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.

In a similar way to Okinawan Bull Wrestling, fishing with cormorants is something that I have mixed feelings about. Is it a happy symbiotic relationship between man and bird , or simply exploitation? Taking photos was tricky, not using a flash meant that I had to use Provia 400 for the dusk shots of the fishermen and then Provia 400 pushed to 1600 once it was dark. As I had expected most of the shots were junk (slow shutter speeds and difficult to focus), but there were a few images that worked well and captured the overall feel of my night on the river.

Arashiyama is a district of western Kyoto, that I had never been to before. There is a  bamboo grove, several temples including Tenryuji and in the summer is the location of Ukai – cormorant fishing. Here’s a couple of shots of bamboo…

Ryoanji is a Zen temple in northwest Kyoto famous for its dry landscape rock garden. The last time I  visited and took photos was nearly nine years ago. This meant the old images I had of Ryoanji were all shot on 35mm film, and simply not of high enough quality. On this trip, it felt like a good time to return to the temple and see what the big old Pentax could do. One interesting point for photographers is that at Ryoanji you are not allowed to use tripods, and just to make sure, staff ask you to leave your tripods with them at the entrance.  I found however that by placing the camera on the raised wooden flooring I was still able to frame the image and use a slow enough shutter speed for it to be in focus front to back.

Cosplay (costume roleplay) events in Japan always remind me of Halloween. Although some participants dress as their favorite characters from movies or TV, the most common choice seems to be to imitate idols from the world of manga (comics). While wandering around Kyoto I saw a cosplay event taking place at the new Kyoto International Manga Museum. Everyone was really friendly  (far more so than at Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon), and I spent a couple of hours taking photos. It was a cloudy day and a little darker than I would have liked, but it meant that I had good even lighting for the shots.

On August 16th the Daimonji festival took place in Kyoto. Groups of bonfires are lit at six mountainside locations around the city. When burning the bonfires create giant kanji (chinese symbols) that can be seen from miles around. The most famous is Daimonji, appropriately the symbol means big. To give some understanding of scale, the horizontal stroke is 80 meters long. The day before the event I scouted out the area looking for a good viewpoint. I was amazingly lucky when I managed to get myself invited to a rooftop for the event so I could get a clear view free of wiring or buildings. Thank you so much to the staff at camera shop Korakudo! On the night, I got a clear shot of the Daimonji, and it was great to hang out with everyone on the rooftop. Unfortunately the conditions were not exactly how I would have liked them. What I had hoped for was a crystal clear sky which would have retained a blue/purple tint  while providing a nice silhouette of the …

A few years back I wrote the article The Best of Kyoto.  On my latest trip I wanted to get some more images of city, including Daimonji Festival, Arashiyama Ukai (fishing with cormorants), Nijo Castle and Ryoan-ji Temple. First, however, I’ll show a couple of photos from Tozando a Japanese martial arts equipment supplier based in Kyoto. Particularly photogenic was this suit of samurai armor, (the Akanuri Sugakedou Yoroi Set), on sale at ¥350,000. However, my favorite item in the store was a katana & wakizashi set that had been made in the 18th Century by Sadayuki of the Owari region (¥2,800,000). You can check out the store online at http://www.tozandoshop.com