nouvelles impressions du tokyo

Finally, I can make the Raymond Roussel reference I've been dreaming of. Well, some readers may know this, but I am planning to move to Tokyo sometime early next year. If all goes according to plan, I'll be working in a highly photo-centric environment. I won't be quite as vague about this if/when it actually happens. There would be plenty to report on from a photography perspective, though, since Tokyo is packed with galleries (and people with cameras in general).

As a place to take pictures, Tokyo really grabbed me. It was actually cloudy and rainy for a lot of the time I was there, but when the sun was out there were so many good pictures waiting to be taken. A few pictures follow, with relevant links at the end.

sorry, these images are optimized for RSS readers. just click through if you're using a browser.

tokyo diary (words) - tokyo diary (a few more photos than you see here)

NYC

Across the Golden Gate

Weekend bike trip with the Kisekae. Processing in homage to Moriyama.

A first project

This weekend I'm walking by Clarion Alley and a couple of girls stop me and ask me to take their picture with their Olympus DSLR. So as I take the camera, they tell me that they want me to shoot as they jump up in the air together. I couldn't believe it. Here's a picture I took in Ireland:

Powerscourt Gardens, Kisekae camera

Why jump in midair while being photographed in front of Clarion Alley? Why jump in front of Powerscourt Gardens, for that matter? Isn't that 'not acting natural'? What does 'acting natural' mean when the setting of the photo is, in some way, the real subject? Would it be possible to act 'natural' anyway? Is the function of this type of picture to commemorate something? (An experience?) Will the value of this type of picture always be strictly ornamental?

As I looked over a bunch of my shots from the past year or so, I realized that many of my favorites are the ones I took of people as they photographed each other. By 'favorites,' I mean two things: contentment with how the pictures came out, of course, but also my own enjoyment as I took them. I'm thinking of making this into a project for myself, let's call it Other people's photos.

The idea of the project is to record a moment that was meant for another camera. In my experience, the opportunity to 'steal' these images occurs most frequently when people take pictures at some landmark or point of interest. These pictures are normally uninteresting (you can find many of them on Facebook), but I think there is a hidden value to them that can be brought out. The project will work if I can show these posed figures so that they appear candid.

Does this picture work? Does it appear candid? Comments welcome. For my own judgment, though, I'll really have to wait and see until the rest of the collection takes shape.

In a beautiful place out in the country

Glendalough, Ireland

Here's a photo I took using the "Kisekae" camera, which is a toy camera made in Japan by the totally awesome SuperHeadz. The appeal of the Kisekae is that you can cut out a piece of paper or photo and mount it in the front of the camera, which is transparent. I've been meaning to catalog the toy cameras I use beyond the Supersampler, because more than anything else, they're tons of fun to use. I've actually got a Supersampler image loaded in the front of the Kisekae right now.

This photo is definitely not my worst ever, and I think there's something sort of interesting going on here. However, the Kisekae is not the camera one would want in this situation! When you look closer, you'll find that the picture is quite blurry on the whole, where a piece of real glass would resolve more detail. (There's nothing more to resolve on the negative, because I'm scanning my own negatives now. Yesssss.)

forest for the trees

The camera wasn't the only thing that let this picture down of course. For starters, getting closer to those people would have helped a lot. I do think it's possible to make printable images with this camera, and I have one roll from summer (SUMMER!) that I know is worth revisiting. I'll scan some of the good shots from it and see what comes out. In the meantime, I've filed this under "useful failures."

I see white people

Back from Japan. I've posted a traditional photo album on Picasa.