Sunday, January 7, 2007

Lux Japan: City #6 Yokohama


We arrived in Yokohama via train, then train again, then met my close friend Noe’s best bud from RISD undergrad and fellow photographer Dai, and caught another train to a train to his studio where we were to stay for the night. Dai had nicely set up a spot for us and I repacked my equipment before we took off to the brainstormed locations.

The first Harbor view was lacking so we walked up the hill a bit to the old foreigner’s cemetery my Japanese literature and film Professor friend Steve Clark’s had suggested we try. It was a nice option. First we tried to see if I could sneak over the low lying wall and set up on a little sort of landing that looked out over the skyline but I got caught by a worker! Dai asked the worker nicely if it would be alright if I photographed and reflective of the politeness of the culture, Gayle and I were sure it was a green light only to find out that the graveyard worker actually said a firm no. Oh well. I walked down along the wall of the cemetery until the path curved down some steps and found another great option. I set up the view over and sort of in a set of bushes, carefully cropping out all headstones and crosses (as not to bring a whole other dialogue into the work), and let the shot run for an hour. In the meantime Dai was off scouting another nearby option, a park where we ended up doing a second shot. It was also set up on a hill where, once I had scaled the back fence I could set up my camera on a ledge. It was not quite as interesting visually as the first but it felt good to get at least one more shot in as an option. Of course there were vending machines nearby so we snacked and drank our vended drinks and talked about RISD related experiences through the fence. We made our way back to the studio and checked out what turned out to be an amazing family run organic restaurant where Dai ordered us all kinds of interesting options including whale skin, and pigs feet (yeah whoa, different) and some AMAZING sashimi and other more familiar and seriously good foods! We stayed up late talking to Dai’s nice studio mates(Dai as the translator) and crashed on an air mattress around 2am amazed we had finished Lux:Japan rounds!!

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