Another great quote

"A successful artist is a person who is able to create something that manifests their truth...a perception that they feel they need to bring to the world. A successful creative person is someone who continues to create no matter what happens. I respect many artists. They are not all extremely successful in the art market, or in the art status structure. Some are, and some aren't. Some of the ones I respect have been overlooked. But I still consider them to be successful, because they have succeeded to give the world their vision, even though the world does not always acknowledge their worth...In other words, I define a successful career as much more than just external validation." -- Jan Harrison

Stolen from http://www.aphotoeditor.com/ again!

Quote of the week

"I really miss 4×5 – it’s beautiful. The slowing down of the process; taking time to make a composition, lining things up, doing Polaroids (I love that smell – I wish they made a men’s fragrance)."Taekn from the end of this post.

Possibly the end

Well, that was fun.Lots of work. Not a great deal of reward. A lot learned. A few friends made. LOTS of time wasted. Photography, I need a rest. Thanks for all the kind words over the several years. Time to get on with my life. Bye.

Tokyo Tower

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.

Rain crossing

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.

Mini worlds

A shot from the mini world series from tha archives. This one has not seen the light of day yet.

Ghost in the machine

Shot (like usual) on the way to work.

Killing time

This particular shot I like because of the light on her face and the softness of the shot in general. Difficult to find in stations.

Shibuya girl

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

Shinjuku 3am

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!

Reflection

He started it. I'm only following.

Gaze

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

I'd see delight in the shade of the morning sun

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.

Hydrangeas

View fullsize

View fullsize

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!

G-men

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 to escape

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

Look no one in the eye

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.

Makeup

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

Sleep

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

Sinister

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 :-)