One of the core reasons for visiting Japan was to meet this guy. His name is Keishin, but he is more commonly known as cocoip to the Flickr community. Over the past several years, he has become quite possibly my favorite photographer online. His shots are simple, clean, but always alarmingly gorgeous. His shots are typically of the Japanese night skylines, but even when he’s moved out of this comfort zone, the shots are still amazing.
We met up with him on the man-made island of Odaiba, which is about a 20-minute train ride away from Shibuya. Odaiba is also home to the giant Gundam, which provided some ample photographic scenery. Despite some language difficulties with some of the more complicated questions, it was great to pick his mind and figure out why and how he does what he does, and also get some perspective on Japanese culture and customs from a local.
Keishin’s day job is over at Capcom as a music producer, and he’s largely moving over to large-format film photography for future projects. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t do photography professionally, just as a side hobby for the pure purpose of producing great photos. He is an excessively nice individual and I’m thrilled that I got a chance to hang around him for an evening. Oh yes, and the name. Cocoip = Coco (a love for cocoa) + ip (first account was created for iPhone photography). I didn’t ask him about his user icon though.