50mm

A wasted evening wasting film. C41 shot in Shinjuku station through a rangefinder and a 50mm lens. This could have been shot yesterday or 3 years ago. It’s now all the same to me.

So I managed to visit the Fragments of Tokyo exhibition at M Place in Shinjuku Gyoenmae and have to say I was impressed. Four very different styles of photography and each with a wonderful and different perspective of Tokyo.

If you missed it you’ll have to bug them to put on another show. Below is each members flickr stream although to really do any of these pictures justice you need to see them printed. It was really a different and exciting experience to see them printed and presented as a series. Congratulations to the four of you.

Toshiya Watanabe
Dairou Koga
Thomas Orand
Jon Ellis

I’ve kept this exhibition pretty close to my chest thus far. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. It’s a very large group art selling festival (for want of a better description) which I’ve somehow managed to get myself involved in.
Despite it having a very department store like feel I have to say I’m enjoying the experience. The range of people that travel past the exhibits every day is staggering.
The other thing that has completely knocked my socks off is the price of some of the work on display. The most expensive piece I found was over $500,000US so there is quite a price range to be had.
I have been lucky enough to be included as one of only 2 photographers to be exhibiting and Mitsukoshi is, for the first time, including photography in their art exhibition (so I guess I should be feeling privileged).

If you have any interest the event is on till the 18th located on the 7th floor of the main Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi store (Mitsukoshimae station on the Ginza line).

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.

Woke at 4am to arrive on the island at around 4:45am. After checking the perimeter I spotted a fisherman heading up a path. Follow the local knowledge. Sure enough I found the spot I was looking for although the sun was rising from behind the island. Unfortunately there was no way to get around and the view from that point is not as good anyway. Still, it was surprisingly busy with fishermen for 4:45am (I’m betting most of them get there at 4 or so).

Click the image to start the slideshow (2 slides)

On my little adventure to Enoshima last weekend at 4am, not only did I manage to get sick but I tried a Film / Developer combination I hadn’t seen before.

I’ve used Ilford Pan F on occasion and, while expensive, have liked the results I’ve gotten so far. My trip to Enoshima was finally a chance to shoot something at ISO100 (developing with Diafine pushes it a stop to 100) so I thought I’d try it developed in Diafine.

Well, as you can see by the results, it’s pretty damn dark. But, looking at the shot of the old man (second slide), I couldn’t have really exposed it more or the shirt would have been blown. The background at the time was not at all dark and the day was overcast so there were no shadows so in theory more of the background should be visible.

If you are going to use this combination, make sure you don’t have any dark area’s in your shot or you’re likely to get blacks.

Sometimes you find a gem in the crowd.

Went out the other weekend in search of a semi reasonable location to shoot something other than night city action. thoroughly uninteresting I have to say. Half a roll shot but some how I get the feeling that this place could have potential. Maybe because I walked 6km to reach this spot in the middle of a summers day my judgment of the place has been affected.

I’ve become increasingly nihilistic about photography… photography was much more interesting 50 plus years ago, and now there is just this overabundance of photography. It’s like saying “What type of art do you do?” “Oh, I do Twitter.”

– Alec Soth
Via http://www.aphotoeditor.com/

Great story and even better photos to be had over at whatsthejackanory.com

Sometimes you’re afraid to ask…