In July of 2024, I went to Kamakura, Japan. My first time hearing about Kamakura was from an Instagram reel. The photos of the beaches were some of the most beautiful photos I've ever seen. Apparently, Kamakura is home to the famous photo spot that appeared in the Japanese anime series: Slam Dunk.
I was already planning a trip to Japan and felt that this place was a good location to spend a couple days of my trip. After traveling around the small town near Mt. Fuji, I went back to Tokyo, took the train and went to Kamakura. I unpacked my luggage at the guesthouse I was staying at, took my Nikon FM2 and my first ever roll of Portra 400.
My guesthouse was a 10 minute walk away from the Kamakura beach. There were a lot of tourists, seagulls, and hawks too.
Keeping this in mind, I headed to the sandy beach and loaded my first roll of Portra 400. Here are some of the shots I took that I really love.
I love these shots a lot. The sun's ray reflecting on the water and the people enjoying the ocean. There were a lot of people enjoying surfing as well.
The first time I scanned my negatives, I fell in love with Portra 400. Before Portra, I mainly used Kodak Gold. Although I love Gold's yellow and light-brownish color base, I love Portra's style of sticking to the original colors as much as possible. If you're in South Korea and need your negatives processed and scanned, try visiting Gorae Studio Film Lab. Processing the film is very cheap and you can scan the negatives yourself.
As I walked along the shore, I took one of my most favorite shots of all time.
It was a man swimming in the middle of the Kamakura Ocean. I love the gradient colors of the sky, the light reflecting the mans back, and the contrast of the man's skin color and the ocean. I'm thinking of getting a high resolution scan of this photo and putting it in a frame in the future.
While I was walking around, the sun set and it was the golden hour. It was very beautiful with the sunlight making the entire setting more yellowish and warm. While walking back to my hostel, I saw two people playing with a beachball. I waited for the right timing and took this shot.
Kamakura is a beach I'd love to visit again in the future. If you're lucky, you can even see Mt. Fuji in the distance but I couldn't because it was cloudy. I recommend taking a walk along the shore during golden hour - around 4 ~ 5pm.