Kimono Girl

This is a very kind person I have known for years and years. She takes great pride in her kimono and is constantly studying to learn more about traditional Japanese clothing, of which I have a particular fondness. I am not very good at photographing models in Kimono though, so I did my best in directing her in this pose with my umbrella. Again, almost no make up and no styling at all. Can’t wait for January and it’s Coming of Age Ceremony where 20 year olds all over Japan dress up in traditional clothing to celebrate their entrance into adult society. It’s a fantastic sight.

A Grey Dress

My friend who is not only a fantastic friend, but also a talented freelance designer is starting up her own brand and needed some help to shoot some of her future designs. I picked this dress as it was the most dramatic!

Ever since I was a kid I have been drawn to still life paintings, dull and placid images with lots of details and very little drama or vitality. My first real love in photography was Sally Mann, not only for her beautiful pictures, but mostly because of the fact that it would take her hours to set up the camera, hours to print the photo. In a world where everyone seems to thrive on rush and the thrill of action I felt at home in her photography, and in other slow art forms, Dutch 17th century painters, monumental ancient Roman architecture, model railways, etc etc. For me, time was a virtue and in my paintings as well as in my photography I felt I could slow down or almost stop time.

But I am constantly striving towards a photography with more vitality, more life and more movement. My series of snaps from festivals are some of my serious attempts to make my photography more energetic, but I still end up with a series of snap shots frozen in time.

For this fashion shot, I asked the model to pose more freely, to move around, and I had a bare flash to add dramatic light and dark shadows. To liven even the darkness up I used a flash with the Orbis ring flash adapter as light modifier. In the end, we settled on this picture, a dramatic pose perhaps, but still a snap shot frozen in time. Like all my photography! Enjoy the dress!

Toy Soldier II

I keep myself sane and busy by doing some creative personal work every now and then. All this corporate stuff can drive one crazy if you let it. My little experiment with the quick and simple Toy Soldier photos led me to expand on that and so I shot these with a fantastic model who kindly took time of her busy schedule to work with me. Again, the clothes are my design but the binoculars are real antiques. Stay tuned for more Toy Soldier shots, I have recently finished Tank and Cavalry shots, next week I hope to get cracking with Navy and Air Force (if I can find good models for it). Enjoy!

Singing Robot Beauty

Last week I was able to spend some time at CEATEC, a huge IT and electronics industry exhibition at Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture next to Tokyo.

Several of the inventions and exhibitions from this event has already made headline news on several tech sites so I won’t go for the obvious “breaking news” handle on these things but instead try to give you another angle on them.

One of the coolest and most popular booths was the one run by Yamaha (The music soft- and hardware manufacturer). I was walking around, minding my own business when I suddenly hear the sweetest female singing one of my favorite songs of all time, Kyu Sakamoto’s “Miagete Goran, Yoru no hoshi o” (見上げてごらん夜の星を). Naturally I was drawn to the sound of the voice like a moth to flame, and the booth was packed with curious visitors in a matter of seconds. Inside was Miimu, a female robot designed by the AIST（The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, 産業技術総合研究所), singing with the voice of Yamaha’s new human voice synthetic singing software, Vocaloid. Absolutely amazing.

After the performance, the people at Yamaha and a representative of AIST (whom I think has more than a little resemblance to the robot itself) gave a short and interesting lecture on the technologies behind this collaboration.

How often do you get to indulge in three major loves at a single moment? Photography, the songs of Kyu Sakamoto and female robots? A perfect moment for me. And for once I can honestly say, it isn’t my camera taking blurry photos, that girl’s face is naturally blurred!

If you want to, you can listen to the robot’s song on this video here, and then I recommend you to go out and get more from the master singer Kyu Sakamoto himself, whom I consider to be one of the top three male singers of all time. No discussion. If you feel less than nostalgic you might want to check out the “duet” between Sakamoto and Ken Hirai where the younger (and still very much alive) singer Hirai does a performance with a recorded Sakamoto of the very same song. Fantastic.

Yamaha also showed a very nifty iPhone application that I will blog about later this week. Stay tuned!