Blog
The photographic blog of Sean Wood (aka motionid)
Ponies
For what could possibly be a happy title I've managed to make a pretty dark image.Went out after a few drinks this evening and found myself a few Ponies with owners. Somehow through the rain and umbrellas I managed to get something I liked. Or maybe it's because I haven't shot this way for more than a year it feels new again. Either way it's different to the clichés I'm known for apparently.
Don't look up
And on a completely unrelated topic to the photo above, I will need to take a little break from shooting as I have managed to damage my back badly and need to rest it a bit.Expect a few archive shots to fill the gap in the mean time.
On the hill
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.
Hakone
I've visited Hakone several times by train and bus and also several times by bicycle. What I didn't realize was that the actual place extends quite far and that there is such a huge variety of places to visit within the area. I'm going to be coming back fairly soon to explore more.
Two shots from the trip. Always good to go in a typhoon. Makes for better sky's :-)
End of summer
Sometimes you have to take this kind of shot just to get it out of your system. Well, I've done it now so I can finally move on. This was shot with a 50mm and an extension tube for those that care for these things. If you are looking for a relaxing escape from the usual over crowded parks of Tokyo you might want to take a look at this one.
20 years of work
My good friend Tanaka san recently had an exhibition of 20 years of work. The collection consisted of every photo, digital and analog, printed on contact sheets. As always his art direction is stunning with the analog on traditional sheets in black and the digital on the opposite wall in white.
The images themselves are very industrial but you can't not be impressed by the consistency in his tones, persistence and variety of images in such a narrow subject focus.
The man and his work are truly and inspiration and if you have a chance to check his art direction work you'll find an attention to detail that will impress.
Visitor from the other side of the world
Normally I don't post these kinds of snap shots but I need an easy way for a few friends to find the odd snaps I take. My mate Oleg was over from the Ukraine and Citt is about to leave our little team where I work as well as Stephan I guess soon too. So I figured I'd better shoot them all together before everyone runs off to new adventures. So I vow to shoot them all again at some stage, just maybe not all at once.
hmm. I just realized that I feature somewhere in here by accident.
Shop windows
Lens fun
So just for fun I asked several people, including my friend Stephan, for a photo. I usually use the Hasselblad and have tweaked my settings so I can use the 80mm lens to take close-up head shots. I was, however, surprised to see the result when I developed the film. I wasn't expecting him to look so different. And I always thought that the 80mm lens on the Hasselblad was a 50mm equivalent on a 35mm SLR. What a difference a lens and a bit of fiddling with the settings makes. Stephan prefers the digital shot. Probably because of how different the lens makes his face look. I actually like it more. Most likely because it's difficult to replicate the look. In any case I'm surprised to see how well the film version turned out when putting it side by side with the digital one. More of these to come.
Faces on white
Little experiment. Faces of Tokyo on white.
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.
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!
Out with the new and in with the old or out with it all?
So I started shooting medium format film for a few different reasons. I like the "look" of film. I like the mood it gives you. I like it's unpredictability. I like that it's not easy to get right. I like that it can give pictures a timelessness. I like that medium format photography is a slow process. It's manual focus. It's slow lenses and manual winders (most of the time). You can make big prints. And when you manage to get all of the details correct you can make a great picture (or so I've been told).Another reason I changed formats and mediums is because I realized that my old digital photos were easy to copy. And when I realized this I understood that what I thought were great pictures were not. Anyone could take them. So I thought I should try harder and set myself a challenge to try to shoot the same subject matter with a different camera. Give myself a challenge to see what I could achieve. And so after countless rolls of film and a huge amount of time trying I finally realized that I suck at medium format photography. A friend of mine took a look at my pictures recently and told me not to give up on the old stuff I'd done. I think I'm slowly starting to see his point. And what's interesting about this is that what he's saying not only is that my old stuff was better but, given it was so easy for anyone to replicate even the old stuff was not much good. I think I may need to revisit the whole idea of taking pictures.