50mm

Here he is on flickr

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.

This was shot quite a while ago. Not a flattering shot of the model but I like the atmosphere in the shot all the same.

Random collection of old shots from around Shinjuku and a few stations.

Sometimes the strangest elements all come together in a shot when you least expect them to.

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).

As so this is about where I am at the moment. The end of something and the beginning of something else. Here is hoping your journey from one thing to the next is an enriching one.

This shot is one I dug up from the archives again. To be featured in the upcoming update of the 50mm web site which hopefully should launch before the end of the year.

Sometimes you have to revisit the past to see if you missed anything. I think after a LONG hiatus I might be ready to revisit this genre. We’ll see. Anyway, was a bit of fun to hang with the lads and shoot a few pictures.

See his genius at work here -> Uchujin
While I was in the film archives the other day I found a few shots I forgot to scan. A case that so often happens to me “ah, not bad, I’ll do that one last”. As usual, I forget or run out of time.
Figured it would be nice to add to the rest of the shots considering everyone else got a look-in a while back on the blog.

Too busy to go out and make an effort to shoot anything.

Another archive shot while I work my way very slowly through a roll of film.

Caught him early one evening on the way home.

Man reads a morning newspaper. Caught on the edge of the frame with the Rolleiflex as I went to work.

From an ongoing series that doesn’t seem to have a beginning or an end. This guy at first glanced looked drunk but after closer inspection seemed to have something else wrong with him.
This was taken at about 8:45am which, as you can see from the onlookers reaction, gained a bit of attention. He managed to get on the train and pass out again and then somehow remembered his station and got off only to pass out again on the platform.
Never a dull moment in Tokyo.

Before I took some time off from shooting (something I badly needed) I was testing out an old Olympus Pen-s half frame camera. With all the talk of the new Olympus pen digital I thought I’d give the camera a try for the second time. My first attempts were not great as it doesn’t have a meter, has a shutter limit of 250th/sec and has a tiny ring where the aperture of the lens can be changed with a lot of effort. After more than a month on the shelf I thought I’d develop 2 of the films I’d shot with it to see what I had. I’ve not had a chance to go through them all yet but I did find this semi focused feel quite appealing. These 3 frames are actually taken in succession which, judging by the other frames further on in the film seems to be a reflection of my ability to gauge light and set the camera correctly. I think my speed judgment is off a bit but I’m not minding that I got these wrong

I’ll likely be posting experimental stuff up here for a bit while I get to work on the other projects I have lined up.

So I modified a Kodak No. 2A Folding Autographic Brownie so that it would take Fuji instant film. Lots of electrical tape and a few tests later I worked out the 3 fstop settings and the basic focal lengths. I’ve not shot a lot with it yet but as it’s a bellows camera a thought occurred to me while trying to shot with it this weekend. If I could some how take the thing off it’s rails I might be able to twist the lens around a bit and get something different. So I now have a very random tilt shift lens. Took several shots to get one steady enough to use.

One from the archives while I take time out to process a bunch of pics I took the other week.
Shot in Shinjuku during the rainy season I guess. Provia 400x pushed to 1600 as always.