50mm

Random girl found of the street that would pose (with assistance from friends)

An outtake from a little assignment I was given by tv network you would have heard of. You’d think that it would be easy to shoot the streets of Shinjuku with no one in them. You’d be surprised at how busy it is at any time of the day or night. Word of caution. Try not to do this in the summer. The entire place smells of urine and it’s not because of the poor sewage system. It’s literally because so MANY people are peeing in the streets. And you thought Tokyo was hi-tech and trendy!

He started it. I’m only following.

Sometimes you have to really hunt for these types of shots.

Connections to title…

This created by Peter Saville reminded me of this (wrong song for cover art…still…) which is where I stole the title from.

Figured I needed a bit of colour on the blog. As you can tell, Haven’t been getting out much on the weekends for the last year!

Well, government men but they are not really G-men as referred to in Wikipedia (FBI).  When I shot this the hasselblad back was dying and was causing a lot of overlapping of frames. I like the picture but have never used it cause of the overlap at the top of the frame. Obvious solution if not very pure.

Looking for a way to escape, he looks back only to discover the best possible route blocked.

No eye contact, head down, no speaking with anyone. 8.3 million people in this town (source – probably more now) and my version of Tokyo seems like an endless stream of the same.

See this kind of thing every day. Hard to photograph at this angle though.

It’s so easy to go to sleep on the train in Tokyo.

Sometimes you point your camera in a direction and just hope something will fall into the frame. You don’t expect to feel like your about to get killed (in Tokyo anyway) in the process. This could have been one of these times

Resting up outside Bic Camera in Shinjuku.

Daytime photography. Something I really don’t do much of in Tokyo. Tokyo by day is ugly. Real ugly. Ugly enough to have to shoot in black and white. So, being a night shooter I’ve always got my camera loaded with 1600 asa (iso to you post film people). During the day this means f/16 and hope like hell the shutter speed is fast enough. The magic thing about f/16 is no focus! Which is why I can point the camera behind me, hope like hell and take the shot.

I think the strap adds a level of genuineness to the picture

Sometimes a girl needs accessories in her bag. This one seems to be bigger than most.

Last Xpan II shot for a while. Candid shot of an old guy looking a bit worried about the storm that was coming.

This is another shot taken with Jon’s XpanII camera. The fun thing is that it’s a rangefinder not unlike my Bessa R2a or Brian’s Leica M6 albeit a lot wider and slightly harder to focus. Having said that it makes taking panoramic or wide shots much easier than say the Horizon Perfekt and you tend to get a MUCH nicer, more cinematic feel from the shots than a regular rangefinder (likely the format of the shot and the lack of distortion (horizon problem)). The only downside, and it’s a biggy, is the price. Be sure to pick yours up when you have a few thousand dollars spare

Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower. Shot with Jon’s XpanII.

Girls hanging out in Shibuya

On a recent trip to Australia I managed to find these little spores which I’d previously spotted in Japan. Thanks to Brett for giving me one of several random rolls of expired film which I (for only the second time ever) cross processed.