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By the time everything wrapped up for the CMWC, I was back to my home base past 9am Thursday morning, September 24th. I was burned out becuase I hadn’t slept more than 90 minutes for the few nights prior and biked some intense distances. The summer sun scorched us all and I was crushed from carrying gear on my back 18+ hours a day. All in the name of living the dream… and I loved it.

Thursday was a total catch up day for me and I did nothing. I was leaving two days later for another destination and my plan was to get one last day of shooting on Friday. I didn’t feel like “working” but I didn’t come all the way to Tokyo to not take photos. The objective was to get working Tokyo messengers on their home turf. I was advised to lurk around the corner of Meiji Dori & Omotesando and I would catch a lot of messengers in traffic.

I hit the road early Friday afternoon and got to my target zone.  I’m a portrait guy and tracking moving targets in traffic isn’t my strongest skill… especially with a slow portrait camera.  Tokyo was still in post-holiday mode (the CMWC was timed with a national holiday), so the life in traffic wasn’t quite the same. I was in what is considered to be one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the world – yeah, there were lots of pedestrians, cars and scooters… but not any messengers. The handful of real messengers I spotted ended up being hidden by traffic or just moving in ways that I couldn’t track  focus properly.

I really just wanted to go get some food and chill out with a nice coffee, but knew I would regret that decision after the fact if I gave up before at least getting one shot. The smog was really fucking with my head, but I kept telling myself “just ten more minutes, maybe I’ll get a shot”.  Nothing…

Then from the corner of my eye, I saw some girl cranking along from my far left, no idea who she was, but the body language was clearly that of an experienced messenger riding in traffic.  I swerved with my camera to target her, but completely missed.  There was a dude riding behind her, so I targeted him.  Hit the shutter and knew I nailed something.  I checked out the LCD screen and recognized my Chicago friend Christopher Dilts.  I was far away with a long lens, didn’t even have a chance to shout at him, he was already long gone.

Granted it isn’t the most amazing action shot ever, but considering the context, I think it’s special.  As guys behind the lens, Chris and I rarely ever get shots of ourselves, let alone riding, let alone  riding in  Tokyo.  So in the end, I didn’t get what I was looking for that day, but I got a super cool shot of Chris that put a smile on both of our faces.

I met Umi at the CMWC closing party at Club Axxcis.

I was shooting people in the street while we were waiting for the lineup to clear. The club was on a back street and there was no car traffic, but messengers spilled out everywhere drinking beer and hanging out. The bouncers kept freaking out telling people to get off the street and I was walking around with a strobe on a lightstand shooting – easy target for stressed out bouncers wanting order and control. It wasn’t long before I was very sternly told by the one of the CMWC organizers that I needed to get off the street or it would fuck things up for them. I understood, didn’t want to be a nuissance or selfish (even though I’m always looking to get that next killer shot) and went inside to shoot other stuff.

I only got 6 shots of Umi that night. The first three were way underexposed, so I slowed down my shutter to get more ambient light and the last three ended up being really blurry. That’s the way things go sometimes, you win some, you lose some.

I was away from Tokyo early October when I got an email from Umi – I had been giving everybody I shot flyers for my Tokyo exhibit and telling them to check out my work and that they could track me down with my contact info on my website.  Umi went to my exhibit at The Ghetto in Shinjuku, was stoked at the quality of my work and wanted to see the shots we did together. I was bummed to write back telling her that the shots I took at Club Axxcis basically sucked, but used the opportunity to let her know that I was coming back to Tokyo that weekend to catch my flight home to Montreal and that I wanted to do a properly organized shoot with her.

A few emails went back and forth and we scheduled something for that Sunday afternoon. Her boyfriend Ucchie came out with her and assisted me with my lighting, which was a major bonus. We spent the afternoon shooting in different spots.

Umi is magic in front of the camera and oozes this sexy coy/confident ooomph that is typical of Japanese women. Exotic indeed. I’ve got all kinds of sweet shots of Umi and her bike that will be filtered through my upcoming portfolio & promotional items, but this is the first shot I’m releasing. I couldn’t have imagined a better way to wrap up my Tokyo trip than mixing the best of both worlds… bikes and sexy women. Thank you Umi and Ucchie!