New shit hit tha fan

2009 had it's up and down for sure. Major economical draw backs on the global market proved to be for me a real eye opener (one that I knew about but never had to adress in this head-on manner) and I decided that I had to do something drastic on the D.I.Y side of -mwcp-. To be able to do your own stuff within photography as a proffessional is not always the case for most in this field. Clients with no budget and respect for the labor sure had a great time but in the long run this is a path straight to the abyss for the induvidual photographer. If you want to do what you love, what you are good at and you want to do it for a long time you have to find the way arond the bullshit. In my case I am on a mission to get my photography on its feet again. No more begging and getting let down at last minutes by unresponsive and careless money makers. I will be working on this new project for some time now and hopefully come back with better, stronger and more powerful material within 2010. I will be based out of both Thailand and Japan for some time (in Singapore at this moment...monsoon rain!) and am looking forward to being able to go even more solo that ever (how more solo can a One-man-show get!?). Lets see if I can turn this one into something fruitful and creative, do or die!

Stayed tuned, thanks for your support during the years. I'll be back!


Reach me here : nishitaka@hotmail.com

The Dream

The preferred way to travel in these parts of the world. 80's comfort still thrives up here. Fast, fun and funky.





















I'm on my way from Chang Mai up to Mae Sai in a minute. Will try to track down the same hidden villages I visited last year as well as a possible visa-run into Myanmar over the day. The roads up here are great and not to busy. The mountains and forests are breathtaking and the further from the beaten track you go the better it gets. I've been shooting elephants up in the forests here for the last couple of years, a private project. And I will try some new areas not mentioned on the map this time as well. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. But always in the end of the day you have seen and experienced something out of the ordinary. Always worth it!

Winter In Siam

Sitting in the heart of South East Asias "City Of Angles" at the moment i.e. Bangkok. The train up to Changmai is leaving in a couple of hours. A second class "fan sleeper" ticket in my pocket.

Contact me via E-mail  - nishitaka@hotmail.com

Back in Tokyo December 18.

Sawadi Krap

Roof Shooter

Beginning Of the End

The Ghetto in the former red light district of Shinjuku, in the heart of Tokyo. Today was the beginning of the end and it's sad to see this landmark for Tokyo underground disappear and give way to something more settled. Well, time goes and shit happens, it was with style the ship sank. The cops was late so the about 100 people on the streets and surrounding rooftops got to see 30 minutes live music under a clear blue sky.

Tuned Out

For The Unwanted

Another Halloween, the day of the year the unwanted claim his right to be unwanted.

Last night at The Ghetto in central Tokyo.

OGRE JAPAN / BETRAYER (2009 P.V)

Here it is, the promotion video I got the pleasure to film and direct. Had about 90 minutes of raw materials to work with and to try to squeeze into the 3 minutes song. The key words I was given by the band was Power, Blood, Evil and Hell, hence the Betrayer. I was lucky to be able to have Mao Satan (the "creature" in the video) to help us out as well as engineer Ren who spent many weekends putting it together file-vice. There is another slightly different version out there (this is the Directors cut) on the YouTube, if you have any comments of the two, please let me know. Eager to hear what you have to say about this project. The band OGRE JAPAN have become good friends during the process and it's with joy I'm looking forward to see what the future will hold for this D.I.Y one-of-a-kind die hard true to the bone real metal band keeping up the underground spirit of Tokyo.

Went out for a ride, G9 around the neck. October is the best month to be here in Tokyo. Getting cool and you can start to breath again. Best way to see the city and the surrounding cities is by bike, no doubt! I landed in Japan for the first time about 15 years ago and it was October. This impact on my memory makes fall/winter the time of the year when Japan is what Japan is about. Always liked it here in Fall and Winter.

My Dad

These lines are the first of a longer introduction of a future book project. The book project focuses on my love to Asia and how photography has made for me Asia the most interesting, attractive and never ending place on the earth to live and how without knowing it at the time, my father inspired me to take up a camera and see, not just to look and to hear, not just listen.




"My Father had a camera. We sat at dark winter evenings in front of 35mm slides projected on a white roll curtain screen and watched ourselves in swim suits on rocky shores, in hay at some farm stay, always with sunburned faces. These moments were for me magical and I clearly remember those unexposed rolls of film standing there in the cupboard over the sink waiting to be processed. Sometimes it took weeks or even months (that's what it felt like anyways) for my father to get it done and come home with an envelope of prints. He wasn’t really a great photographer my father but he did have the spirit to document our first years, mine and my sisters. He told me once that he got this Contax 35 mm camera with 2 lenses as payment for a car he repaired, he once got a fishing rod and roll as payment. He wasn’t a very good business man my father.

I did never have the chance to talk about photography with him but I have come to understand that he was like me really drawn to images. The bookshelves back home in the house were filled with books, most of them cheap hardcover novels, also an encyclopedia as well as lots of books with photographs in them. I don’t think my father really knew any famous photographers name or what was hot on the photo marker at the time, but the books there in the bookshelf was of a photographic nature and I used to love to flip through them all. Why did I never ask him about his camera, why did I never ask him to teach how to use it? It was like I couldn’t connect the camera with those magical moments on dark winter evenings in front of warm grass, cold lemonade and bright nights with the rest of the family.

I guess most with families with kids fight a lot, we fought a lot, my sisters, and me and gave our mother a daily headache. But in the images my father showed us everything was always happy and uplifting. He chose to filter out the dark and negative and maybe for him just capture the dream he must have had when he decided to have a family on his own. My parents were young when they had us and from pretty modest families themselves so I can’t really blame them for being naïve, sticking to that dream we could see was real, at least in my father’s images. A reminder to us that moments were sunny, bright and loving as well."......





Miss you man!

Shrine Shooting

Was shooting this trio yesterday afternoon at a local shrine. The afternoon light was not bad at all for portrait photography. These images will be part of a music project originated in the U.S. later this winter. Stay tuned.

Let it out!

Promotion Video

There is a first for everything...right! I was working with metal maniacs OGRE JAPAN and computer guru "Ren" to finally sit down to this master piece of metal video. The first time for me to work in video format and to do a continuous "frame" compare to still photography (my preferred medium) was actually a bigger challenge that I imagined. But after many sit-downs at the digital mixer-board I think we got what could be described as a pretty fair picture of the song "Betrayer". There will be a "world" premiere on Friday at The Ghetto here in Tokyo. Then we upload to YouTube after that.









Flyer design by Mookie

Saying of the day

"Happiness is to get lei'd in Hawaii"

Sticker seen on young girls suitcase on the train back from the airport.

New Scotland

Back from couple of weeks in Nova Scotia, East Canada. New project coming up, more about this later on when the timing is spot on. Good to be back in Tokyo. It's when you have been away for the city you find out that there is more to it than your eyes can see. I will be on the road soon again though, back to Thailand to continue on my elephant photo story I started a couple of years ago.

The Step

This image











Svenskar

Sag pa blog raknaren att det var manga "klickar" fran Sverige. Har inte varit i Sverige pa manga ar men det lilla jag sett fran foto-sverige ser alltid javligt bra ut. Skriv garna en komentar.

Halsa


M

Alba Nuadh

On the road again, back in mid October.

If urgent, mail me here : nishitaka@hotmail.com

Sendai - Keeping Up The Spirit

Bozozoku Chilling




Metal teens thrashing

MIKURA JIMA - a very special place

The true locals...


















Who could have known? I saw this island from a ferry passing by while on another job a couple of years ago and knew that I had to come back here to see more for myself. Mikurajima belongs to Tokyo city but couldn't be further away. This little rock in the middle of the ocean has on the western side a less steep wall of rock and is the only place you can access it. On all other sides there is a 400 meter vertical wall dropping straight down into the rough seas below. I had a certain mental image of what I would encounter but everything from the totally fearless dolphins to the thick rainforest like vegetation covering all made me realize this is an untouched jewel amongst the islands in the pacific just west of mainland Japan. Being a hard to reach protected national park with few locals up to this date has made flora and fauna flourish in a way we seldom see in this place of the world. It took me a days of waiting due to a passing by typhoon and half of the time I spent on the island was either in heavy fog, rain or storm winds...or all together. But I managed to shoot the native wild dolphins, climb over landslide damaged roads to reach the closed areas of this green and blue wind beaten oasis.
The small powerful Canon G9 in an underwater housing worked (use what you have, right) but recycling time was compared to the speed the dolphins swam by just too slow most of times. Totally fearless they torpedoed right by from all directions leaving me a feeling of just being a slow and clumsy human. For land photography I mounted 2 5D's with a 16-35mm and 24-70mm respectively and was shooting with this on all the time, wouldn't want to risk to get any of that salt filled air inside the housing. I have been abused my 2 5D's in the worst environments now for many years now and it always surprise me that they just keep on going. This story will be in one of Japans major airline magazines next year so please stay tuned.