There is an Obon festival (お盆の阿波踊り) not far from my place that my wife's Awa Odori team performs at every year. It's very local and always a great atmosphere with kids running around. If you ever visit Japan at the end of summer I recommend visiting one if you have the chance. Always a great community feeling.
I went out for a bit of practice on Friday. Need to brush up the skills for the upcoming Awa Odori event in Koenji in August. This also gave me a chance to try out a few Ai servo modes to find what worked and what didn't. Kind of impressed with the iso on this shot. Difficult to tell because of the size but at 2000 iso this is pretty clean. I'd suggest looking at the tags below for details about what was used to practice with.
So the Tensyouren team my wife belongs to were at Kyodo in Setagaya again this year. It seems to be a tradition to make an appearance. It's really just practice for them for the big even at the end of August in Koenji.The streets are too narrow to take any real pictures but I go all the same and try to take a few snaps of team for the archives. This has prompted me to do a bit of street shooting in preparation for the event in August. Too mach time using medium format cameras has slowed my reflexes somewhat.
There is a little bar in Kabukicho that holds exhibitions for photographers. Some very famous ones have and do exhibit there. One night I happen to be there and a photographer was having an exhibition. The subject of his work happen to turn up and she turned out to be pretty friendly. Taken with the permission of the photographer and the subject. Names have long been forgotten.
Well, that was a fun morning.
In 2008 I had a chance to shoot an event called Tokyo Decadence. Run by a French guy the event is aimed at the crowd that likes to dress-up. If you come dressed in an outfit you get in for free otherwise it's 3000 yen or so (if I can remember that far back). Most of these have been languishing on my drive since then with nothing to do. Figured they might as well see the light of day. A little different than TMax 400 :-)
I have been uninspired lately to post anything of Tokyo. I am wanting to do a series but have too many other half completed series' on the go I cannot muster the energy to start another one. 13 rolls of film yet undeveloped and many rolls unscanned and forgotten. Every photo chosen is a photo unfinished which is probably why I have so many pictures and post so few. That, and I can never decide if I like some shots or not. Or maybe I should accept that I have run out of good shots and should stop trying to feed the blog and get on and make new ones. This is a shot taken mid 2006 in Australia where I first visited Tea Gardens. On the way if you look carefully you can find this tree on a hill. I have visited the site a few times and shot it with the Hasselblad . One of the many forgotten images made. maybe the past is worth revisiting? Even if it's just for a short time.
This is the 2nd shot I took from the same time and location as Apocalypse. I don't think its nearly as good but figured I'd post it all the same.
Going through some old printed photographs I found one that I thought needed to be revisited.
Afternoon light – Omotesando
Finally, after some really crappy weather we finally get a decent day in Tokyo. Shot in Omotesando during lunch.
I had met this bunch a week before. They had these amazing bikes. And at the time I had B+W film in my camera. I rewound it and stuck in some colour (still yet to be developed!) and shot some frames. I thought these guy's would be a great story for my mate Skorj so I asked them if they were around the area much. They said they were in Shibuya every Friday so I said casually that I would be back next week with my mate. He usually shoots for a few foreign bike magazines and I figured it would be a good match. In the process of trying to reach Skorj and arrange him to shoot these bike guy's I discovered I had somehow given them the impression that this would be a full blown shoot for a big magazine (There was definitely a good bit of imagination being used by the bike guy's at this point). The next Friday came around and Skorj was busy. I sent a mail to them explaining it was off and they called me up and got all pissed off. Joy! So, rather than giving up and making enemies of them I explained that while my mate could not make it, I could shoot them then try to get them onto a CNN site. At worst they would have a set of nice pics and at best they would appear on an international website.That night, the usual bunch of photographer friends were turning up to the usual drinking hole about the time I was due to shoot the bikes and I was loathed to meet up with them because I knew I would have to explain my early exit and all the gear I was carrying and I know these guy's are all like Vultures when it comes a shoot and would basically take over and claim the entire plan as their own. Lucky for me everyone was feeling semi respectful and didn't completely take over what I had organized. And, as it happens it was good thing a few of them came along. Brian and Eiichi were there to lend a hand with interviewing the guy's which was really lucky cause had they not done that and also been kind enough to send me the recordings / notes I could not have written the little story for CNNGO.
So, all the drama kind of paid off in the end.
