Travel … UK, France, China, Japan …
Just returned from a five week trip to the UK, France, China and Japan. Ostensibly it was for recuperation and a respite from taking pics (with the bonus of a UK Christmas).
However, as a freelance, the reality is that far too many pic opportunities regularly rear their heads whilst travelling … and I always found myself lugging at least one camera (Nikon Df, Fuji XE-1, Fuji X100), sometimes more (in addition to the obvious iPhone for the odd Instagram). There is a persistent deep seated optimism that images made on a trip may make the odd dollar/quid somewhere down the track!
Occasionally hefting the kit paid dividends … (although how I failed to leave at least one camera or lens in any of bar, bistro, boulangerie, museum, gallery, palace, temple, hotel, hutong, noodle or teppanyaki restaurant is beyond me … )
Below I’ve posted just a few of my favourite images from the past weeks overseas.
Unfortunately, I left Japan on the day the big January Grand Sumo Tournament commenced at the National Sumo Hall in Ryogoku Tokyo, so I decided to get up very early the previous day and attempt to catch Sumo in last minute training at their ‘Beya’ or Sumo ‘stables’. The stables were very difficult to find … and when found even more difficult to gain access. (I now understand the Japanese ‘sign’ for ‘NO’!)
However, persistence paid off … and I made the top image below through a small glass window of Sumo going through their final training session.
What must be the most bizarre rail journey on the planet was the subject of the second image.
The weirdly named ‘Shanghai Pedestrian Transit Tunnel’ runs from the beautiful Bund under the Huangpu River to the new Pudong skyscraper district of Shanghai China. It isn’t a ‘pedestrian’ tunnel at all … passengers are transported under the river in little carriages and assaulted with a trippy light and sound show during the four minute journey. Money … and not just a few dollars … well spent! (in contrast the ferry across the river costs less than 35 cents!).
The image gives some sense of the insanity of the journey.
In the third image … there is no place better to read a book on a sunny but bloody cold winters day than on the pavement of the Avenue Victoria on the west bank of the Seine in Paris !
Images © Brian Cassey
Dubai, London and Budapest …
One of the absolute truths of being a working photographer is that you always appear to be … well … ‘working’. We don’t even qualify for a ‘busman’s holiday’ … definition … “a holiday where you do something similar to your usual work instead of having a rest from it”. It’s the ‘holiday’ part of the definition that doesn’t happen.
The fact of travelling is that the camera is always slung over your shoulder … and if it isn’t on your shoulder you WILL eventually regret it.
I’ve just returned from nearly a months travel to Dubai, the UK and Hungary where a camera rarely left my grasp … and where my time was also spent productively visiting photography work in galleries or meeting editors, printers or others involved in the industry.
In Dubai I worked on some ground work and initial photography for a new World class environmental venture to be opened later this year (my reason for travelling to the UAE … but more on that down the track). I also found a little time to make two contrasting images of daily life in the principality. Away from the glitz and opulence of downtime Dubai I spent early mornings among the thousands of wharfies and sailors who worked on the traditional wooden dhow trading boats that ply their goods around the Arabian Sea from their base at Dubai Creek. Near all were ‘foreigners’ from Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere. My fav pic was the portrait I made of old Hossain in front of the most beautiful weathered rosewood dhow hull. (top below).
In contrast was the image (also below) I made in a segregated ‘male only’ carriage on the Dubai Metro … one of just a handful of railway systems in the World that operate segregated carriages for women to address sexual harassment and unwanted contact .
London is proudly my heritage … and I spent some time fruitlessly digging around for reminders of the London of old. These two pics (3 and 4 below) came closest to the required nostalgia levels. Wandsworth Common on a cold foggy morn with the young football players from Broomwood FC brought back memories of my own youthful footballing days. The portrait subject is Lewisham street trader Alan Hogg. Born in Lewisham Hospital (as was I) Alan is the quintessential south east Londoner of old. He runs ‘Pitch 45’ at Lewisham High Street market selling, according to his licence, ‘fruit and vegetables or flowers or xmas novelties’. Lewisham has now long been a diverse multicultural society and cloth capped characters of Alan’s ilk have almost disappeared. Pure nostalgia …
The last image is deliberately different … a quirky image from Budapest Hungary … a city now best known for it’s beautiful city architecture. However, metres below the World Heritage Castle district on the Buda side of the city there exists a cold war nuclear bunker … complete with gas masks and ‘occupants’!
Ain’t travel … and work … grand !
All Images © Brian Cassey – from top – Dubai UAE x 2, London England x 2, Budapest Hungary