Masako and I made the trek to Harajuku tonight for The Shins concert. It took a bit of arm twisting but I think the concept of not having to watch the musicians on a JumboTron intrigued her. The Shins played an excellent set, nicely mixing songs from both studio albums and a few from older EP's I hadn't heard before. The bass player (Dave Hernandez) wore a cast on his right arm, exposing only the ends of his fingers just allowing him to play. Marty Crandall (keyboards) said something about bones sticking out of the flesh, but I think that was just some comic relief, which he seemed to be in-charge of. That reminds me, can you actually buy nipple tape?

And they finished with one of my favourites, One By One All Day from Oh Inverted World, sporting pig, frog, and monkey masks. Apologies for the horrible photo. A phone-cam pic is all I could get away with.

Put away the glass and pull out the plastic. The good folks at toycamera.com have declared tomorrow World Toy Camera Day. Just what I need to get out of this creative slump, though I wouldn’t classify my Lomo Kompakt Automat as a toy. Built like a toy -- yes, but priced like the real thing. via photoblogs.org

I've always had a thing for the graphic designs covering skateboard decks, same goes for the t-shirt designs. These deck designs are now being appreciated as art rather than sports equipment at an exhibit traveling across Canada, making stops in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal. 32 Inch Canvas is featuring hand painted decks from 65 artists from across North America. Vancouver being the next opening for the show, October 16th at Livestock in Gastown.

Thanks to Greg, Andrew and Shimokitazawa's Antena Cafe for giving me the opportunity to show some of my work last month. If anything it was a good experience in printing and framing. Now I have to figure out what to do with all these photographs in an apartment with walls that have a difficult time holding a towel rack.

From the crew that brought us Sundown Sessions comes the Sunscreen Film Festival. An independent short-film contest for both first-time and veteran filmmakers. The submission deadline is October 22nd and the 10 finalist films will be screened Sunday November 21st in Shimokitazawa.

For all the details download the official info pack (pdf 1MB).

After the last few weeks of selecting, editing, printing and framing (no blood, a few tears and plenty sweat) ten photographs are now ready for my exhibition on Sunday. If you're in the area come by and enjoy the live and dj'd tunes from 5 till 10.

Date: Sunday Sept. 19th 5pm to 10pm
Event: Sundown Session 13.0
Venue: Antena Cafe, 2-14-2 Shimokitazawa JOW Building 4F

On Saturday I attended a b/w developing workshop at Jim O'Connell's put together by the Japan Photographer mailing list. James ran us through the basic makeup of film, the equipment, a bunch of stuff on silver halides and the benefits of alcohol consumption before, after and during the entire process.

More on the afternoon workshop from Jim , Kristen and Kurt. A few of my photos are here.

Last night I was one of a hundred or so lucky people to be the first to see Fahrenheit 9/11 in Japan. It was a private screening set up at Toho Cinema in Roppongi Hills for members of a group called Democrats Abroad Japan and the press. I'm neither a Democrat (I'm Canadian) nor a member of the press, so how did I get a ticket? A nice lady from the DAJ by the name of Lauren Shannon happen to check my site and asked me to take pictures during the evening. Felt cool being asked "Who you with?" while checking in at the press table. "The Times", or "The Post" I wanted to say.

The film was exactly what I expected it to be, excellent. No big surprises or changes of heart for me as my despise of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq was well established already. Some photos I took during the evening can be found here. Unfortunately I could not attend the post screening party as the last train forced me to run out of the theater while the credits were rolling. Sticking around and taking more photos would have been great but killing time in a coffee shop till the trains start running at 5 am is not my idea of fun.

The next Sundown Downtempo Session, this coming Sunday (June 6), will feature the photography of fellow photoblogger Kevin Cameron.

If you don't want to get lost in the rain trying to find the venue like me make sure to check the map for antena, or if you like getting lost in the rain feel free to use my rushed napkin-map.

On the way back from Shinjuku on sunday I stopped in at Sundown Towntempo Session in Shimokitazawa. It was also opening night for Andrew Beveridge's photo exhibition, which made it a great excuse for attending. Here's a few photos I took, and should see a few more I took on Andrew's Canon 10D dSLR up on Sundown's site soon.

world peace now 3.20 @ hibiya park. starts at 1pm

to find march 20 events in your area check united for peace

a great collage of images from last year's internatonal day of action can be seen in a system of a down's music video for "boom" in which they teamed up with director michael moore.