Travel

夏(Summer)

So, long and short, in the last three months my life exploded. It would be difficult to even write a chapter as wild as the one I have had, but it happened, so I pressed the eject button and booked flights back to Tokyo.

I was there in spring of this year and that trip only made stronger my wish to be in Japan as much as possible. This particular trip was focused around one thing, improving my Japanese. I arrived into the sauna that is summer in japan, an oven of 35 degree heat and 90% humidity. You cannot walk for long outside without drenching yourself in sweat, so its a bit of a pain to go anywhere during those months.

I dove into four lessons a week, along with attempting to speak as much as possible with my friends. I also committed to pushing myself into tricky situations such as visiting restaurants alone and making small-talk with other natives, taking taxis, shopping and going out with all Japanese people and speaking 90% Japanese only. It was wonderful to also widen my circle in Japan, being introduced to friends of friends and see some cool art galleries and resturants!

I also got really into taking photos looking up at buildings so here are a bunch of those too!

夢(Dream)

I travelled to Tokyo with three of my friends to shoot the culmination of a year of planning, a Yakuza Parkour POV chase video. It had been my one singular goal for the last five years, to get a project that would bring my parkour team to Japan, and I had finally done it.

You can see the actual project we created here, along with the behind the scenes vlog, so this post will focus on other images from the trip. All of these taken on my trust iPhone + NOMO Cam combo, across a range of locations in Japan, mostly shot during the few minutes spare we had each day!

異世界 (Another World)

After being unable to visit Japan since 2019 because the borders were literally closed for two years, I finally visited my home away from home, Tokyo.

This trips intended purpose was as a location scouting trip. The amazing collaboration with Hello-o my name is… had blossomed and after the huge success of the first ‘Secret Agent Chase POV’ I had made, they wanted us to make another one, but this time in Japan! My dream of taking my team to my favourite country was becoming a reality, with plans to shoot in 2023, and I could not believe it.

I spent four weeks in Japan, two of which were travelling around the country visiting potential shoot locations for next years POV, planning potential choreography and making relationships with both the Hello team and MonPK, who are Japanese parkour friends and would be supporting the project.

Time Well Spent

I had so much fun touring with Puppet at the start of this year, when he told me he was doing it again in the autumn on the east coast of the USA, and asked if I wanted to join for a couple shows, of course I did. This leg would be a show in New York city, then down to Philadelphia and Washington DC.

It’s always a good time getting over to New York, and it’s one of my favourite major cities in the world. Being surrounded by such scale with the buildings, the people, the mishmash of dirt and grime and shiny and new.

Also different on this mini-tour was that we drove, where we had previously flown. It was nice to get some time in the truck enjoying the great American pastime of driving haha!

Dubai

Imagine it’s 8PM and you get a phone call.

‘Hey Scott, we have a spare ticket to Dubai, flights at 10AM tomorrow, going for a week, do you want to come? It leaves from Liverpool so you’ll have to drive here tonight though. Yes or no.’

So of course, I said yes. Immediately packed a bag, and did the 4 hour drive to Liverpool, arriving there at 2am. Quick sleep, wake up at 7AM and off to the airport, straight to Dubai.

Yeah I wasn’t planning on that either.

Anyway here are photos from Dubai!

New Year in USA

To celebrate the release of his upcoming new album, Puppet held a mini-tour across a few cities in America. He invited me to join and shoot the shows, and maybe make a small little music video. As I was going to be in America, I made sure to stop off at Denver to meet my friend Matthew first, where we thoroughly explored the wonders of Colorado including a trip up Pikes Peak. Then onto the tour which comprised of LA, Seattle and finally back to Denver.

It was nice to get back to LA considering it was pretty cold in New York and the UK, so wearing a T-shirt for a few days was a and treat! We decided to rent a huge red truck and park in the lot of an abandoned K-mart, because it looked cool and I roped my good friend Omar Zaki in to do a backflip for the music video. We also got out to Sepulveda dam for a little skate which was lovely! Seattle was damp and we only had the one night there, and the return to Denver was more snow! Anyway check out the music video we made and the shots from the trip!

Edinburgh

I popped up to Scotland for a weekend to visit my friend Alex, who has recently moved there. I’ve never been to Edinburgh before but I ended up really enjoying it! It’s a pretty interesting place as it’s all built around the castle, and then sprawls out from there. Secondly, there is what is basically a huge mountain (Arthurs Seat) thats right in the middle of the city, so we went for a hike up that and the view was spectacular.

Huji in Tokyo

While I was in Tokyo this summer, I discovered the HUJI app. Admittedly I was a little late to the party on this one however Japan proved to be the best place to start using it. We made it our mission to capture as many ‘clappers’ as possible and it was a lot of fun to ge the randomised vintage style light flares and effects coming through on our images.

All the photos that you see here were shot on iPhone and processed through the app with no additional editing. If you want to try getting some unique looks that really suits the kind of raw and candid images an iPhone tends to capture, I recommend giving it a try!

Autumn Colour in Japan

Following my previous post with images from my November Tokyo trip, I wanted to follow up with a post that focuses specifically on the stunning autumnal leaves I got to experience in Japan. The Japanese word for the autumn leaves changing colours is ‘Koyo’ 紅葉  and during my trip I too got to see the shift from yellows and oranges of November to deep reds into the first week of December. These images were shot in Kamakura, which was the capital of Japan from 1192 to 1333, Enoshima which is a small bridged island near Kamakura, and finally in gardens in Tokyo. I personally really love to see temples, gardens, and also to be by the water. Kamakura and Enoshima are really close so generally you would do both in one day by taking a short train between the two. Its basically a must visit day trip from Tokyo in my opinion!

November in Tokyo

I found cheap flights to Tokyo in November so obviously, I went. This was my fourth trip to Japan, and to be honest the more often I visit the more often I want to. I stayed at the amazing Mission Parkour gym with my friends, old and new. During my trip I also created some content for GoPro Japan, went to my first live gig in Tokyo and acquired two new Gameboys. On trip, I’d recently bought a Sony RX100V that I was keen to put through its paces as my pocket camera. Previously I’d been shooting on the G7X that Canon gave me, but I finally felt like I wanted to upgrade with something that could shoot raw and had a slightly improved image quality. The images that follow are from various moments during my time walking through various areas of Tokyo, both on solo missions and hanging out with my mates. It was such a warm november and the low sun and nice shadows led me to a colourful approach on these photos.

Abandoned Kupari

Every once in a while, I get an email for a project that results in an opportunity to shoot Parkour in a ridiculous location. So when the guys at WormApp asked me if I had any ideas for cool, abandoned places, in Europe, that might be good for a video shoot I got to googling. It wasn’t too long until I found Kupari, a beach resort complex of five hotels, abandoned since the 80s and looking amazing for parkour. A few days later, myself and Brad from Worm, were on a flight to Dubrovnik to go and scout the place. What follow are my favourite images from that scout.