Oh, the Joys of Film

I've been shooting with all sorts of film lately. I'm talking about stills, not the single roll of movie film (super 8mm) I recently shot.

On the old blog, I had an interview with one of Japan's preeminent bondage photographers, Sugiura Norio. When I asked him why he'd switched from film to digital, he explained that digital was so much easier than film. At the time I hadn't begun shooting film so the profundity of his comment was lost on me.

Not anymore.

A Visit to Ubu

I came out of my self-imposed exile the other night and went over to Ubu, an SM bar located in the Kabukicho district of Shinjuku. I went with my good friend (and model par excellence), Rida, who was able to squeeze a little playtime into her hectic schedule.

Ubu is a small watering hole that manages to extract an impressive mass of form and function from its relatively constricted space.

Retro All the Way

Following up on a previous post, I've now shot some test footage on the Super 8 camera. I had it transferred to high def video. Transferring film footage to digital doesn't change the look of film. For me, digital is useful for distribution and archival. It just seems like a bad idea to acquire one's content digitally.

That means no digital stills cameras and no digital motion picture cameras. Analog all the way. 

Bakushi and Cameraman Asano Yuu

Thanks to the internet, Japanese photographers Sugiura Norio and Tanaka Kinichi have become widely known outside their home country. These are probably the most recognized names internationally (among SM photographers), but there have been many others who have made an impact in Japan yet remain relatively unknown abroad. One of these is Asano Yuu.