Zaimokuza.
A grey morning on Zaimokuza beach, south of Tokyo. The tide had pulled back far enough to leave the sand holding the whole sky, and a crow had the shoreline to itself.
Straight captures. No generation, no compositing, no added elements. The grade is the only thing applied, and it is the same across all three.
Since I was a child the sea has meant three things to me: freedom, stillness, and a door left slightly open onto somewhere else.
I loved the water and the boats enough that people stopped using my name. Captain to some. Poseidon to others.
Somewhere new, the sea is the first thing I greet. I go in, or I find a way to touch it, and something of me passes into the water.
I swim out past where the bottom disappears and stay until everything goes quiet. Then I come back, knowing who I am again.
It is also how I report my position. Wherever I am in the world, the seas should know. Just in case.
But I had only ever touched seas. What I wanted was an ocean, because the ocean is where the freedom lives.
This is the first ocean I ever touched.
35.30° N · 139.55° E · Position reported
I had a camera with me because I wanted the hour kept.
Partway through it a crow came and stood beside me. It had the air of something that already understood what this was, and it stayed until I left.
The film came out of the same hour. It follows a self the cities have closed in on, still looking for the ocean, and it watches through the crow's eyes.
The shoreline was set inside the eye of a character built in the studio, and then the look was returned: what the bird sees, staring back, is a city. The film runs as a loop with no cut, so neither gaze gets the last word.
The Camera
Comes First.
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