Like many photographers, I’m guilty of chasing spectacular scenes and completely overlooking my daily routines. Since first picking up a camera I’ve always felt a call to awe-inspiring mountains and fairytale forests, at the expense of photographing daily rituals such as my morning coffee or walk in the park.
However, I recently came across a film called Perfect Days – which has completely turned this idea on its head.
While not strictly a film about photography (the plot focuses on living presently in a more general way) it does teach photographers an incredibly important lesson: the everyday doesn’t have to be mundane, you just have to look for the interesting scenes among it.
It’s a simple, and perhaps overrated, idea. But it's one that the protagonist, Hirayama, a middle-aged man living in Tokyo, makes thought-provokingly clear.
ABOVE: watch the trailer for Perfect Days
On the surface, Hirayama leads a pretty humdrum life, following the same routine every day. He wakes before sunrise, waters his plants, drives to work while listening to music on cassette tapes, cleans public toilets with extraordinary professionalism, eats lunch in the same park and reads before bed.
The film never alludes to any kind of social life beyond family and his only creative outlet is photography.
But Hirayama has mastered the art of looking closely and, more importantly, looking closely at the details of his seemingly mundane routine, revealing a whole world of photographic opportunities.
He is fascinated by komorebi (木漏れ日), the Japanese word describing sunlight filtering through leaves. During his daily lunch break, instead of photographing people or famous landmarks, he points his camera upward toward tree branches.
Komorebi is a natural phenomenon that cannot be repeated exactly because the movement of leaves, wind and sunlight is always changing, constantly representing a new photo opportunity for Hirayama to capture on his 35mm film camera.
Hirayama chooses to see the moments that many of us overlook, including returning to the same subject again and again, knowing that the changing light, textures and shadows render a whole new scene.
Unlike many photographers, myself included, who often get caught in the cycle of only seeking extraordinary compositions, Hirayama is able to find visual meaning and interest in places you and I perhaps overlook.
So, even if you don’t watch the film after reading this article, I urge you to do what I am now promising myself to do more of: to become a photographer more like Hirayama.
By opening your eyes to your everyday life and focusing on a couple of themes that you can revisit time and again, you're bound to explore so many new different visual angles and stories to be told.
Perfect Days is available to watch on Prime Video and has also earned a place in the catalog of the Criterion Collection.
You might also like…
Discover our pick of the 29 best movies about real photographers. These will inspire you to pick up your camera and get out there to shoot!
