Blog

The photographic blog of Sean Wood (aka motionid)

Trip to Atami (熱海市)

A recent trip to Atami. I'll be going back for sure. Actually the trip along the coast looks more interesting than the destination.Once my bike is fixed (hit by a car 2 weeks ago) I should jump on a train in the morning and spend the day riding around the coast road to check locations.

Ume closeup revisited

Japanese advertising photography has this trend of creating a very flat, no contrast image with a very particular blue / grey tone as the background. It's quite a unique style and very particular to Japan I feel.Anyway, in place of actually shooting anything new I thought I would revisit a few of the 100,000+ images that are sitting on my computer and see if anything could be done to an existing image. I failed to replicate the blue / grey tone but felt I came up with something a little different in terms of colour and softness. I'll be thinking more along those lines this spring.

The long Grass

This was shot at the start of the year. I think this river near my house is becoming the new muse.Winter is drawing to a close and the that great winter light is going to be replaced by something horrible and sharp unless I choose to wake at 3. A shame inspiration and motivation have taken such a long time to take root again. Hopefully I can sustain this new found enthusiasm.

Scouting locations

The other day Curtis took me on a little scouting trip to a building he found not too far from where we work.This place is going to need a revisit soon with a film camera and a tripod. I've been quite poor at posting for the last year or two so I thought I'd better post SOMETHING. Even if it is from an iphone for now.

The last day

Mt. Fuji Sunset from tamagawa

I knew I could see Mt. Fuji from Tamagawa on a clear day but I didn't know how great the sky was going to be when I set out to take a shot of the sunset. I figured I'd shoot a few digital shots to see what I could come up with along the river. So I took my 24mm and the 50mm with me. What I should have done was take to 70-200mm and a monopod. I think that might even be the plan for this afternoon. The interesting thing about this river that's got me all excited is the fact that I can see further than 3 feet in front of me. Typically in Tokyo you can't see into the distance and being from Australia where that's all you can see it begins to be frustrating. This must feel like of like a return home of sorts.Anyway, if you have no idea what you are looking at, just below the sun to the right is Mt. Fuji.

On the River

Tamagawa - Cold Day

Tamagawa - The Return

Tamagawa -The Road Beyond

Tamagawa - Whoops

After recently moving house and being closer to Tamagawa I've taken to doing a bit of shooting and riding. Unfortunately the only camera I can be bothered to carry more than 20km is my iphone at this point. I plan do a few film shoots but not on exploratory rides. The shot of my head was what happens when you are fumbling with phone, gloves and inner gloves. The order of the images is frustrating me to no end. I need to sit down and fix the bug in the wp theme code but I know it's going to take for ever to track down so I'm living with it for now.

The images were taken at the end of the ride.

My App for choice for shooting with the iphone has to be kitCam. It's by far my favorite photo app. The iphone is also the only other digital camera I own apart from the Pro canon I have. I expect more iphone images to appear here as I attempt to post more often.

Exhibition Setup

Here are shots of the setup for exhibition I just had.
Before I start on the little story, a very large thank you goes to Thomas, Watanabe San, Jon and Koga San for letting me participate this year.

Setup begins at 7pm on a Sunday night. As the previous exhibition is being taken down a team from the gallery sets up make-shift tables and begins setting up the new exhibition. You have the option of renting frames from Place M or bringing your own. In my case I rented the frames which proved to be a very practical idea. I came with prints and mattes ready which I turned over to the team.

In short order they had my whole set framed and mounted. I was impressed with their efficiency.

For the mounting to the wall they use a laser to ensure all images are mounted straight and at the same height. This makes the process super simple. Thomas chose to bring his own frames and Watanabe San had rented frames from another vendor. Turns out Watanabe Sans images only just fit the frames which meant struggling with the framing process somewhat. Thomas' big challenge was just to figure the layout of the images. And being French meant that this took longer than normal as one needs to throw ones arms around a bit, check lots of details in an animated way and mix up French, English and Japanese in explaining how thing's should be.
There was a slight setback with Jon's prints when we realised that the gallery no longer had the frames that he planned to use. Lucky for us Thomas was using the same size frames and we could rent one from down the street so we had four of his six prints up on the wall from day one. Thomas turned up the next day at the opening and made sure the last two were complete.

The whole setup took maybe one and a half hours after which the team proceeded to bring down a load of beer and food and eat right off the setup tables! Place M have a great system in place and the eating aspect makes the whole experience feel a bit of a family affair.

What I learned from the whole event was ones exhibition needs more time and focus that I made this time around. I also learned that I should be listening to myself and not to everyone else when it comes to the details of exhibiting your own prints.

Fragments of Tokyo Exhibition at Place M 12-18 November 2012

So I guess this is me advertising the exhibition I am part of. Place M

所在地：東京都新宿区新宿1-2-11 近代ビル3F

http://www.placem.com/schedule/2012/20121112/121112.html

12-18 November 2012. 12pm - 7pm every day.

I'll be there on the 17th and 18th all day. The goal of the exhibition for me I guess is to use this as an excuse to meet people. So feel free to stop by and say hello. I'll be showing a little set I've had stashed away for a long time now. Time to let them see the light of day. Other members:

渡部敏哉 Toshiya Watanabe Jon Ellis Thomas Orand

Upcoming Exhibition

I'm joining what should be four other photographers in a group exhibition this November. Unfortunately Koga san has had to drop out due to family reasons. The Exhibition is called "Fragments of Tokyo" and will be held from Monday 12th November till Sunday 18th November.

Above are the characters that are participating.

Jon

Watanabe san

Thomas

The Group


Takahiro Tanaka

My Friend Tanaka san had another exhibition at his studio the other week. Every time I've been there he's surprised me with a new set of work completely different from the last yet totally consistent with the theme that seems to run through all his work.

You can take a look at it all here: http://www.takahirotanaka.net/

The work he was showing this time was created over a 20 year period. Each canvas acting as a protective sheet as he made his paintings. The canvas itself becoming the art hundreds of paintings later. I can't help but be impressed with his single mindedness when it comes to following a theme. Everything he does is black and white or as he would like to put it "Grey". From photographs to paintings to found objects, graphic design and even music (noise compositions) he is consistent in theme and his minimal approach. I only wish he got more exposure for his work as it, as a collection, really unlike anything I have seen.

If you want to see his work and he's not having a show drop him a mail. I'm sure he won't mind letting you peek into his studio if you ask nicely :-)

Obon - お盆

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.

Choices

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.

Kyodo Awa Odori

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.

Kodoji

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.

Kanazawa to Tōjinbō

This is one of my favorite photos.On the train from Kanazawa to Tōjinbō there are these mountains that line the edge of the coast. I was sporting the 150mm lens for the Hasselblad and managed to take a few shots out of the window. Once I returned and developed the film I realized that the developer had died and there were real issues with how the film turned out. I was really surprised and happy to find that the mistake actually made the shot.