I was inspired to do a little homage to Ozu, a Japanese film director known for his low angles, in Houston yesterday evening. I first discovered Ozu through the documentary Tokyo-Ga, which I found on Netflix. Tokyo-Ga is a 1985 documentary film directed by Wim Wenders about filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. I used a fully open aperture of 1.4 on a 46mm lens (adjusted for sensor size), which caused sheets of focus. For me these images have something magical about them. Blurry foreground, then a narrow field of focus followed by a blurry background. Like the past (blurry), the present (sharp) and the future (blurry). Or like a thought lighting up a field of attention. I set the camera on the ground, guessed at the focus and captured the image, then viewed it on the camera’s screen. Sometimes I had to repeat the process a few times until the image was composed to my liking.
The last photo in the previous series inspired a little homage to Ozu, a Japanese film director, known for his low angles – he had to customize tripods to fit his needs. I first discovered Ozu through the documentary Tokyo-Ga, which I found on Netflix. Tokyo-Ga is a 1985 documentary film directed by Wim Wenders about filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. I used a fully open aperture of 1.4 on a 46mm lens (adjusted for sensor size), which caused a sheet of focus across the image. For me these images have something magical about them. Blurry foreground, then a narrow field of focus followed by a blurry background. Like the past (blurry), the present (sharp) and the future (blurry). Or like a thought lighting up a field of attention. I set the camera on the ground, guessed at the focus and captured the image, then viewed it on the camera’s screen. Sometimes I had to repeat the process a few times until the image was composed to my liking.
