hsjhoshi | Nakajima Yuto - CAPA January 2021 (English Translation)

Thank you for coming today. You brought along your beloved camera with you, right?

Yes. I'm using a Sony a7R III. I've been using the a7 series since the first generation. I bought the a7S at first because it was good at high sensitivity. I love that it's good in the dark. I don't get any noise in my pictures and I like the colours it produces, so I've been using it ever since. My favourite lens at the moment is the 90mm macro. I have some plants at home, and I use it to take photos of them. It's refreshing to be able to get so close with the macro lens! I'm drawn in by the idea of noticing things by getting closer to the subject, not by widening your field of view. But for everyday shooting, I tend to use the more convenient 24-70 mm or 70-200 mm lenses.

How did you become interested in cameras?

I've always loved taking photos with my phone, even back in the days of feature phones (T/N: A phone that isn't a smart phone). And I started to think I wanted to take photos that were a bit more to my liking. Around that time, Miyazaki Aoi-san was doing commercials for Olympus, and I thought the Olympus PEN was really cute (laughs). So it's been more than 10 years since then. I got my own camera for the first time, and I was so happy that I started taking all kinds of pictures.

I bought myself a book and studied. Things like exposure, shutter speed, f-stop, etc. Anyway, I was interested in being able to control things by myself, so I learned manual mode from the beginning. If I didn't understand something, I would ask the photographers who I was indebted to. I was fortunate to have people around me who were willing to teach me.

This time, we asked you to choose five of your favourite shots. Do you like landscape photography?

I do. I like to shoot on location. I happened to take this photo of the waterfall when I was out with my family. This sky is at a beach in Los Angeles, where I went on location.

What a dramatic sky!

That's right! It looks like the wings of an angel. So I fixed up the image a bit to make that impression stand out more. When I looked back at it later, I was like, "Wow~" and singing my own praises.

The vertical shot was taken in New York from a taxi. The roads were crowded and it was very New York-like. I also liked the colourfulness of the signs and I tried to bring out the colours.

Are you good at developing and post-processing?

Yes. I tinker around with Photoshop. Nowadays, there are many apps for that kind of thing. I sometimes post photos on a blog called Johnny's web, and I use stamps to correct them and I make the members' skin a bit clearer (laughs).

This group photo is fantastic and cute. What was the situation?

This is a shot from a concert performance I took with my Ricoh Theta S. There's a part where Inoo-kun is playing the piano and everyone comes up to him, and it's distorted so much we all look like mushrooms (laughs).

I took this self-portrait because the light in the evening was very beautiful. I don't usually take many selfies. I like to take photos at the time of the day when the colour temperature is low, like in the evening or in the morning glow.

Do you have any other cameras?

Yes, I do. I'm quite a collector. I can't buy real cameras all the time because they're expensive, but toy cameras like Lomo are easy to get hold of and they look really cute. I only really need one, but I can't help but want different colours and designs of the same type. Toy cameras are mostly used for admiring and having fun.

Isn't it hard to go to the shops because you will be seen?

But I surprisingly go to Shinjuku and other places without any issue. It's fun eitherway. Once, when I was walking up the stairs of a second-hand camera shop, I passed a photographer I knew and he asked, "Why are you here?" (laughs). I wanted to take pictures of myself in motion with a low f-stop fixed lens. It's a great way to learn about composition, and I'm longing for a lens like that.

Do you feel the urge to compile what you've shot?

Of course I do. I'd like to make a photo book of the members one day. Originally I wasn't very good at photographing people because there are only quite a few faces that I can capture. I was a bit embarrassed at first to tell the members to "Move like this" (laughs). But in terms of my job, I know the feelings of both the photographer and the person being photographed, so I know more than other people what they want to photograph. I think it's a blessing to be able to be on both sides.

With a photo exhibition too, the bigger the print, the more different it looks, and there are many different frames so it seems like it'd be fun. I'm interested in things that you can't understand from the scope of a computer screen.

But it's tough because I know I'm a bit of a pain in the arse when it comes to things I'm passionate about (laughs).

I'd be so focused that I wouldn't be able to do anything else. But since I'm taking my own photos, I'd like to take the plunge one day.