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.

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 …

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.