built-up or urban function landmass at 7,800 km² (3,000 mi²).[6]"
Japan is approximately the size of California in land mass but still manages #10 on the most populated countries list and Tokyo's population is close to the entire population of the Roman Empire (AD 300-400). It will be interesting to watch how the world adapts to the new space, agricultural, and industrial challenges of a planet hosting this level of human diaspora. The following aerials attempt to illustrate the sheer sprawl that is greater Tokyo. From the air I could view the population horizon in a manner impossible from the tight-knit street level of the city. I scheduled a future dawn flight, even though my pilot informed me the city has yet to return to its full force illumination in the wake of last years tsunami and subsequent power shortages. For now this hazy mid-day flight was an amazing glimpse at the worlds largest city and possible a sign of things to come.
Creepily checking out peoples ears.
I was on an assignment yesterday for Business Week shooting one of their four-country Man-on-the-Street gigs. The job used four photographers in Cairo, London, Tokyo, and New York to shoot street profiles of people rapt in Apple Inc. auditory bliss. The article addresses Apple products on a global scale, but we were simply tasked with capturing their headphones. These types of assignments are never particularly exciting from the production or even the creation standpoint but often fascinating studies in street behavior.
It's an examination of how rarely people truly help an elderly person cross an intersection, of how infrequently people look up or behind them but exist while powering forward. It's a closer look at how the masses avoid collisions with atom like precision without ever lifting their gaze from mobile devices. A ceaseless stream of fashionistas, titans of commerce, and student dreamers blended through encounters, machinations, and circumstance all standing on the corner together for a fleeting moment waiting for the little green lit walking man.
I spent my afternoon on Shibuya corner attempting, in that moment, to pry into public rhythmic cocoons for permission to document their personal soundtrack. It’s funny how things come full circle. My first forays into the art of the Man-on-the-Street shoot date back to high school. It was my regular gig for the Fort Worth Star Telegram to stand in front of Borders (R.I.P) every Thursday and ask the lifestyle editors’ question of the week. There were days we stood for hours attempting to get the right five people to fill the mandated demographic. You begin to sense those who will brush past you, ignore you, glare at you, or at last acquiesce to your request. It was a regular job because no staffer wanted it but I think on many levels it was an early study in puncturing people’s personal bubble in a public space. Now, years later dehydrated, sunburned and feeling incredibly creepy staring into peoples’ ears (ensuring their headphones were an apple product) I found myself smiling at the circling nature of it all.
I know I do it too. I drive those headphones in and crank the beats that make crossing the city seem like some bass driven cinematic action sequence. The right song epitomizes a part of town or memory seeped section of it. It all fits into my über personal urban soundtrack. However, next time you stand at a busy intersection analyze the crowd around you with headphones in mind. I estimated 3 of 5 people yesterday were plugged in. It was amusing watching them fiddled for their next song, constantly switching between phones and iPods or simply lip synching while waiting. It made actually connecting with people so much more difficult than those days in front of the bookstore. Cell phones are ubiquitous for more than a decade now but the sheer quantity of hanging cable beards was fascinating. The longer I watched the more I identified with the etiquette of it all: With a friend - take off and wrap up cables after leaving the train station. Waiting for someone - just one ear bud in. See approaching photographer quickly insert ear buds and look down.
People get so engrossed in that audible insulation that when I approached I actually made 3 different people standing in a huge group in the middle of the city in the middle of the day jump as if I pounced on them in a dark alley. I never wear music when I shoot because it disconnects me from my surroundings but yesterday I felt on some level the disconnection was made for me. Entire crowds were walking through the city staring at the fourth wall and living in a concert between their ears. Looking into the oncoming crowd I was ignored if not invisible and after breaking their personal cocoons examined as an oddity at best. It was a strange day behind the camera.
Singapore are you mad at me?
Our last three shoots in Singapore – rainouts! Not the soft romantic mist rain but tropical fist size droplets of never-ending infantry-esk waves of persistence. We made two of the shoots work with umbrellas or bending to what was given but yesterday’s shoot in the East Coast Park was just not going to manifest. Sitting there in the car watching the curtain of rain drawn in front of the incoming tankers off shore with models in the backseat holding pattern we kept grasping at straws and praying for a post storm god light or hell even an escalation to tornado. We could at least manufacture some dramatic narrative with that. Ultimately we received the gift of 18% flat grey uninspired light, which while great for a meter reading is not exactly the mood we hoped to convey with a family day at the beach. Needless to say with tails tucked we called the shoot. Singapore, I am starting to take this all a bit personal.
Tomorrow is an early morning Yoga shoot in front of a Black and White (local slang for the historical British military officer housing here in Singapore) and if it rains we will turn it into a breathy, sweaty, sexy, rainy, grass-covered down dog. Come on Singapore bring it on. There is still a lot on the agenda for this trip but for now I am just drying the gear and clothing on our down day.
I want to say thank you so much to our dear friends, models, and assistant who showed up to help us attempt yesterday morning. Looking forward to rescheduling.
Why do you climb?
I rediscovered my love of climbing in Japan. I stopped going to the gym in lieu of heading into the mountains or to one of the climbing gyms close to home. Our time in Japan is not the windfall of shooting opportunity I still wake up daily hoping to take advantage of but rather a long slew of battles competing for time with my wife’s military/nursing schedule and life with two kids sans help. The crag and the gyms are sanctuaries for us to play as a family, release tension, hide from the falling dollar in a very expensive city or to simply meditate as we work a problem to the sound of the river running through the Mitake valley. The more we head to the wall the more amazing people we have befriended here in Japan.
My stock producer is a climbing friend, my daughter had her third birthday at our local bouldering gym, and I look forward to seeing some of the same faces at my night sessions where someone will inevitably be chanting "GANBA!" for my efforts. Surprisingly, this is the community we have become apart of in Japan and the one I will miss the most when we leave in a year.
To keep these faces and these memories I decided to start a portrait project paired with quotes on why they climb. Last week my good friend and climbing partner Eddie packed up the car with the gear and my kids and headed to Rock Master Yuji Hirayama’s BaseCamp gym for the first day of shooting. What followed was a great start to a project I don’t even fully have mapped out in my mind. From the World Champion himself to little girls my daughter climbs with it was an amazing day to get everyone chalked up and in front of the lens. I have several unfinished ideas where I want to go from here but thought I would share some images here and take suggestions.