A Shoot in Japan

After a four month pause of modeling, I couldn’t ask for anything better than to have a shoot in JAPAN!

His name is David and he has exceptional work.  Here’s a link to his website, definitely worth checking out:(http://www.talsit.org/).

If you take a look at his photos of both people and nature, they are beautifully done and well thought through.  He is phenomenal with the lighting and how to make the best use of it, as all photographers should be.  I’ve learned a great technique to find the lighting as well!  Even with the limited sunlight we had, he’s really good at finding an area, a safe area – I should add, to take these amazing photographs.  And I mean safe for the fact that our shoot was in an area where if you slip, you could potentially plummet to your death— I could be over exaggerating a bit, but … pretty much.

For someone who takes photographs as a hobby rather than a career says something about the 40% of the photographers I’ve already worked with.  It amazes me that this is just a hobby for him.  He takes his work very seriously and he pays close attention to each detail.  He is very good at what he does.  Photography, that is.

I enjoyed working with him.  He’s got a quirky personality and is very knowledgeable about the field he is in for work as well as in the world.  He has a soft voice, so whenever he said something, I ended up saying, “What?” … what? what? what? Man, I was probably annoying him with my, “I’m sorry I cannot hear you, wha?” I apologize, David, if you are reading this! He’s a Spanish-Australian mix living in Japan who doesn’t fluently speak the language, which is intriguing to me. How do you live in another county and unable to communicate with the people around you?  I was only there for 10 days and was going nuts.  Someday when I return, I better learn the basics…. at least I can semi-read.  I guess people do it and it’s fairly simple. Props to them! Lucky for him that he is married to a Japanese woman too!

For our shoot, we went to Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto.  It was pretty far from where Kevin and I were staying and we got a little lost along the way, but able to meet up with David at a train stop.  The train systems are amazing, by the way.  It’s very simple if you know where you’re going.  There are a lot of different lines and a couple transfers from one place to the next, especially if you’re coming from different parts of the city.  It was a small temple, but with beautiful architecture and spacious scenery.

Our final destination was a secluded area, probably because it’s quite a bit of a hike to get to. So. many. stairs.  It must have been the part of the temple for people to come and go peacefully to pray.  We did get a couple of angry stares like, what are you doing here? you shouldn’t be taking pictures up here kind of stares, but mostly, ooo, what’s going on here, interesting stares.  The locals of Japan: “Sumimasen (excuse me, pardon me). *bow* Gomenasai (sorry).”  Me: *bow, smile* 没问题(no problem)、没关系(it’s okay) shoot, did I just talk to a Japanese person in Mandarin?  I guess taking 4 years of Mandarin, something’s bound to happen when someone speaks to you in another language….

Overall, it was a good shoot.  We worked great together, everything went smoothly.  Rain was starting to fall slowly towards the end, which I was slowly starting to feel sick as well. But, I’ve always learned to press on, which I did until we called it a day and I really started feeling it during the train ride back.  Minus the evening, it was a fun and adventurous day.

Here are some of my favorite photos that we took:

rebeccanne

p.s. After creating and deleting, creating and deleting, I finally had the guts to create a modeling Facebook page and not delete it!  If you have Facebook, I encourage you to “like” it, that is, if you happen to really like it! 🙂
https://www.facebook.com/rebeccanneuy