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.