After spending five days of non stop scanning, I finally got to see what I actually shot the last months here in Japan. It's a very nice way to learn to see again and work differently.

To me, there is big difference in working on film. I am more conscious while I photograph and I spend less time behind the camera. I am a lot more open to my environment. I spend more time chatting to the people and walking through the streets, bars and places. At some point the picture actually finds me. I have been trained in digital Photography and in some ways it is a kind of brute force approach where you click away the shutter to get the right picture. In the worst cases you have these machine gun photographers. I try to avoid this as much as possible when I use a digital camera. However, you have always the urge to photograph because this could be a good picture. So you end up photographing more or less non stop for the sake of being on the safe side.

On film I can't do that. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, it's far to expensive. With each frame you can see the money running from you. Secondly, with the Mamiya 7 I have to wind the film for the next frame and there are anyways only 10 frames on one film. Changing film takes now about 1 minute if it is not to cold outside.

So I had to start to trust my guts more and let the pictures find me, instead of pushing to get the right picture. Another lesson is to just let go. Sometimes you get the right picture, sometimes you miss it. This is the beauty in working on a free project on a longer term. You have the chance to take off some pressure.

I hope that I will manage to get back to this mode of working even with a digital camera and on assignments.

Hope you enjoy the little set I put up here. Feel free to drop me an email If you have any suggestions or comments, especially the bad ass critics!