What makes Japan such an desired place for photography? I'm really trying to understand the hype around it. When I visited of course the size of Tokyo itself opens lots of opportunities but I quickly notice that it gets repetitive rather fast. All muh taxis look the same, the buildings have a pattern that repeats a lot. If you've seen a few shrines/temples.. in the end they all look the same. Even if you visit other prefectures you won't see much of a difference. Whenever I see camera vlogs or flickr uploads in Japan I now tend to skip because it's always the same. My current number one location would probably be Germany. Still safe enough to bring your camera with you, every state has it's own architectural style. Towns are usually a comfy mix between old medieval houses in the center with grim 60s bauhaus constructions that look really odd. Also home of Leica where this sort of everyday compact photography started. What do you think? What's your prefered location?
has a retro vibe, like a 90’s filter written all over it
I'm generalising, but their society values and prioritises "aestheticism" and beauty like few other places do. That mindset just naturally blends into pretty much every aspect of their life and environment.I'm not saying they don't have ugly shit, terrible places, bad people and other places around to world aren't beautiful too. My point is just when the baseline of their society values beauty at the level they do, then you see it pop up everywhere in a natural way. It's not hard to understand why so many people fall in love with the place. Kinda how people used to fall in love with Paris back in the day.It gets repetitive because of the amount of tourism they have. I saw a guy post a few photos from Taiwain on (dare I say) Reddit the other day saying something like "Is Taiwan the new Japan?" and everybody commenting on it went absolutely nuts about how racist that was to say and fuck white people and all that shit, when the guy clearly meant it was about photographer hot spots changing now that Japan has been overrun for a while. It was the most stereotypical comment section you've ever seen. It was almost like a caricature, but they were totally serious. I like the colours in the photo too, what's the source on that image?