TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography

Bape is a Japanese fashion brand designed by Tomoaki “Nigo” Nagao. It has quickly become a cult brand with both Japanese youth and American hip-hop stars including Pharrell and Jay-Z.

I think you can only buy the clothing at official Bape stores. I got this T-shirt at the Fukuoka branch a couple of years ago. It looks much better on my friend Chris than it does on me. Maybe I need to hit the gym.

Bape Clothing, Japan

On of the highlights of the Kamakura Festival is the horseback archery that takes place within the grounds of Hachimangu Shrine.

Three square wooden targets are placed at intervals along a tree-lined path. A rider gallops along the path and tries to hit all three targets. The event is free for people who are happy to stand on the target side of the path. If you  book in advance you can buy tickets on the opposite side of the path with a better view of both rider and target. A small area was roped off for press photographers next to each of the three targets. I was stood in the third of these areas.

I love my Pentax 67II, but at an event like this  (high speed sports photography), I was somewhat jealous of the lady next to me using a Canon 5D Mark II. As I have to manually wind the film on and manually focus the camera I could take a single frame for each of the dozen or so archers as they fired at the third target. I prefocused the camera on the target, set the exposure for the shafts of sunlight coming through the trees, then pressed the shutter as the rider galloped through one of the shafts of sunlight.

Just one shot came out with the horse and rider in clear focus.

Yabusame / Horseback Archery at Kamakura

However, in another frame the horse and rider are blurred, but I caught the exact moment when the arrow passed through the target.

Yabusame / Horseback Archery at Kamakura

Images were shot with Provia 100F pushed to 400.

Last week I flew up to Tokyo for a meeting at the Pentax Forum, and to photograph the Hachimangu Shrine festival in Kamakura. (Still scanning the images of the festival will put them up in a later blog.)

While I was in the capital, I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some youth fashion images. I love to photograph the ornate traditional costumes worn at festivals, but for Tokyo I wanted something a little more up to date.

After spending a morning in Shibuya stopping fashionably dressed strangers and asking to take their photograph, I switched tack and met up with Tokyo based model AJ.  The whole shoot with AJ lasted less than 30 minutes. Used natural light and a single silver reflector and came away with a few images I’m really pleased with.

Shibuya Photo Shoot with AJ

Shibuya Photo Shoot with AJ