28 days in Japan.
666,717 steps taken.
310 miles walked.

That’s the equivalent of walking from London to Luxembourg. I had swollen ankles by the end of it all. Needless to say, my itinerary in Japan was merciless. Most of it for Kyoto consisted of visiting local gardens. Despite the packed schedule (made worse from the crowds of tourists everywhere), I was shooting over an hour’s worth of footage per day. But while I was finding ‘aesthetically pleasing’ things to shoot, it got to the point where I was shooting things for the sake of having enough footage. After all, I wasn’t there just as a tourist. I wanted to make at least one short film on Japan. How could I not? It has given me so much in my life. I wanted to give something back. But I was falling back on familiar ways and retreading old ground. It was only until I walked through one of the gardens that something clicked amongst the chaos. I can’t remember what garden it happened in but I’d been blessed with a “touch of zen” so to speak. The lesson is: Be present and go by feeling. Follow that instinct. Animals are the masters of this. But we often get caught in the red tape.

“Old habits die hard,” they say. I’d fallen into the same trap. I’d become overly reliant on compositional patterns in my work - namely the rule of thirds, leading lines, frame within a frame, and negative space. If you’re not careful, you can end up in a creative quagmire forever, relying on technique and what you know works aesthetically rather than going on feeling and being present in the moment. My trip to Japan changed that for me.