Do not enter, again

I had a photo with the same title here more than a year ago and coincidentally it was also taken in Boston - even on the same day.

Yep, the first color picture in 2011. I had to work a bit on this one until it looked the way I wanted it to look and surprisingly that made me fancy color again. Don't be surprised if you see more of this soon. You already noticed that I'm currently in an experimental phase, didn't you?

Tokyo

Taken through a hotel window early in the morning on a dusky November day. The light (on which I admit I had to work a bit) gives the picture a somewhat forbidding atmosphere and at the same time makes the houses look like toys.

Given the recent events, this old photo seemed fitting. And it's from the Ricoh series.

Textures

I forgot what I thought when I took this picture, but now I think it's about textures. I generally don't make conscious decisions when I'm pressing the shutter. In fact, I try to avoid thinking too hard and too long about a picture while I'm shooting. I prefer to be surprised by what I "saw" when I later see the contact sheet.

Another crosswalk

Do you remember the other one? This one is from Hamburg and was taken on November 26, 2008 (when it was almost dark) with the Ricoh.

Fake bricks

It's blurred, it has too much digital noise, the colors are off - and I like it nevertheless. With hindsight, I think it captures exactly what I "saw" when I took the shot.

A narrow side street in Asakusa, Tokyo on November 9, 2008. Taken with the Ricoh.

Plexiglas

A ship in Hamburg's harbor seen through a scratched plexiglas window on September 27, 2008.

Taken with the Ricoh at ISO 100, converted with Silver Efex Pro.

Bag of fish

I couldn't resist to add another photo from the Tsukiji fish market. Again a picture that grew on me after I initially rejected it.

November 11, 2008 in Tokyo, with the M8.2 at ISO 320. The photo was slightly cropped and converted using TrueGrain. Then I added a border.

10,000 meters above the sea

Does this photo qualify for the "out of the window" series? It captures a view out of an airplane while we were over the Atlantic. One thing's for sure - these airplane windows have to endure a lot more than your typical window. I think it was pretty cold outside.

Taken with the Ricoh on December 7, 2008. I tried several ways of framing this view in different lighting situations and eventually settled on this one.

Drapes

Ten seconds after I pressed the shutter, the woman living in this very little flat (you already see her head behind the door) came out and asked me what I was doing. I tried to explain that I just liked the combination of the curtain and the light behind the window, but she seemed suspicious. At least she didn't object to me shooting the photo.

Taken in Hamburg on November 26, 2008 with the Ricoh.

Autobahn

On the A7 while heading south on November 30, 2008. Not the first photo on this blog out of a car window, but this time I was the driver. I forgot how fast I was when I took the photo, but I like to think that it wasn't dangerous. I snapped this when it started to rain and it definitely came out as expected.

The M8.2 at ISO 320, converted using TrueGrain. Uncropped, but the photo needed a border.

8 Eyes

In the Akihabara area of Tokyo on November 10, 2008. I'm not sure anymore if the title was inspired by the photo's content or if I was rather subconsciously reminded of a Japanese Jazz LP called "Eight Eyes and Eight Ears" which I've had for a long time.

Taken with the M8.2 and the 28mm Elmarit at ISO 320.

The picture was converted directly to black-and-white in Lightroom without the aid of external tools. It was then slightly cropped and I added a small border because it looked as if it would otherwise fall apart.

The car

A battered car somewhere in Boston. I simply like the curved lines and the tones in the picture.

Taken in October 2008 with the 35mm Summicron on the M4-P on Tri-X. From the X-rayed series.

Tuna

Another one from the fascinating Tsukiji market in Tokyo. Most of what's happening there is about tuna.

Shot on November 11, 2008 with the M8.2 and the 28mm Elmarit at ISO 320. Converted to black and white using Silver Efex Pro.

Two joggers

Boston and the Charles river as seen from Cambridge, MA. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, this area is flooded with joggers.

Leica M4-P loaded with a roll of X-rayed Tri-X, October 2008.

Street jumble

I was very briefly considering to dedicate this photo to Daido Moriyama.  Not, of course, because I think that my pictures could be compared with his, but maybe because this one was inspired by him in one way or the other. But I'd rather not in order not to do him injustice.

Taken on November 14, 2008 in Tokyo (Minami-Aoyama) with the M8.2 at ISO 640 and converted using Silver Efex Pro. The lens was the 28mm Elmarit and the shutter speed was a whopping 15th of a second.

Part 3

Yet another view out of a window - this time from a boring chain hotel in Cambridge, MA on December 8, 2008.  This seems to become a kind of a series.

Taken with the M8.2 at ISO 320, converted using Silver Efex Pro.

Do not enter

I took almost the same shot of this street in Boston about two months earlier, but as it was on one of the films that were X-rayed, I went back and tried again. In this case, I think the second attempt was better than the first one, so here you have the digital version of a photo that I originally shot on film.

Taken on December 13, 2008 with the M8.2 at ISO 160. Converted to black and white using TrueGrain.

Three grumpy old men

Japan seems to have a plethora of old men whose main job it is to stand in front of construction sites, parking lots, and other places, doing essentially nothing. Well, OK, sometimes - very rarely - they might open a door or something like that, but most of the time to me it looked as if they were there just to be there.

This is probably a good thing as these guys might otherwise be unemployed and sit at home alone, but - coming from another part of the world - it looked strange to me.

This particular construction site even had three of them. Taken on November 10, 2008 in Tokyo with the M8.2 and a 28mm Elmarit at ISO 320.  Converted to black and white using Silver Efex Pro.

Here's an update I received from a Japanese visitor of this blog: "Those grumpy old men are very common in Japan. The Yakuza (Japanese mafia) bullies contractors into hiring them to do practically nothing and then takes a (big) cut. Along with loan sharking, it's one of the ways the Yakuza survives in the modern world."

X-rayed

When I was in Cambridge in October 2008, I took my old Leica with me. I hadn't had undeveloped films on a plane for several years and so I somehow managed to make the big mistake of checking in the Tri-X rolls with my luggage which you really, really shouldn't do. Only when the films came back from the lab did I realize that they had been essentially ruined by the X-rays on the airports.

Well, they're not totally unusable, but it's hard work to get at least some of them in a printable state. Even worse, I think that in this particular week I had more keepers than usual. This here is one of them - the reflections of two bridges in the water of Boston's harbor.

Thanks for all the fish

Together with a friend of mine I was in Tokyo last year. I had bought the M8.2 only a few days before this trip and of course I took it with me and shot lots of pictures. A few nice ones remain, but the majority of them seem strangely alien to me when I look at them now. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all to use a brand-new camera for an exciting city I had never seen before - not to mention that I had never shot digitally before. I would probably have taken totally different photos had I been there some months later.

Nevertheless, as I said there are a few which aren't too bad and this is one of them. We spent one morning at the very impressive Tsukiji fish market and we were lucky because only a month later the authorities decided to close it for tourists.

The photo (shot at ISO 320 on November 11) was converted to black-and-white using TrueGrain but wasn't cropped or otherwise modified. Once again a shot where I forgot which lens I used, but I think it was the trusty old 35mm Summicron.