On Sunday morning I met my friend Mr. S and we went to Tokyo to see the exhibition of the All Japan Alpine Photographers Association. We met our friend Mr. L there, whom I wrote about before.
Almost immediately I was greeted by the association members at the reception desk, who congratulated me on winning the Hasselblad Award. One guy joked that he had accepted the prize on my part and kept it. Curious and eager to know, I asked what the prize was. Was it a camera?
No, it was a camera bag. I was told I could pick it up at the office sometime or if I could stay until take down (Sunday was the last day) I could take it with me. I was hardly thrilled about winning a small camera bag but joked about hoping for a camera and said I was pleased that I had won something. Someone asked if this was my second year as a member and I said it was my first. He told me that after I had been a member for over three years I might have a chance at winning a camera, but the models on display were not high end except for maybe the Mamiya 7II.
The three of us began looking at the photographs, of which there must have been over 300. Each member who submits work has one photo selected and there are well over 500 members I think. But soon I bumped into the man who first told me about the association and I chatted with him and went to see his photo, which was enlarged to 3’x4’. He had won the Fuji Film Award and when I asked what his prize was he said it was a compact camera. That seemed kind of useless considering that this guy shoots in medium format. What was he going to do with a compact camera?
After looking at the photos we moved on to another part of town where we saw the exhibition of the Japan Alpine Photographers Association. The two associations used to be one group but there were disagreements and quarrels and finally the association split.
In comparison the AJAPA has more members but many of who do not shoot exceptionally interesting mountain photos. Many of the photos were little more than snap shots taken from the trail at mid-day. The JAPA had no such photos and many more of them were very inspiring. I also noticed that JAPA’s photographs included more from abroad, including China, Nepal, Pakistan, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Switzerland, France, Russia (Kamchatka Peninsula) and Antarctica. This had me conclude that the members were likely to be wealthier than the AJAPA members.
One thought that really hit home (and not for the first time) was that in Japan there are so many people going to the same locations all year round and shooting the same view. With so many photos of famous peaks above the clouds at dawn or winter snow and peak scenes at sunset the photos all start to look rather similar. More than ever I realized that simply capturing the view in nice light is not good enough. The weather and light conditions must be exceptional in order to produce an image that truly stands out from the others. One has to also be ready to challenge himself to shoot the same view as everyone else with a new perspective.
Mr. L, by the way, is a member of four different mountain photo clubs and he is a very good photographer too. I was pleased with two things he said to me. The first was that after seeing my photograph he said he expected that I had better photos than that one. He has seen some of my work on the Net and felt my work was more impressive than what the AJAPA selected for the exhibition. I took that as a compliment. The other he said when we were discussing contests was that should forget about contests and start submitting to magazines. “It’s about time you started turning pro,” he said. He didn’t know me well enough to know that I have been submitting to magazines for over ten years and getting work published, but I was glad he thought my photography was worth submitting.
I was sent a photo of me at the exhibition with my photograph but the file size is too large for me to save on the device I have here now. Instead, here are some photos from the Japan Alpine Photographers Association exhibition.
The photo on the far left is from Chile. I have been to those mountains. The others on that wall are mostly from China. The big white one second from the right is Alpamayo in Peru. I went there to see that mountain once but the weather was crud and I saw nothing but rain, clouds and sleet. I suffered from altitude sickness pretty badly too.
The central photo with orange clouds illustrates how capturing a rare moment made this photo a choice for a bigger enlargement.
The same goes for this middle photo here too.
Incidently, about 98% of the photos at these exhibitions were shot on film and more than two thirds were shot using medium or large format cameras.
