Maria Cross: polychromatic
We stumbled on a quick Maria Cross [warning, very drab website, all in Japanese] performance in Shinjuku on Friday night, just before the cops shut him down again…. There are a heap more photos to come from that night, and no, it’s not all Maria Cross… Hopefully I’ll get a chance to edit them a little this week but I have another busy week ahead of me so I don’t know if it’ll happen any time soon. I’m loving shooting at 1600 iso and getting deep grain for my night street shots. Probably a little overkill but, hey, it’s fun. You can see some more fabulous Maria Cross action at Youtube here.
[posted with ecto]
Technorati Tags: canon, canon300D, japan, shinjuku, sigma17-70mm, streetphotography, tokyo, web
Shibuya
Spend the day yesterday wandering around Ebisu (where we saw the excellent Tokyo seen by Magnum photographers exhibit at the Tokyo Museum of photography and ran into Skorj and John Sypal) and then into Shibuya where we visited the East/West Propaganda Project exhibit (cool, colourful and free!), all with Christian and a friend of his, just arrived in Japan from our home town of Brisbane. I’m such a ditz, totally can’t remember her name. She would randomly ask heavy questions about life in Japan. It got me thinking about many things. Anyways….
Lovely day, took heaps of pics following people (I’m such a lazy photographer), all up at flickr now, but most specifically at the Random Tokyo and Tokyo Street Art albums…
Today is the first day in about 5 or so months that I haven’t woken up and put the heater on straight away. 20 degrees, sunny. I gotta get out into it. Mata ne.
[posted with ecto]
Technorati Tags: events, exhibitions, flickr, friends, japan, photography, shibuya, streetart, streetphotography, tokyo
New Years Day 2007
After a leisurely New Years Day breakfast and coffee, we made the trek out to Asakusa to join the other million or so temple-goers to visit Sensoji, one of my fave temples. I’ve always avoided such New Years Day activities out of fear of crowds, but you know what?! It was a lovely day – full of amazing sights and sounds, and truly, the Japanese are masters at keeping it cool in often overwhelming crowds. No flaring tempers, just an electric, happy vibe. The way Sensoji is laid out made it easy to negotiate the crowds and get great photos without actually having to stand in the main line into the temple. The side areas were all laid out with stalls selling New Years paraphernalia and food and had a great atmosphere.
We were feeling pretty confident after negotiating the massive crowds for a few hours there so we decided to hit Meiji Jingu in Harajuku after that – arriving there just on sunset. Again, a beautiful atmosphere, full of excitement but no jostling or pushing and shoving at all. Amazing really when you consider the sheer numbers of people involved. Seriously millions in a day. I shit you not. It was cool to walk down the long gravel avenue with such a cross section of Japanese – families in traditional dress, young punks and goth-lolita types, cooler-than-cool dudes, stylin’ chicks, old people, kids, couples, tourists – everyone heading in the same direction, to do the same thing: pray for the new year, in this electric atmosphere. Quite special really.
The day was also exciting for me because I got to shoot the whole thing on borrowed lenses: a Sigma 24 – 70 MM 2.8 and a Canon 10 -22 MM 3.5, and I decided to test my new software and shoot in RAW format for the first time ever. I’m pretty happy with the results and am relieved to realise that it’s not my camera that is crappy – it’s just the lens I’ve been using. I’m kinda shocked that Canon would ship such an inferior lens as part of their Kiss/Rebel kit! Anyway, You can see more photos at the New Years Day 2007 photoset at Flickr.
And all the best to you all for a great 2007.
Technorati Tags: japan, photography, meiji jingu, shibuya, streets, tokyo
This week in pic’s
Haku is a hilariously cheeky Chinese boy I know. I’m photographing the boogers up his nose here. No actually, I was trying to catch his beautiful brown eyes but failed miserably. Still, I like this photo a lot.
I stumbled upon this scene in Kichijoji last weekend.
Charlene at our fave kichijoji bar
!Beatdown! punks getting drunk
Add a couple of other late nights with J-buddies, an all-nighter in a colour-developing photo darkroom in Shinjuku (with no heating), and then visualize about 32 English lessons (and their preparation) in various school rooms, community centres and cafe’s around Tokyo…. and you will understand why I slept 12 hours last night. Really gotta settle down on the burning-the-candle-at-both-ends-thing. Ha! Off to the pool, need to de-calcify my back. Have a great weekend ya’ll.
Technorati Tags: friends, funny, japan, kichijoji, parties, photography, streets
W.I.G. out. Part One
Today was the inaugural W.I.G. out event. I haven’t mentioned W.I.G. here yet and I really should have written about it when I got home last night and posted this entry but I was a wee bit tipsy and forgot.
W.I.G.: Warm Inner Glow. The name of our new club.
Kat, Christian and I are all Brisbane kids (from the same town in sub-tropical Queensland) and we hate winter with a passion. It sends us all quite batty. In a bad way. So we have come up with an experimental defense plan… The Warm Inner Glow club will have monthly expeditions all through winter designed specifically to cheer up we pathetic little tropical kids. Octobers W.I.G. Out was Christian’s plan, November will be mine (which will be easy coz it’s my Bday month although Kat and Daz will be in The States for most of the month) and December will be Kat’s plan.
2/3rds of the W.I.G. Out club spent the day at the Earth Festival at Yoyogi today. Fabulous, and the plan worked, not only were we full of warm-inner-glow but also beer and general merriment. Kat was off with an old friend recovering from last nights Peaches show last night and enjoying an onsen, but she’ll definitely be at the next one! A few more random shots over at Flickr.
Technorati Tags: funny, japan, parties, photography, portraits, tokyo
Seeking foreign women for photography project
I’m working on a cool project for a magazine and require foreign women subjects. Because I’m going to be out of town for most of summer I need to get a bit of a backlog together to cover me for while I’m away. The brief is for stylish (but not necessarily beautiful), happy foreign women in the streets of Tokyo, just doin’ their thing. There is absolutely no need for prior experience as a model, but an ability to work it for the camera would be handy. There is no money involved but all models can get free prints and full resolution digital files from the shoot as payment if they want them. Please email me at martine at frangipani dot info – thanks!
You can see some other portraits I’ve taken at my Flickr Portraits Set. I know they’re not all great but I’m working on it. I do love trying to get a good portrait. Anyone out there want to help me out?
Technorati Tags: japan, photography, portraits, streets, tokyo
Bare arms, bare legs.
The weather has been glorious here in Tokyo over the last 2 days. Sunshine. 30 degrees. Bare arms. Bare legs. Frigid trains and cafe’s. Ice cream and beer. Park parties and DIY hanabi (convenience-store-purchased fireworks for general use, especially popular amongst groups of drinkers in parks across the city). Yukata’s (summer kimono’s). Humidity. School holidays just around the corner. Everyone’s gettin’ frisky.
And only 27 sleeps till Thailand.
If anyone has any tips on cool stuff to see and do in the 2 weeks I’ll have free in Thailand before I start the course, please leave a message in the comments. I’m kinda sad I’ll be missing all the fun summer stuff Tokyo has to offer but hey, 6 weeks of summer in Thailand – and more specifically 4 weeks in Phuket – ain’t gonna be too shabby. All those gorgeous beaches, all that great food.
Technorati Tags: inokashirakoen, japan, kichijoji, photography, tokyo
Dancing Girl Re-dux
My favourite picture from this year. I took this at Sarah and Keisuke’s wedding party in Harajuku back in April and did actually publish it at the time but this is a much better quality file and I wanted to republish it… The dancer (a friend of Sarah and keisuke’s) is actually a Japanese salsa dancer. The salsa scene is pretty big here in Tokyo. Anyway, she went off on the dancefloor that night and everyone loved it.
I have discovered the joys of medium format negative scanners, which grab the holga photos I’ve been shooting recently way better than the crappy old flatbed I’ve been using. Stand by for a truckload of black and whites from the Holga.
Special thanks to Jeremy for the scanner, tea, tasty lemon meringue bikkies and uniquely Glaswegian semantic jokes…
Technorati Tags: holga, photography, blackandwhite, toycameras
Taipei gallery up
Just finished uploading 40 pics from my Taipei adventure and must run out the door to ride over to Kat and Darin’s for the Season 2 finale of LOST. Woot!!!! A beautiful sunny day today, beer and merriment and more LOST excitement than you can poke a stick at tonight and I don’t start work till midday tomorrow. I feel human again. And it just keeps getting better – an almost completely free weekend.
Shinjuku nights
This is where I had some late night snacks and beers with my friend Helen after finally watching “Walk the Line” in Shinjuku on Saturday night. While it’s definitely still wintery weather, things are slowly starting to warm up and we sat outside at this oden cart for about an hour before it got too cold to bear.
I’ve got this feeling that there’s something that I missed
A beautiful woman washed in beautiful light in Shibuya on Saturday morning
Somewhere a clock is ticking.
Visa problems. Long story.
The weird winter blues in me and everyone around me. *Sigh.
I want to be far away from here.
Walking from Shibuya to Daikanyama
These pics were taken yesterday evening as I walked from Shibuya to Daikanyama for the Snow Patrol show (which I didn’t end up getting into because I’m a moron and didn’t get round to buying advance tickets.)
The streets of Ryogoku
Waiting for a friend
Kimono’s in Ryogoku
Flags outside the Ryogoku Sumo Kokugikan as the crowds gather
The streets around Ryogoku, and the Grand Sumo Tournament at the Ryogoku Kokugikan.
Tags: Japan, Tokyo Streets, street photography
Interesting angles in Shibuya
So I wonder just what exactly the photographer is trying to photograph…
in a new york state of mind
goddamn it’s been so humid and hot (the last 2 days have been 37/6 degrees with 98% humidity!) it makes me imagine all those gang movies set in new york summers with everyone in their white singlets and looking like they just got out of the shower… which made me remember that i had never finished editing my pictures from the astonishing sakuragicho graffiti wall of fame!.
back in april i tooka daytrip with some friends to yokohama. we spent the day wandering around chinatown and the harbourside, riding (allegedly) the worlds biggest ferris wheel (scarier than one would imagine) and then photographing the endless offerings of graffiti on the other side of sakuragicho station. some of it was really very beautiful – and skillfully executed.
i think that maybe most of it was done by off-duty US army guys seeing there are some big bases in and around yokohama. but some of it definately shows signs of local flavour. i also uploaded some new pics to the tokyo street art sub-gallery and moved it into my “projects” gallery coz i wanna keep collecting this stuff.
hey if you wanna see some crazy animations, please check out darin‘s latest animations. i loved this stuff! goodonya daz.
he says:
“Technically this is advertising, which I’ve always said I don’t ever want to do, but it’s character animation (which I’ve always wanted to do), and during the meeting, they kept saying the most important thing is to ‘make it as crazy as possible,’ so I’m fine with it. Plus, they said the reason they chose me was that my sense of humor was ‘the closest to a junior high school boy’s,’ so I considered that a great compliment.”
been somewhat over-prolific here lately, i think i’m just hiding out from the humidity by hanging in my room (in the safety of the air con). have been keeping busy on the private student search front though – despite the heat. am up to 9 now! bring it on.
electioneering in tokyo
this weekend saw the upper house elections here in japan. koizumi lost some seats and many see these results as the beginning of the end of the most distinguished looking PM japan has ever had….
all around the major centres we saw electioneering crowds and vans, bellowing out over loudhailers across busy intersections and railway entrances. even heavy rain on saturday couldn’t dampen their fervour….
tokyo street art
urban guerilla street artists are prolific in tokyo.
please check out the updated tokyo street art gallery
buddies in town
some friends from home are visiting – james and bec. been takin’ them all around, including a trip back to the old home town, fujiyoshida for a glorious day of fuji-gazing. nice to hear all the music goss from home – james is a veritable fount of gossip since he has his fingers in so many pies – including production of a new series for MTV australia (which is why he is here, and has just been in NY and LA). he also bought with him a million NY pirated films including kill bill 2 which i am planning to settle down in front of shortly…. we’ve been talking about the possibility of me working on some stories for the series – crazy tokyo adventures…. i think i might have a go. my uni major was film and it’s been a long time since i dabbled.
actually i’ve also been talking to an aussie consultant based here, who is investigating a long term plan – with a local fella – to set up a touring circuit and a permanant regular venue for australian bands. it’s all still very much in the planning stages and they may decide it ain’t worth the effort but he figures there’ll be a place for me in the plan if it does go ahead. nice.
please check out aaron farleys very excellent photography. james stayed with aaron and his girlfriend while in LA.
and finally, i told nicole that i would put out a call to japanese locals/old-timers who might know if there are any online telephone directories for japan – she needs to locate some old friends. sites in japanese are OK.
