Over the weekend, I had the chance to witness something I thought only happened in movies. It was an event ripe with photographic opportunities, but I chose not to shoot a single frame, leaving my camera in the bag.

Why? Because some events are too private to be documented, and some experiences are meant only for those who are present. Because some moments are meant to be lived, not made to be captured. Because sometimes, those gaps between frames do not belong to you, even if they were shared with you.

Inside those gaps, brilliance can still arise, even if they are not of your art. I live to photograph, I do not photograph to live.

And no, I couldn’t tell you what happened even if you asked me, because I promised to keep those gaps for ourselves.

1. Life is Short, and Therefore I Will
2. A New Room
3. Future Past Tense

No related posts.

As a photographer, it’s both inspiring and maddening to see a beautiful photograph and wonder just how the photographer did it. I mean, there are photographs that are really good, with excellent composition and beautiful light. And then there are photos that transcend the really good; you don’t just appreciate them with your eyes alone but respond to them with your heart. Those are the photographs I wanted to learn how to take.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single book that talked about that. There were a lot of books about composition, technique and gear – which were great, but nothing about how to distill moments of feeling into a single frame.

Until I found Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision by David duChemin. To be honest, I’ve wanted to write about this book for the longest time, but I kept putting it off because I have no idea how to summarize a book which I’ve learned so much from. In the end, I think the best way for me to put it is to put it bluntly; this book changed my game.

It helped me move up from taking photos like these of Japan in 2008:

To photos like these in 2009:

I’m not sure if the difference is as obvious to you, but it sure is to me. Without having read Within the Frame just before I left for Japan in 2009, I couldn’t have improved as much as I did. I’m pretty sure of that, as I purposely set out to apply what I’d learned from the book.

duChemin is probably best known now as the “gear is good, vision is better” guy, and he lays out that idea in Within the Frame. It doesn’t read so much as a “how to shoot” book as a “how to think about what you shoot” book. How do you shoot what moves you? How do you use universal themes and conflict to tell a story within a frame? How do you shoot people, places and cultures in ways that are specifically your own?

In short, Within the Frame is a gem. I didn’t just learn how to tell stories within a frame – to make a photograph not of something but about something – but also how to sharpen, express and chase a personal photographic vision. Highly recommended.

Note: David duChemin has two sequels to Within the Frame; VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography, which I’m reading now, and Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, which was just published and I’m eagerly waiting for. He also runs an insightful blog and an ebook store Craft & Vision, which sells great photography ebooks at very low prices.

1. The 3 Decluttering Boxes

I pushed myself to take better photos while I was in Tokyo recently; shooting in the rain while my friends were enjoying hot coffee indoors, bruising my feet walking round the streets and overcoming my fears to shoot complete strangers. I wanted to do better than I did in 2008, where I shot mostly buildings on a Tadao Ando pilgrimage. I wanted to capture a sense of life in Tokyo, and infuse my photos with a sense of story. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but I learned a few lessons from the experience. So if you will, here are lessons learned from the adventures of a hobbyist photographer.

1. Wear Comfortable Shoes

Sounds almost too obvious to be ridiculous, but I paid for this lesson dearly with bruised feet that hurt for days after I returned home. See, I like to pack light, and I had to dress for a formal occasion during the work/pleasure trip, so smart me decided to pack a single pair of dress shoes and walk up and down Tokyo in it. Not only did it make walking hell after a couple of days, it impeded my movement and my ability to shoot, and I had to rest more as well. Never again!

2. Be Brave/Shameless

Tokyo was the first time I tried street photography, and it was hard for me to overcome the fear/shyness barrier to shooting complete strangers, unasked, on the streets. A photographer I spoke to told me I just had to get over it, and this is something I still need to work on.

3. Camera in Hand is Best

Having a camera in the bag is good. Camera slung around shoulder, even better. Having the camera in hand, hood off, switched on, is best. There were moments that went by so fast, from when I saw them to when I had the camera lined up to my eye, that they would have been impossible to capture if I hadn’t been ready. The shot below would have been impossible if the camera wasn’t in my hands, from the moment I spotted the car I had 3 seconds to shoot it before it sped off. I missed so many shots with my camera tucked away that I pretty much carried it in my hands the last couple of days. Was it troublesome? You bet. And it made shopping impossible. But it made all the difference.

4. Don’t Look at the LCD Previews

A couple of pros I met at separate occasions both advised me not to look at previews after shooting. At first I was skeptical, but I learned it really works. To paraphrase them; it’s better to keep watching the scene than to watch TV, as you don’t want to give up on a scene until you get home.

Secondly, you got what you got. The shot you took isn’t going to change after you looked at it, if you got it, you got it, if you didn’t, you didn’t. The only exception, I was told, was during tricky lighting situations to check for exposure. Otherwise, turn previews off and leave the Play button alone.

Last reason, and I discovered this for myself, it’s real easy for me to get discouraged. If I preview my shots immediately after and see that they suck, I spiral into a horrible depression where the evil voice in my head starts going “see? I told you that you were just a hack, you’ll never amount to anything, why does your work suck so much etc. etc. etc.” This was a really bad funk to get into, especially seeing how I needed all the positivity I could muster to do better later in the day.

So, leave the TV off, focus on shooting. Valuable lesson learned.

5. Shoot Alone

I can’t get into the zone while shooting with other people. I’ve tried, and I always become a cranky, horrible human being whenever I do. I need the freedom to do what I need to do, whether it’s jumping up onto railings, lying on the ground or spending 30 minutes just waiting, without having to think about other people. I need to be quiet to focus and get into the scene, and I can’t do that with other people hanging around.

6. Go Where the Story Is

I was wondering about how to shoot photos that tell stories before I left for Japan, and during my shooting trip I realized the obvious: if you want to shoot something interesting, go where the interesting things are happening.

7. Lenses are Opportunities

A big duh, but before Tokyo I really hadn’t shot with anything much more than a 18-55mm lens. The Canon EOS 7D I borrowed came with a kit 18-135mm lens, which opened up an entire new world for me; I realized I could shoot so much more with that extra reach. I was lucky enough to borrow a couple of telephoto lenses in Tokyo, and those opened up even more shooting opportunities.

8. Luck is Preparation meets Opportunity

I had lots of lucky shots – like the one below, where the birds flew by just as I aimed my camera towards the dome. And yet, as much as I can’t discount the element of luck in those shots…I realized I’d played as much a part as luck had. I’d walked to that spot, with the intention of capturing a good photograph, done the training for years prior to learn how to use a camera and principles of composition, switched it on, lined it to my eye, and looked. If I hadn’t prepared, the opportunity would have simply come…and gone. It’s good to be lucky, it’s essential to be lucky and prepared.

9. Let it Go

I missed so many more shots than I got. Either the camera was in the bag, some setting was off, or the moment went by too quick. I had to learn to just let it go, and tell myself to focus not on what I missed, but to focus on what I could still shoot next.

10. 1 in 36

This was something I heard more than a decade ago from my brother’s photography teacher. Back then, we shot in film with rolls of 36, and he told my brother that if he could get just 1 good shot in 36, he could consider himself a good photographer.

I didn’t get it. Isn’t it the mark of a pro that every shot he took would be a great one? I only started to understand when I had the chance to look through a highly regarded photographer’s photos, straight off a shoot. I was really surprised to see a lot of them sucked. But the ones that were good, were really good.

I shot over 6000 photos during my 6-day trip, and out of those 6000 there are some that I’m happy with. Out of these, there’s a handful that I’m very happy with, and these are the only ones that I need. Whenever I got discouraged with crappy results in the field, I just kept telling myself “1 in 36, 1 in 36″ to keep me going. Most of my pictures might suck, but I really only need a few to be good.

1. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 1
2. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 2
3. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 3

Concluding Parts 1, 2, 3 & 4 of a recent photographic trip to Tokyo, Japan.

I visited the 21_21 Design Sight museum this morning, and was lucky to catch The Outline, an exhibit about the work of product designer Naoto Fukasawa. I’m a fan of his work and really enjoyed looking at the flowing, organic shapes of his designs.

I love Tadao Ando‘s architecture as well, and looking at the 21_21 museum he designed, I thought it would be a lovely thing to shoot in the evening light, but alas I was there at noon and nothing worked. It wasn’t all wasted though, as I managed to catch these autumn leaves behind the museum, my first in Tokyo. Even though I visited Tokyo in late November and everyone was telling me how beautiful the autumn leaves were going to be, I hardly saw any (the Japanese were also telling me how unusual it was raining so often – global warming, I’m looking at you).

I then walked over to the National Art Center. I didn’t want to spend too much time shooting it as I wanted to move away from shooting architecture this time round, but I enjoyed playing with how its shape interacted with the beautifully blue sky that day.

These birds flew by just as I lined up the camera to shoot the Art Center dome. There was no way to see it coming, there was only time to shoot one frame – it’s just one of those happy coincidences where I was in the right place at the right time.

Finally, autumn leaves! It was a beautiful scene, and I wanted to convey the slow, contemplative feel of a lazy afternoon in the warm sun, cool breeze blowing, light lunch and good book in hand. It felt like it would be really rude to disturb the people enjoying themselves, so I only took a few shots here. Ah, the Japanese are so lucky to have beautiful places like this.

I then took a slow, lazy walk through Aoyama, getting lost. I found myself wandering into Aoyama cemetery, which I admit, hardly sounds like the best tourist spot, but it was so quiet and peaceful there.

I’m not sure, but it looked to me like the Japanese have a different attitude towards cemeteries than Singaporeans do; I saw a family playing ball inside, somebody reading, and people jogging around the periphery. Instead of looking gloomy and abandoned, it looked clean and even beautiful. I know I had an interesting time looking through at some of the very old tombs – it was almost like walking through a history museum.

As I looked at graves of people who have been dead for decades, some for centuries, I tried to picture them as they once were; real, living people, who were brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, husbands and wives. I felt a profound sense of gratitude wash over me, for being alive to witness this scene while they weren’t, knowing that one day, I too will join them. Although it would have been interesting to photograph, I felt like it would have been deeply disrespectful, so I left it at that. It’s going to sound strange of me, but this accidental visit to a Japanese graveyard was one of the highlights of this trip for me.

My feet were killing me after all that walking (seriously, they would be hurting days after I returned home), and as I came out of Aoyama cemetery I saw a little cafe called Chocolat Chic tucked away near the exit. It was a great find, the coffee was rich and the dessert was delicious. This is what I love about letting yourself get lost while traveling, if you’re lucky you stumble upon great places you would have otherwise never found. The composition in this photo isn’t anything to shout about and the light is all wrong, but unlike 90% of the other shots I took, I didn’t take this for anyone else, with interesting leading lines and clear center of interests. I took it for me, to help remind me someday that one beautiful autumn afternoon, I enjoyed a delicious snack, lost in the suburbs of Tokyo.

I wanted to capture what an autumn late afternoon felt like on the streets of Tokyo before I left. I’m not sure if I got it with this one, but I like how the light catches the man on the right just as he’s glancing across at the two ladies on the left, and the long shadows that stretch across the pavement cast by the setting sun.

The shot that became a favorite amongst my friends almost never happened. I touch-downed near evening, hands full of luggage, stepped off the plane and this view greeted me. I was exhausted by then, and just snapped a customary shot using my iPhone. I wanted to go off there and then – but something made me dig out the Canon 7D from my luggage and snap another couple of photos. Lucky for me.

And that concludes it. I shot around 6000 photos over 6 days of travel, and these few are amongst my favorites. I hope you enjoyed looking through them as much as I did shooting them.

1. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 1
2. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 2
3. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 4

Continuing Parts 1, 2 & 3 of a recent photographic trip to Tokyo, Japan.

A friend brought me to Meiji Shrine, where I was very lucky to witness a traditional Japanese wedding. I was also very lucky to borrow her lens, the EXIF data says this shot was taken at 300mm and I could never have pulled it off with the 7D kit lens. Japanese weddings seemed to be very somber; they were posing very seriously for their group photograph and I had to wait just to see the bride smile.

Another stroke of luck; I happened to be in Japan right in time for the ’7-5-3′ Festival, something I’d never even heard of before. My friend explained to me that it was a annual festival where parents will dress up their 3 and 7 year-old girls, and 3 and 5 year-old boys, in traditional kimono and bring them to the shrines for prayers, which meant lots of cute pictures.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of light in Tokyo. I thought we were a little late at getting to the shrine, this was shot at around 11 in the morning, and whereas in Singapore everything would have looked hard and harsh by that time, in Tokyo the light was still nicely soft and diffused.

After visiting Meiji Shrine, we walked out onto the streets of Shibuya where I took this shot. I have no idea what she was doing with a giant queen of hearts cut-out, but she gamely posed for me. This is what I love about shooting in Tokyo, you never know what you’re going to find just walking around.

This is the shot my friend jokingly called the ‘Japan tourism picture’. I was really lucky to be in the right place at the right time for this one, and doubly lucky to have a friend lend me his telephoto lens just then, otherwise I would have missed this.

To round the day off, my friend brought me to a cat cafe where I met the saddest cat in the world. The cat cafe was two floors full of cats, you just pay for your time and you can play with them as much as you want. Photography’s allowed, which made me delirious with joy. My friend says it’s a popular idea in Tokyo, as many apartments don’t allow people to keep pets, and I saw a couple of cat-lovers who looked like they were really enjoying themselves (the cats too).

1. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 1
2. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 5
3. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 2

Continuing from Parts 1 & 2 of my recent photographic trip to Tokyo, Japan, where I continue my exploration of street photography.

After grabbing a quick breakfast at the convenience store right next to this junction, I hung around while waiting for a call. I noticed the light was lovely that morning, took out my camera and started shooting. There’s something I like about this one. Makes me think of my own solitary early morning commutes to work, feeling like the weight of the day ahead was already upon me even before I’d started.

This was shot at another crossroads, about half an hour later at Omotesando Street. I spotted this beautiful mother and daughter pair from across the road and snapped a few photos, feeling again that mixture of excitement at getting a good shot and nervousness at disturbing someone else’s privacy.

This was a happy accident. I probably didn’t think too much of the shot at the time, and only saw this result later back at home. It’s not the best of compositions, but I love how the overexposed sky elevates the star from a Christmas ornament to something altogether mystical.

Omotesando Street, if you’re not familiar with it, is one of the glitzier shopping areas in Tokyo, with high-end boutiques and beautiful shopping centers. Its stores are filled with exquisite items, which are usually pretty high-priced, and its streets are filled with beautiful people – I saw some of the best dressed people I’ve ever seen here.

When I saw this dapper gentleman I just had to take a picture. Later on, I realized this was part of what made taking pictures on the streets of Tokyo so much fun; there are so many well-dressed people there that you’d be hard-pressed not to snap an interesting photograph.

Talking about fashionable, even the motorbikes in Tokyo are full of style. I realized this while watching the traffic go by at a crossroad (yes, lots of crossroads for me that morning). Check out this girl’s funky red ride! She was looking pretty good herself, but I prefer this shot where you really get to focus on the details of her bike.

I was waiting for a friend at this crossroads for a good 40 minutes or so – turns out we were both waiting at the wrong place for each other. But I discovered something while waiting for those 40 minutes with my camera in my hands; lots of fascinating subjects pass by at crossroads. It brings to mind something a travel photographer said to me once: Sometimes you just park yourself at a street corner and shoot everything interesting that passes by.

This is one of my favorite photos from the trip. It encapsulates for me what Henri Cartier-Bresson describes as “…the harmony between subject and form that leads each one of those elements to its maximum of expression and vigor.” I love how the colors work in the lead subject; how the blacks complement the browns while contrasting with the purple and yellow. I love the purposeful stance he’s in as he looks out of the frame. I love how he’s positioned perfectly along the rule of thirds, while the background contains a nice, full crowd just out of focus on the periphery.

I realize that this looks like a perfectly ordinary photo to any viewer, but I suppose it’s one of those photos that have more personal meaning to the photographer than the viewer. I feel as if everything I worked for that morning, shooting on street corners, standing up, sitting down, climbing up, squatting down, twisting and turning, shooting complete strangers, came together in this little chance moment of time that might have missed my eye completely and been lost forever, if not for the instance-stopping frame of my camera.

I love that about photography; the ability to capture meaning and memory in a way which wouldn’t have been possible with the mind and eye alone.

1. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 1
2. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 2
3. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 4

Continuing from Part 1 of my recent photographic trip to Tokyo, Japan.

The one day we went out of the city was the one day it kept drizzling. Instead of being disappointed though, I wondered if I could take advantage of the rainy weather. Sure enough, I realized that there were many beautiful colors and patterns in the umbrellas that people were carrying. In this shot, I love how the color of the umbrella complements the color of the temple in the background.

There was a price to shooting in the rain though. I realized very soon that I couldn’t shoot holding both an umbrella and a Canon 7D DSLR at the same time, so I abandoned the umbrella and walked around in the drizzle, tucking the camera into my jacket whenever I wasn’t shooting. Although it got really cold with the rain and the wind (around 10 degrees Celsius), I was more worried about the rain getting onto my DSLR than getting onto me! The Canon people assured me that the 7D was weather-proof, but I kept wiping raindrops off as fast as I could.

This is one of my favorite shots taken during the trip. I was wandering around the temple grounds when I noticed a spot where a few white birds were hanging around. I parked myself there and waited for them to start flying around, which they were quite happy to do every once in a while.

I wanted to achieve two things with these shots; one was to try and photograph an illustration of an idea, instead of simply photographing a pretty picture. Since my subject was birds, I tried to illustrate the idea of freedom with this series. The second thing I wanted to do was to catch the birds against the small temple in the background, so it could provide context to the picture.

I shot a lot of photos at this spot, and I could have happily stayed there for the rest of the day just shooting away, trying to catch as many decisive moments as I could. But unfortunately I only had 15 minutes before I had to leave. I got quite a few usable shots in those 15 minutes though, and I remain convinced that I wouldn’t have gotten as many without the quick 8 frames per second ability of the Canon EOS 7D and a fast Sandisk Extreme Pro CF card, both of which I was lucky to get on loan. It really made me understand how important good gear is when you need to place high demands on it.

Most of the shots I took in Japan the previous year were of inanimate objects; architecture, interiors and still life. I wanted to challenge myself to shoot photos with more emotion and life this time round, as well as a more human sense of Japan, so I started to shoot street candids. This was something I’d never done before I went on this trip, so it was a real stretch for me!

We were waiting for the bus and I noticed the pedestrian crossing ahead would release streams of people our way every once in a while, so I stood right in the middle of the street, pointed my camera forward and started shooting away. I was part nervous, afraid someone would scream at me, part embarrassed, not sure if I was being rude, and part excited, because I was getting some really good shots. This was one happy accident that happened (see what I mean by those umbrellas?).

I’m not sure if it’s a cultural thing, but I noticed that Japanese people weren’t as adverse to having their photos taken by random photographers as Singaporeans, in fact some of them were quite game and posed for my camera. Maybe looking like a tourist helped! In either case, I realized that the ins and outs of being a street photographer was something I was only beginning to learn.

This is another shot I particularly like, and I have to thank Paul-Henri Cahier for the inspiration behind it. Before I saw his beautiful impressionistic photographs of the F1 night races, I thought all photographs had to be picture-perfect sharp. The moment I saw this car at the crossing, I knew I wanted to try my hand at making the same effect.

By then, I’d missed too many shots and learned it was much better to travel with the camera in my hands, even if it was cumbersome and made me look like a snap-happy tourist. Which was lucky for me, because I probably had 3 to 5 seconds from the moment I saw this car to when it drove away.

That’s it for Part 2. Look for Part 3 coming soon, where I really start exploring street photography in the streets of Tokyo, Japan.

1. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 1
2. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 5
3. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 3