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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.