• B&W,  Daily photo,  Osaka,  Winter

    One Shot Story: (Un)Available Coin Lockers at Shin Osaka Station

    コインロッカー, the coin-operated lockers, are fundamental to travel around Japan: this is the first lesson any first-timer to this Country should learn beforehand. – Initially publishd on 35mmc.com Almost ubiquitous, they are plentiful in train stations and airports and are a convenient way to get rid of your luggage for a few hours or days while you are on a stopover. Until a few years ago, finding an empty コインロッカー was not such a daunting task, even when there were large numbers of tourists. Now, however, things have changed for the worse.  Recently, on my way to Tokyo from Kyushu, I did —as the automatic PA system of the Shinkansen likes…

  • Colour,  Daily photo,  Downtown,  Nagasaki,  Osaka,  Photography,  Streets&Squares,  Thoughts,  Tokyo,  Travels,  Yokohama

    Why You Should Only Shoot in Your Backyard (or ‘The Art of Belonging’)

    What do these pictures have in common (apart from having been taken in various places in Japan)? No, they don’t have the same look and feel, composition or use of light, nor they convey a particular meaning. What they have in common is that they’re just dull and boring —meaningless, indeed. This picture of the Yokohama’s Chinatown Dragon is hardly different than the others available on the Internet. Initially published on 35mmc.com It shares a similar fate with this one, taken last Mid November in Osaka, and, as Google Lens mercylessly shows, with this one, shot in Omura, near Nagasaki. One can hardly say that this is a never-seen-before view of Tokyo’s Kyu-Shiba-rikyū Gardens, or of…

  • Colour,  Daily photo,  Exhibitions,  Osaka,  People,  Summer

    Silhouettes@Osaka Castle

    I shot this frame just before sunset, outside the grounds of Osaka Castle. I wasn’t chasing history or architecture—just silhouettes. The timing was right: the light low enough to flatten depth, strong enough to cast hard contours. The figures that passed in front of me weren’t posing, just walking—some slow, some hurried, all perfectly unaware of the geometry they were helping to construct. What worked here was the compression of scale. The castle, distant but looming, becomes almost secondary—a backdrop with less narrative weight than the humans slicing across the foreground. Their outlines are clean, their gestures distinct. A child’s exaggerated stride, a backpack slung low, a coat flaring out…