dealing with vagaries

Raindrops on a bullet train window don’t stick around too long.

Underwater. On land.

In the color space that only tungsten and neon in combination can produce.

Check out this tragically beautiful documentary (“The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief”) about the host/hostess clubs of Osaka.

Kyoto. Forest.

It’s funny to think the things we photograph actually happen. Discrete slices of time, forever distilled.

There’s nothing like watching two morbidly obese men in fancy diapers slap each other around. Er, I mean sumo wrestle. The slo-mo replays are not to be missed – it’s like you can see every chunk of stew they ever ate, every bowl of noodles they couldn’t refuse, rippling across their thighs like mini-tsunamis. I’d take it over baseball everyday of the week and twice on Sunday!

The wheels hit the tarmac this morning in Singapore after 24 hours from NYC via Frankfurt. My traveling companies were the ever-reliable Ambien, a couple of drinks, baseball cap pulled over the eyes and two deeply lodged earplugs.

Out here shooting television commercials for Singapore Airlines, one in town here, the other in Japan. A la Bill Murray/Lost in Translation – “For relaxing times, make it Suntory time…”

I’m a pretty big fan of patterns— not too concerned about their context…more interested in their mystery.

Photo by Jason Nicholls/National Geographic Channel International

I love the fact that Nat Geo has used this pic as one of the main images to promote the show…Pete and I decked out in faux punk gear on our way to an underground concert in Beijing…I’m not sure which of our wigs is the more nauseating…but how about them belt buckles?

and if that picture is not punishment enough…

…here’s a link to one of the interviews we did while promoting the show last month in Kuala Lumpur, complete with a special shout-out to the government agents who folded our clothes as they booted us out of Gansu province…

I’m in a hotel room in N’djamena, Chad– watching a made for TV rip-off of The Karate Kid on a fuzzy screen. “Mr. Miyagi” looks either Indonesian or maybe Filipino in this version— and the faux “Karate Kid” is a blond-haired dude who just finished up a musical montage by, believe it or not, running down a beach. With characteristically perfect timing, the “Karate Kid’s” archrival, as all bad guys do, rolled down the window of his limo in order to watch said “Karate Kid” training on the beach. Hollywood is indeed a thing of beauty. And by the way, the whole thing is dubbed into French. Ouch.

It took me over 27 hours to go from Hong Kong to central Africa. Last week’s promo tour for “Somewhere in China” was fantastic, and completely hectic. I flew out of Hong Kong— known for it’s neon, and landed in Chad after dark, a place almost completely devoid of light. Flying in to central Africa was disorienting. None of the recognizable signs of a city– just faint embers and dying filaments eking out their existence on the black earth below.

The city neon to the city noir.