This image is one of the greatest favorites of all time. It perfectly represents the way I perceived Japanese street festivals, matsuri: in the rhythm of taiko beats, a whirlwind of contagious color-bursting energy pushes you into a life full of contrasts, with ancient roots lost in the scent and the semi-darkness of Buddhist wooden temples, in which the same universal light of candles flickers endlessly.

And now, let me tell you a little bit about the practical part of making this

Dynamic image of a traditional Japanese drummer performing in the street during Aoba Matsuri. This is one of the most important festival in Sendai ,Japan.

imagistic story. In that period of great photographic excitement, I was extremely attracted by the representation of the movement in static images. One of the methods I often used was to introduce in the same image both static clear elements together with blurred components, aiming to suggest action. Everything was made, of course, within the camera. With these ideas in mind, I approached a technique called panning. By focusing on the subject in action, moving the camera with it and tweaking certain settings (but not so philosophical) you manage to obtain such images. It looks simple … but it’s not! And do you know why? Because, in the end, the result is bound to the ruthless rules of chance … and it’s unique, because it’s nearly impossible to obtain the same thing next time. It’s like a needle in a haystack, only here, you’re looking for a static point in a moving amalgam.

Basically, it can be done in two ways. Either you follow the movement from one side and move the camera somehow parallel to the direction of the target’s movement, or you are in front of the subject heading toward you or moving away, or it is even relatively static. In the second situation, the effect is achieved by zooming in one direction or another, in unison with the subject’s motion. This is extremely difficult, but this lets me show you how I wanted to present the story of the taiko drummer. I have tried a lot of angles and settings,  but the results “in the camera” were not satisfactory. And so, to preserve the idea, I had to apply an effect in the post- processing stage of the image. What matters is that  the final result expresses, with high fidelity, what I wanted to show. And the take home message of this image-anatomy-crash-course, from someone who dreams and lives in and through images, is that as a photographer, you sketch your “product” in your mind and you work tirelessly until you get it.