The Spark

Since I needed to get around fast and without hinderance over in Thailand I opt to get me a motorbike. Yamaha Spark is a liquid cooled 135cc, one of the fastest 4 stroke fuel injection bike out there. Tops 140 km/h on good days so not many beat me on this one when I feel like giving it a full throttle (which is always!). It gives me the freedom to roam and explore the backwaters of this part of the country i.e. south eastern. You'll be surprised what's out there if you just turn off the beaten track. I was warned by my Thai peers of "bandits" and "highway robbers" on darker stretches of the roads at night down here in this corner of the country, but so far nothing interesting. Guess a white dude on a brand new bike is just too good to be true and if encountered, better left alone. I did run over a large King Cobra (can get up to over 5m!) one day on the way back to town, was no way to steer away since I was doing about 100 km/h. I looked back in the rearview mirror and saw how it was trashing madly before disappearing into the forest and I felt pretty down for a long time harming and probably killing one of these deadly but gracious animals.

Cold

I was shooting the new drummer for OGRE JAPAN this evening. It was so cold on the streets of Tokyo that the batteries to my Speedlite 580EX just ceased to function after a couple of minutes. So this frame was on flash setting but without the needed juice. Check OGRE's webpage (link on the left) for what the used image looks like.
Just pushed up the fill light and blacks, I like the eyes.

A ride in the city

Ride a bike!

MacBook Pro

Yeah man, I've got me a new work horse yesterday at my local ashram i.e. Yodobashi Camera in West Shinjuku. MacBook Pro 15" 250GP, 2.53GHz and all that stuff. Seems to be working just right and perfect for what I will be doing from now on and where I will be for the rest of this year. Always nice when you can expand a bit and when the stuff you actually work with actually works. I am a non-Twitter, non-FaceBooker, non-MySpacer. I keep a planned distance to being contactable and connected to the whole mess and respect my private WWW interference. A humble Webpage with a side kicking blog works fine for me. So, another tool to haul around the world on the quest for things making sense and a better reason to be out there in the first place.

At The Gates - New fat 3 DVD package "The flames of the end"

Wow, came home and found a package from Sweden in the mailbox. I had the intense pleasure to meet and shoot the band (God fathers and innovators of the legendary Gothenburg Sound, this being a classic and pure Swedish melodic death Metal) when they played here in Tokyo May 2008. At The Gates is one of my absolute favorite metal bands of all times.

In the parcel was a brand new At The Gates DVD box set!!  This DVD box features 3 DVD's with "The story of the Gates", "Live material from the vaults" and "Live at Wacken 2008". What more could you possible ask for? I saw ATG at a small venue (Valvet) as a hammerheading youth in Gothenburg where I was going to school (Sailor school!) in the early 90's. I grew up more or less in an identical environment with metal as a key roll in the daily life. There wasn't much else that could top the power metal gave you in this a very much hopeless and out of reach suburban hell hole. There were maybe 5 people in the whole place but ATG kicked ass real hard, and now, 20 years later my photos of the same band is in the fat booklet including in the box set as well as materials in the actual documentary, all from the Tokyo gig. Wow, this really made my day. Thanks Anders, Adrian, Tomas, Martin, Jonas....and Alf of course, who's the one who hooked us up in the first place.

Check images from their gig (with Mayhem, Pig Destroyer, Dilllinger Escape Plan etc) in Tokyo 2008 HERE!

WINGSPAN - DECEMBER 2009 & FEBRUARY 2010

Me and writer Tony McNicol have worked on quite a few projects for ANA's (All Nippon Airline) inflight magazine "Wingspan"by now and this one was an interview on Alpinist/Environmentalist Ken Noguchi.

Check this link for more images from that interview HERE!

Last year I had the chance to head over to Nepal again for my second time walking the Mt. Everest trail solo back in 1997. First time I didn't really bring any proper camera equipment, this time I did and some of the images ended up in Wingspan as a 6 page photo essay. I also made a small photobook to raise some funds for various school and hospital projects in Nepal.

DECEMBER 2009 Issue

Check many more images of the stunningly "real" Himalaya solo project HERE!

Moments

Back in Japan. It proved to be a rather strange feeling to be back home after 4 months in a so different lifestyle and environment. Got to do some more work (never enough...) on my elephant project as well as some humble Street stuff from both Thailand and Singapore. Tokyo is colder that I have ever experienced due to being in a tropical South East asian summer with well over 36C as the norm. With grey weather greeting you from the airport and the stoic Tokyoites covered up in down-toned colored  coats, like going from highly saturated to overexposed monochrome.

Some street stuff I liked

An evening in Bankok's China town 

These guys are just the coolest

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