Images from Japan II

This shot I planned for weeks, maybe even months, before I got there. This is the famous crossing in Shibuya. Every four minutes around three or four thousand people scuttle across under the neon glare and the sound of the adverts blasting out from speakers. It's an astonishing sight. It was one of the first things I encountered when I first visited Japan in the 1990s, the full Bladerunner experience, and it's only got more intense since. I shot with a wide lens, and set my flash to manual, maybe half power, with a narrow beam (105mm), aperture at f/8 with a shutter speed of 1/30 - that was what I needed to get the neon and the TV screens burned in. The idea was to throw a pool of light into this scene, and pick out a small crowd within the mass. It was such fun. I'd like to try it again, but this time with a tight grid spot or snoot on the flash, and see if I can pick out a smaller selection, maybe even one face. But it's a random process, you just have to fire and hope for the best. One thing about shooting with a wide lens (it's a Sigma 10-20) is distortion. You can correct it afterwards, and I worked up a corrected version, but I like the hallucinogenic quality the wonky angles give the image. That lens is a real favourite.

As for the location, I went there earlier in the day to get the rhythm of the place and to scope out suitable vantage points, and I came back after dark to get the full neon/huge telly into the shot. I had to clamber up onto a junction box to get the height, and a lot of people were staring at me. It's not the kind of thing one does in this famously law-abiding society, but westerners seem to get away with it because it's expected we'll behave badly. After I'd been up there a few minutes, I looked down and saw that small crowd of snappers had gathered around my feet, maybe waiting their turn to get up on the box, maybe just thinking that I looked like I knew what I was doing (!) and so it must be good place to shoot from.

Anyway, I was really pleased with the results. I could have chosen any number of shots to print, but in the end this one had the most elements I liked, including the hands holding a camera in the bottom right of the frame.