Over the last few years, I have put significant effort into getting better at taking “good photos”. By this I mean images that capture not only interesting content, but also move me on the same deeper, emotional level as my favourite art pieces.

This might seem obvious, as reference photos have always played a huge role in my art-making. Since I came to Japan, I have been gathering and curating my own library, which has proved invaluable in generating ideas, designing, and adding lifelike depth to most of my drawings and paintings.

But the truth is that, for years, I was just satisfied if the location-hunt photos captured all the details that interested me, were not blurry, and were easy to understand. I simply knew that later, when the time came to use them for painting, I could modify, “collage” together details as I saw fit, or re-imagine parts of the composition completely. The goal was mainly to preserve the raw material, not to search for ready-made images to recreate with paint. Even my most photographic-like works in the “Tokyo at Night” book were created as amalgams and my own interpretations of many reference photos.

Something Deeper Appears

The weird thing that happened was that as I gradually upgraded my gear and got better at using the camera as an art tool, I started getting photos that felt different. In between thousands of “boring” reference shots I reviewed and catalogued, I would occasionally stumble on a frame that made me feel something, that was more than just documentation, that meant more for me. And so, just for fun, I made a separate folder on my hard drive labelled “good photos” and started gathering these outliers there, dividing them by year of capture.

The numbers were low, and I purposefully tried to be as strict as I could, aiming to keep only the most meaningful, emotion-filled shots. In a good year, maybe fifty frames got added in.

I did not exactly know why I was curating this collection; it wasn’t like I was aiming to publish it anywhere. It just felt so satisfying to browse these folders from time to time, like I would an old-style printed family album. Go back through 2023, for example, and feel the emotions, memories, and moments locked in the frames flooding back in.

Guided by this, I decided to set my laptop to display these photos at random as the default screensaver, and I knew at once I did the right thing. Whenever I felt bored or my focus faltered, and I looked up from my work, I would see this slideshow and feel a peculiar kind of joy and nostalgia.

The anti-Instagram

Some time ago, while talking to our comic-artist friend Ken Niimura about ways of making work and everyday life feel more fun, he shared with me one of his methods: sometimes whan I feel down, he said, I imagine myself as the hero of a great movie – something cinematic like “Perfect Days” or youthful like “Bakuman” – and then my days and work become again something extraordinary, romantic and cool.

And now I realize that my “good photos” slideshow was doing a similar thing for me. A forced perspective shift that shows my everyday neighborhoods, my family life, my friends, my workspace, etc., back to me in a new light. It reminds me how interesting, cool, and unique they are if I only stop to pay attention. An anti-Instagram effect of sorts, showing my own life as a cinematically edited experience, instead of someone else’s “better” world to strive for or feel envious about. A well-needed antidote to the feelings of doom and detachment that social media can induce.

Without me noticing it happen, taking and curating these “good photos” has quietly become the private art project that may be having the most positive impact on my wellbeing.

My “good photos” folder already has six years’ worth of shots in it. I constantly add new ones and prune those that don’t work as well anymore as my taste and skill grow and mature. I try to make this process as fun and pleasant as I can – little to no editing of the photos, only me as the audience, no technical judgements or pressure to make things “properly” – just positive feelings. It’s a hobby, really.

A living album that makes me want to take my camera with me more, inspires me to be more present in the moment, and to continue learning how to take better photos still.