Tokyo Street Workshop - A Work In Progress - The Passionate Photographer

I’m here in Japan and the workshop is going better than we could have anticipated. Our special guest, one of Japan’s foremost book publishers Ms. Kimi Himeno has published 160 photo books in her career thus far and has provided participants (and us) with tremendous insight and illumination during her critiques of student work—we have learned so much from her in a very brief time.

The idea of this advanced workshop was to have students find a theme or story idea and work toward creating a set of pictures by the end of the week. This is not an easy thing to do but once you come up with your idea (which often evolves and changes) it provides them with direction and purpose on the chaotic streets of Tokyo.

To our surprise each one of the seven participants found an idea that is personal to them and are pursuing their stories.

Because of the powerful performance of Ms. Kimi we hope to have her back for our next workshop in the spring. It will also be an advanced workshop with a portfolio review for acceptance to keep the level of work high. We are also going to add Kyoto to the itinerary, taking the bullet train down for a few days of shooting and meeting Ms. Kimi for critique and lecture in her home town. The workshop will end back in Tokyo. (We hope to announce it soon, if interested drop me an email or make mention in the comments).

At the end of our workshop we will do a slideshow and a book for participants. Here now is a glimpse at their street stories, a work in progress after only a couple of days of shooting!

Don Dillon

Looking at youth culture.