Right now I’m sipping lemon chu-hi at Bill’s Bar and going through my photos from the Thai dance exhibition Nam participated in last week. Pictured here is a Japanese girl who is quite skilled and actually teaches others classical Thai dance. The dance group is comprised of both Japanese and Thai girls, and they perform all around Japan.
I am waiting for the new Nikon D70 DSLR to be released and push down the price of the Canon Digital Rebel so I can buy a digicam that works better in low-light situations than my Coolpix 4500. I love the 4500 but it sucks for night/low-light pics. The Canon apparently does quite well. Hell, if the D70 looks good I might eventually go for that… I don’t know if I can wait for the next generation cameras to come out. After all, the waiting game tends to get tedious for me and with each product cycle my patience wears a bit thinner.
I like photography a lot, but I often wonder if I should spend more time on technique. I think I could really get into it but I worry that it would affect the fun I have now. It’s rewarding to be in the middle of learning the basics and still produce results I’m satisfied with, say once every 200 shots or so. Digital cameras are so liberating for me. I erase at least half of the photos I take before they ever leave the camera, and I don’t think anything of it. If I were using film, I know I wouldn’t take a lot of the shots I experiment with now because of cost.
Why is this so important to me at 3AM? Everyone else here in the bar is wasted or borderline comatose… Time to go now that the police running the sobriety checkpoints have packed up for the night.
Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
you’ve got the “it” factor for photography in your genes and I imagine you’ll continue to enjoy playing with the new stuff. Your great-grandfather’s images still live on at the JA Museum and in many family albums. I just saw some great old photos with his fancy mat work and artfully inscribed “T. Utsushigawa” at my elder cousin’s home, Akira and Martha Suzuki. Great stuff and if you think playing with digital mode is artful, imagine those wonderful old still cameras on tripods, the film very heavy and expensive…so only a perfectionist/artiste like your great-grandfather could create such perfect lighting and compositions! Keep on keeping on!