Tokyo Camera Style has long been on my list of sites to visit daily. It consists, largely, of people holding up their various cameras for posterity. Doesn’t sound much, but it’s compelling stuff and, over the years I have seen some stunning equipment on show.
A couple of thousand kilometres to the west you will find Beijing Camera Style and this is even wackier. Run by Mr. Li (Jiayi or Gary to his friend)s, BCS is something else. Jiayi took over the site, apparently by default, last year. Posts are not daily but Mr. Li does come up with some odd stuff during the course of the month. The site is light on comment but most pictures are accompanied by a very terse description, often bordering on the poetic. Jiayi has a charming habit of calling all his friends (the owners of the cameras) with the honourific Mr. (Mr. Wen Su with his Leica M3, etc). I find the overall result is charming.
Mr. Li is also a fount of all photographic knowledge for (presumably) such a young guy. I learned that the world of “camera style” blogs is vast indeed. There is one in almost every country although I did discover that Newcastle Camera Style no longer resides at the Tumblr address given. I was intrigued to see what The Toon had to offer to street photography. Perhaps more useful for visitors to China is the Photo Dictionary. Aperture Priority? Just say guāng quān yōuxiān and your Chinese photographer friends might be impressed. On the other hand, they might not.
Above I’ve reproduced today’s image from Beijing Camera Style from which we learn that poor Mr. Li has been under the knife. Our commiserations. But we are left wondering what this has to do with the Leica R and, as usual we beg to know more but are left in suspense. Nice picture, though.
Next time I go to the Chinese capital I will be sure to take tea with Mr. Li.
Just for complete the article,
bjcamerastyle was created by me during the period l lived in china.
4 years ago l moved abroad and Gary, a passionate “camera guy” was so nice to continue keep going on the site.
Off course everyone have his own style so the site turn in something different l image. This is the reason you can notice a difference from the beginning.
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I love these enthusiasts’ sites ..pictures of what people have been doing, and whom they’ve met. bjcamerastyle, sadly, seems to have died a couple of years ago, but I admire people who can post blogs in a language which isn’t their mother tongue ..I mean living in China, but writing in English instead of Italian or Chinese! ..I couldn’t do that in Italian, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Japanese, etc. Congratulations Luca (..and Jiayi Li/Gary).