Like Daido

I don't really blow out the contrast in my pictures (I don't feel it's really conducive to the ones-and-zeroes "perfection" of digital cameras), but after watching Daido Moriyama's documentary Near Equal (or, Stray Dog of Tokyo) on YouTube I thought I'd have a go.

I tried it on this all-black clad lady set against a white background and I think it turned out pretty neat. This is also one of the first "let me try and shoot people from the hip like a stealthy street photographer and not look like a perv" shots I ever tried.

What I like about Moriyama's style is that he takes photos of pretty much anything, finding beauty and interest in subjects most people would ignore completely, and he did most of it with a simple Ricoh compact film camera. He also doesn't mind snapshots either. Some photographers don't like the word (I sometimes have that internal struggle of trying to justify snapping away like a maniac) but he revels in snapshots.

It also makes me wish I had a camera that wasn't so bulky and imposing, yet still feature-full. Something like a Fuji X20. The silver and black one is nice... yeah... yeah... yeah...



Here's a nice video by Tate Modern about Daido Moriyama, a bit like a concise version of the full Near Equal documentary. And it's brought up-to-date as he's now shooting in digital (but still with a simple compact camera).