Hi, EyeEm Yoshito Hasaka

We’re excited to introduce you to Yoshito Hasaka aka _F7 today. A master of creating atmospheres equal to a Wong Kar-Wai movie, we’ve asked the 35 year old creative director about his story, his inspiration and the color blue.

We’re excited to introduce you to Yoshito Hasaka aka_F7today. A master of creating atmospheres equal to a Wong Kar-Wai movie,we’ve asked the35 year old creative director about his story, his inspiration and the color blue.

Hi Yoshito! How are you today?

Nice to meet you! I’m so fine today and it’s getting hotter here in Tokyo.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself? What do you do, how old are you, what’s your favorite food and your favorite place in the world?

I’m an interactive creative director / graphic designer in the design industry for about 10 years. 35, married, two daughters, thick/bold ramen lover. My favorite place is of course Shibuya, Tokyo – as you can see in many shots of mine. So exciting place.

Do you live in Tokyo for your whole life?

I’ve been here in and around Tokyo for all my life, moving a few times for short distance when I was a child. Actually I live here next to Tokyo for 2X years and now working at Harajuku : ). I love this place. Tokyo is a very exciting place – it has many hot people, many awesome places to see, and many spots / moments to capture by my mobile phone.

For how long are you already taking mobile photos? Have you been shooting with other cameras before?

I used to take photos with (not-so-high-end) compact digital cameras until I got my iPhone. At that time, social media had not made such growth as these days and I didn’t show or share my photos to people. I just took them for my own memory.

I was stunned by the performance of the iPhone4 when I used it for the first time about 2 years ago. Especially the HDR feature amazed me. The photos my iPhone made were far clearer and more beautiful than the ones my compact digital cam produced, even on night shots.

So I decided to only use my iPhone. And I came to know EyeEm and the fun of sharing at the time. Being on EyeEm for more than 19 months I deleted many of my early photos, however the first photo I posted on EyeEm remains still there : )

Tell us a bit about the color blue..

Off for a long time, I saw many people posting with the tag “Blackandwhite” and they were all great. I saw many people who had great B&W photos all over the feed. So I thought I’d go with a different style – that’s the beginning.

I saw my feed and thought it must be beautiful if they were all glowing blue or green, and began posting all with the color – I came to think strongly to make my own color here. Now the apps and settings I use are almost settled, but this is not the end I think. I dream of my feed to be more bright and happy from the blue lights.

What apps do you use for getting this blue effect? Or do you just use a blue filter in front of your camera lens? Any tips & tricks to get the most awesome blue tones?

I’m using Snapseed and Filterstorm for almost all of my photos. At first, using Snapseed to adjust sharpness up, brightness up, ambience up, contrast down, to actually create a B&W photo that’s too bright.

Then I use Filterstorm to change the white balance to blue X2 and change saturation to yellow (16-20%), green(16-20%), and cyan(16-20%). That’s my current favorite setting. I also slightly adjust the brightness and saturation according to my taste to finish. Someday I really wish to try to cover the lens of my iPhone with an analog blue filter and see what I can get out of that.

What inspires you?

I feel the impulse to shoot when I see strong “light” – that’s important currently. Many of my posts include light sources as you can see. If there exist no sunlights and artificial lights, the photos are of course all black. I’m just attracted by “glow” so I often take photos inspired by night neons and headlights.

Obviously we can’t go to the perfect blue world. I dream to see the world where the color of sunshine is blue (not orange) or the artificial lights are all blue. Besides that, I love and am inspired by artificial objects – cars, buildings, escalators, chandeliers, etc – rather than nature. But that may be just because I’m a designer.

The lines, light and shadows from artficial objects always attract me to take shots. But I want to expand this to other subject like nature, daylight, etc. I just want to see the world filled with indigo.

Thank you for the interview, Yoshito! For more stuff from Yoshito check out his excellent photo stream and also his website.