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Blog
The photographic blog of Sean Wood (aka motionid)
Station life
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.
Under a bridge
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.
Tokyo streets and stations
Random collection of old shots from around Shinjuku and a few stations.
Station stress
Sometimes the strangest elements all come together in a shot when you least expect them to.
Public housing
Fragments of Tokyo
Watanebe san, Koga san, Thomas and Jon looking his usual self at the front
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.
Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi exhibition
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).
The Bogey hole
Shot at about 5:55am on the 1st Jan 2010 in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Managed to wake up at 4 and leave at 4:20am. Never actually saw the sun but was lucky enough to get a bit of colour in the clouds before everything went a flat bright colour.My next trip back there will be with a view to achieve something very different.
Edit: July 3 2010.
Click the picture for a bigger version.
For all of you searching for the location click here for the map
Tips: If you go early enough in the morning, ignore the no entry sign and drive right down to the hole. Otherwise it's a real hike. Especially if you are trying to catch the sun. You should be in and out before anyone can catch you. Go during a week day early. The locals like to turn up super early and swim or actually make it the last point of call after a night out. You won't get any pictures then. Be careful. The whole place is really slippery so take your time walking around. The boats on the horizon you can't do anything about. It's a pain but if you don't want them in your shot you're going to have to pick your angles carefully. If you want your picture to have any depth to it like the one above you should use film. Even if you have a pro DSLR (I own a canon 1d mark 3) you won't get the depth and colour. And anyone who says "HDR" as a solution should be shot. If you think you've taken a winner picture post a link to your shot in the comments. I'd love to take a look. Someone should do a great B+W long exposure. But I bet I end up doing this before anyone else (no one likes B+W any more).
When everything goes wrong
Words of advice from the inexperienced. Wash your negatives thoroughly and DON'T change the type of film you shoot unless you have experience with the new film you plan to use.I'm a bit disappointed that I traveled thousands of kilometers to meet up with the family (which is hard considering everyone lives in a different state) and manage to destroy all my black and white film in an afternoon. I shall, from this point, revert to my tried and trusted film stock and developers. Not that there is anything wrong with what I've just ruined. Just that I don't want to have to spend more money learning the in's and out's of another stock when the current one already serves me well.
2 million years ago
It's nice to know some things take a long time to change.Posting this while waiting for my film to be developed. Picture from a small part of the biggest island in the world.
Faces on white
Little experiment. Faces of Tokyo on white.
Relaunch of 50mm.jp site
So I have re launched the 50mm.jp website.After a lot of playing around with different options I decided to keep pixelpost as the platform. Would have built it in wordpress but it was too difficult to make a seamless experience that handled images well, didn't use flash, worked on the iphone and allowed you to track individual photo views on Google analytics. The site does not contain all work I have done and I have not yet decided how I will approach the upload of new work but I'm hoping to keep it fresher than it has been in the recent past. If it (photo's you have seen before by me) can't be found on 50mm it could be located either on flickr or here. If there is an image you have seen that has gone missing please contact me and I'll upload it to one of the 3 locations. Any and all feedback more than welcome.
Crossing Kabukicho
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.
Fumi in Shinjuku Gyoen
An afternoon off with the wife in the park in Autumn.
Mt Mitake
Mt. Mitake on the final leg of a rather good walk. Taken some time ago.
Night moves
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.
Sunset at mt. Fuji
I tell you I'm a bit hacked off with this Ektar 100 film. This is the 2nd roll I've shot of the stuff and this time I pushed it 2 stops. Should be no issues given I push another neg film and have never had problems. I have, however, had issues with getting Ektar developed at Horiuchi Color before. SO, this time I figured I'd go to the source and get it done at Kodak. Well, the bloody neg has blotches all over it. Spend a good 20 mins touching the crap out of it to make it look half ok. The OTHER issue is that they decided to charge me 1449 for ONE roll! And this is development only. I must say, I do like the colours I managed to squeeze out of the film but not if I'm going to get bent over a table on the price and they do a shoddy job of it to boot (the development not bending you over a table. That they are good at).I think I'll have to give Ektar a miss from this point on. Shame.
Uchujin
See his genius at work here -> UchujinWhile 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.
Tokyo tower part 2
This is what I love about old cameras and film. You can't plan this type of old feeling you get from this type of combination. The random combination of film age, film type, developer, fix, fix age, fix duration, developer duration etc. etc. all add up to a look that makes film special. You can photoshop all you want but you're not going to get the same happy accidents you do when you play with the real thing.