How Japan Helped Shape My Photographic Eye | A Journey Through Japanese Photography

Earlier this year I visited this location in Yamaguchi with some friends for the first time. Cherry blossoms everywhere, you know, people having fun. It was a great scene. But there's no landmark here, there's no famous crossing, there's no huge torii gate, there's only locals here. And yet the second that I parked the car and set foot into the scene I was immediately rushed with dozens of different potential compositions I could make all around the park. Here's one shot literally meters away from the car, a couple framed in cherry blossoms, and another with a different group sitting down. I'll show you more a little bit later on in the video but the point here is that this video illustrates something that took me 10 years of shooting japan to understand and that is that photography is pattern recognition and once you truly realize the extent to what that means everything about the way that you shoot changes even if you never step foot in japan especially if you've never stepped foot in japan learning pattern recognition is The craft of photography and it shows that you really care about how and why things are made rather than just settling for the next easy photograph. My friends over at Musicbed feel the same way, but for all of you, every piece of music in my videos comes from them, Including the track that you're hearing right now. Why? Because they care. And in the crazy world of AI we're in at the minute, everyone is selling out, but Musicbed only works with real, authentic artists. Real people making real music, with new songs landing every single week. Not curated for stock, not AI-generated filler, and honestly, that matters for the craft side as well. You know, the music under a video like this does the same job negative space does in a frame. It is the thing that you don't notice that makes everything else work. So if you're looking for a music licensing source that actually looks after filmmakers, brands, and agencies who care about craft, then hit the link in the description below Sign up and support real artists who support your videos. Thank you so much to Musicbed for sponsoring this video. Now back to visual patterns. So a quick refresher, especially if you're newer to photography. So I teach a concept called visual patterns and every single photograph you've ever loved is built out of it. Visual language is the structure that makes images feel resolved and intentional rather than accidental. Those two images I just showed you were what's called frames. The cherry blossoms are used to encapsulate your view and focus your attention in on the subject. This one is mirroring using the water to create another version of the subject that you're trying to accentuate. And then there is minimalism and leading lines and negative space and so on and so forth. I made a whole series about this many years ago but the crux of it is that these patterns are how you build photographs into something that people actually understand. And I will leave a link to that below if you want to watch the whole playlist. But for this video, all you need to know is that there are elements which are like letters, right? You put some of those elements together and now they have meaning. They form words. They have a pattern. And when you put enough of them together, you have compositions or sentences. And now they mean far more than the sum of their parts. Okay, now that you know all about that, here is the thing about Japan. Everyone tells you that Japan is a photographer's paradise because there's so much to shoot. You could literally shoot here for a lifetime and never run out of things to see. But I'd actually argue the opposite. And it's not because there's endless novelty. The novelty wears out. Japan is a photographer's paradise because it repeats. Hundreds of thousands of vending machines on every corner, the same tight alleyways in every city from Sapporo to Naha, the same contrast of old and new in buildings, similar looking torii gates, the lone solemn figure crossing the same band of light. The subjects change, but the sentences don't. And if photography is pattern recognition, then a country that repeats its patterns over and over again stops giving you variety and instead gives you reps. Japan isn't endless, it just repeats. That is the true gift. And honestly, this took me a long time to see. I didn't see any of this when I first started coming to the country. And on my first trip to Japan, most of it was like... any other persons. Everything was chaos. Everything was fighting for my attention. Everything, everywhere, all at once. You know, the sights, the sounds, the density, the light. And I photographed everything, but I saw nothing. You know, these are some of the photos from that trip. And look, some of them are fine. Most of them are what happens when you point a camera blindly at chaos and you spray and pray. And for a long time, I thought that was how you do it. You know, I thought the problem was effort and effort alone. Shoot more, work harder, walk further. But that wasn't it at all. Instead, it was a budget problem. And I mean that almost literally. Here's my thinking that changed my mental model on this. Every single time you walk into a scene, you have a limited amount of attention. Say it's $10 worth, right? You get $10 and that's it. And at first, everything costs you at least a dollar. That neon light, that's a dollar. The salary man, that's another dollar. His friends, a couple more. You know, fiddling around with your settings in the camera, there goes another dollar or two. Sooner or later you're going to spend your full ten dollars and once that happens you're completely blind to everything else. You literally don't have the bandwidth to see anything else. And that was what happened on my first trip. You know, sensory overload, things flying everywhere, my attention going bankrupt every five minutes of trying to cope with a scene let alone trying to make an intentional photograph. But here's what pattern recognition does. When you've seen a pattern a thousand times, noticing it costs less and less and less the more and more and more you see it, it gets a discount. It starts costing 75 cents, 50 cents, 25 cents. And sooner or later, you walk into a scene and recognize patterns that you've seen before and sometimes they're free. They don't cost you anything to analyze and you just do it unconsciously. So pay attention to what you're paying attention to. Rather than asking, what do I shoot here, which will cost you your full $10 worth of attention, ask, what have I seen here before? And then go and shoot that because that's discounted. That frees up your budget. Now in practice, there are only really two states you can be in when you arrive at a scene. A scene whose patterns you've never shot and a scene whose patterns you know. And notice I said patterns, not places. Because that park in Yamaguchi that I mentioned at the start of the video? Never been there in my life. Brand new place. And it cost me absolutely nothing. Because I've paid for cherry blossoms framing people a thousand times before. The place was new but the patterns weren't. A scene whose patterns I've never shot still costs me the full price of my attention, don't get me wrong, even now after 10 years in Japan. That will never change and honestly I hope that it never does. But a scene whose patterns that I actually know, that is a completely different thing altogether. And these days I can just research a location and just from the map, from the geography alone, I can already arrive at a scene holding five to 10 different compositions in my head and knowing what I'm going to take before I even get there. I know what I like, I know my style, and I can already envision what my image is going to look like way before I set foot on the scene. But of course, sometimes things don't work out. Nature is what nature does. And sometimes the light just doesn't cooperate. Or the scene was better in my head than it turned out in reality. And that's okay. You know, I keep those misses and I learn from them. Now, the point isn't that I'm good at guessing. The point isn't that I pick locations that I'm familiar with. The point is that visual patterns have cost. And every time you pay that cost, the price drops. And if you pay it enough times, they end up costing you next to nothing anywhere in the world, which then raises the obvious question, right? When the patterns are free, what do you do with the leftover money? What do you do with the rest of your attention? Well, this is my favorite part of the entire shoot. The leftover budget is where my favorite images happen. Because when you recognize a scene and it only costs you two dollars, you've got eight dollars left to spend on the stuff that turns an ordinary photo into an interesting one. Experimenting with a different angle, waiting the extra 30 seconds for the right light or the right figure to walk Trying the shot you don't already know works. Recognition doesn't make your photos look the same. Recognition is what buys you the attention to make them different. And it makes you fast. You know, here is a scene of a location that I've wanted to go to for a very, very long time. But when I got there, the snow was so high that I thought we were going to get snowed in and even driving was super difficult. It was obviously super cold and super windy. And there was actually someone living there who was about to plow all the snow and look very pissed off that we were blocking the way. But here six shots rattled off in the space of a minute and I haven't regretted any of those shots or wished that I had wanted more. They're exactly what I wanted from a place that I've seen in my mind many times over. Now back to the scene. Nothing super special about this location, except for the cherry blossoms of course, but here are all of the shots that I saw in my mind's eye while I was driving and trying to look for parking. This one framed with the couple. This one is a pattern that I love shooting which is pretty much what I'm going to be like when I grow old you know camera in hand photographing the best looking cherry blossom that I can find. This one yet another frame shot except this time the person has a lot more contrast and is easier to see. This one is a classic pattern that I always want to shoot, you know any mirrors with cherry blossoms is always a good one to me, but this particular shot doesn't work very well because there's no separation. This one was a tender moment that I wish was framed but it is what it is, and then this one which is similar to the other framed one but doesn't work as much because it's too busy and there are too many cars in the background making the subjects blend in. Anyway, Seven shots. Five of them are keepers. All envisaged before I even stepped out of the car. That's not talent and it's definitely not luck. Although you do have to be a little bit lucky for timing the cherry blossoms. But no, it is all reps man. And this is the part that I really want you to remember. None of this started in Japan. It is not because of Japan that I can shoot this way. It started in Sydney when I was awful at photography. For the first six months when I started, I went out after work every single evening for hours and hours, just walking the streets, walking the same boring, nothing special streets that everyone else walks. I wasn't finding interesting things to shoot because there wasn't any. I was learning how to create something interesting with the skills that I had. And that's the essence right there. You know, I read all the time people in my comments complaining about how their city is boring, but flip the script. It's not, I need to find something interesting to shoot. It's, I will create something interesting with the skills that I have. Japan only sped this process up. You know, the pattern density is absurd and I'm not going to pretend like it's not, but Japan is not necessary. You can do this anywhere. Repetition is the requirement. Your city repeats patterns too. You know, the same corners, the same light at the same hour, the same patterns are waiting to get cheaper for you just need to cash in the reps in order to get the discount. Your boring city is the training ground. So if you're looking to get better at photography, this is the advice that I always give. Show me your first 5,000 images. Show me your first 50,000 images in your first year. Show me your first 500,000 images in your first five years. It's not about going to Japan and making something special. That trip is going to cost you $10 of your attention every single time you turn a corner. It's about the boring streets where you learn the patterns that gives you the discount that makes Japan photographs something that you will treasure forever because you paid attention to them in the moment and they were prepaid when you learned the pattern. All right, I hope that was at least a little bit thought-provoking and useful. And thank you again to Musicbed for sponsoring this video and I hope you enjoyed the music. Now, get out there and make something that matters. Peace.