So I finally got around to having a growing collection of b/w film developed. A few rolls going back close to a year, so it's safe to say my photoblog will be chronologically challenged for a little while. In other news, Masako and I bought our first home, a townhouse 15 minutes from downtown in View Royal which means we'll be moving yet again at the end of April. We decided it was time to stop paying off someone else's mortgage and start paying down one of our own.

On the way home from the office today (on call technical support), I spotted what looked like a vintage camera case in the window of a thrift shop. It turned out to be a Konica C35 Automatic, a compact rangefinder from the early seventies I'd been eyeing on Yahoo! Auctions for a while in Japan, and they only wanted six bucks for it. There's some minor deteriation of the foam seals, but other than that it's clean and feels solid. This will be the perfect take-anywhere camera to keep in my bag. I just need to buy some dirty cheap film to put through it.

Update: I shot a test roll today which came out quite well despite not enough battery power to operate the meter needle. I replaced the old 1.35v mercury battery with a Wein Cell MRB675, which is meant to replace any camera specifying PX675 mercury cells, and it's like new. And my request for the missus next hair cut to be like that of the Konica model above was respectfully declined.

Advertising/Design Goodness just posted an interesting layout of Canon logos since 1943 (above). From Canon, While I dig the whole "1,000 arms and flames" concept, you have to admit todays logo, while sterile in comparison, just feels better.

I can't believe it's taken this long to come across the incredibly sick imagery of Kawahara Kazuhiko, AKA Palla. He takes photographs from the urban landscape of Osaka and mixes them to create beautiful mirrored and other interesting effects. His published book, The Book of Pallalink, is for sale in limited quantity and more work can be found on his weblog. Thanks to Jean Snow.

One of the last books I purchased before leaving Japan was a reprint of William Eggleston's Guide. Eggleston's homage to the mundane accompanied his one-man show, and the first of colour photographs exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1976.

In filmmaker Michael Almereyda's newly released documentary, William Eggleston in the Real World, he "poses a fundamental question to the renowned photographer: What does it mean to see the world so differently that "common" images are converted into unforgettable photos?" Now I just have to figure out how to see this film short of traveling to New York.

William Eggleston on the web:

The Eggleston Artistic Trust

Salon Brilliant Careers on Eggleston

Getty Museum

Metacritic reviews of In the Real World

If you're in Shinjuku this week be sure to stop by and check out John Sypal's exhibition, Nebraska: The Good Life, hanging at the Nikon Salon.

I've always disliked how my photos load in the browser, too choppy and it bugs me when the text gets shifted down the page. Looks darn unprofessional. Flash is cool, but a little out of my reach. The alternative, javascript. I'm getting ready to change servers (and hosts) so I'm having to go through and reinstall all the applications I use here, one being an updated version of Noel Jackson's slick PhotoStack. The current version (2.1b7 at the time of this writing) uses a script that gives a cool flash-like fade-in of your photos that I was able edit and use in MT. More info from the code author here.

(note to people reading via RSS reader, I can't get this to work in the feed so you need to open the post in a browser to see the magic.)

The above photo care of Philip Dyer (John Sypal and myself) was taken at the end of our photo shoot/trek from Kitasenju to Nippori on Wednesday. My film's sitting on the bookshelf, and will be getting on that real soon. John and Guy (1 and 2) have theirs up, with more to come.

And on another note, it almost killed me but this site finally validates (for now). Valid XHTML 1.0 transitional baby!

I find taking photos of strangers incredibly difficult (read: introvert + prime lens) and shooting candids in public with a telephoto just seems wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm hesitant to stick my lens in a strangers face --- and I need to work on that. What this means is that I end up with mostly backs of heads, feet and mirrored reflections. But what if you could get strangers to volunteer having their street portrait taken?

Check out Zach's and Youngna's portraits as well as Neil's series starting here. Anyone in Tokyo interested? Manjyu and Strangers? Senbei? Louis Vuitton bags (small ones)?

How'd I miss this one? Last I heard Ilford was looking for a buyer and if they couldn't find one might have to start closing production facilities. The new Ilford management also stated that they would be ‘The last man standing’ where black & white products are concerned. That's great news, but it sure gives you the feeling (and you'd be right) like film makers are being picked off one by one.

It's official. The wide angle bug didn't just bite me, it all out mauled me to pieces. What started out as an innocent enough trip to Kinokuniya to buy Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places turned into an hour long hike around Shinjuku Station trying to remember where Map Camera was. I remembered that it was behind either Bic or Yodobashi Camera and it didn't help that they're at every bloody exit.

The infection flared up on the 4th floor (used Nikon and Contax) and a once loved manual focus Ai-S 20mm f/2.8 was the cure, or at least a soothing ointment of sorts. Next on the Yahoo auction block, my Ai-S 50mm f/1.8. I haven't had a chance to really try out the 20mm aside from a few shots (above) on the end of yesterdays roll, but it would be safe to expect more wide angle stuff from now on.

I've got a few items that don't quite deserve dedicated entries so I'll try to sum them up in one posting.

Trying to listen to a badly ripped version of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States: Highlights from the 20th Century (read by Matt Damon) on the train was the tipping point in convincing me to search for replacements to the standard iPod ear buds. I settled on a pair of Sony MDR-EX71SL in-ear type earphones. They do a great job of blocking out noise on the train, as well as keeping bodily noises in, or rather amplify them in my head. On the way home from work last week I ran into a KFC between stations for a quick dinner, paused the music and removed one ear phone to place my order. As I ate my twister I kept the music paused, put the right earphone back in my ear (for symmetry) and was amazed by the how loud the crunching, gulping, swallowing and breathing sounds got in my head. It was like putting your ear to the abdomen of a pregnant dog.

I made a great vegetarian chili last night, then added ground beef. It's sad how my brain is trained to be suspicious of meatless dishes. I keep telling myself next time I'll leave the meat out. I don't know what's stopping me as the beef really doesn't add much to the dish in the way of flavour (tabasco, chilies, paprika and cayenne take care of that).

Developed my first roll in many months on Saturday. I haven't developed as much as I would like due to the fact that until now I've had to wait until Frankie has gone to bed before pulling out the chemicals. With better planing, quick and thorough cleaning as I went, I was able to finish one roll, from mixing chemicals and loading the tank to hanging the negatives to dry in less than 15 minutes, or the time it takes Frankie to watch her inai-inai-ba DVD.

I buy and read books in quick rapid spurts followed by droughts where I systematically forget about the books I've bought and start adding more to my wish-list. I received the latest shipment from Amazon in the mail yesterday and will post on one of them shortly.

I'm not an antisocial person by any means, though when I'm invited out to larger gatherings in the city I tend to shy away. My mind goes through all the possible scenarios; I drink too much and feel lousy the next day, I miss the train and have to pay 20,000 yen in cab fare to get home, I don't recognize any faces and everyone feels unapproachable and so forth. My new secret weapon is the camera. Now every-time I hear about a party I think of it as an excellent photography opportunity, where, for the most part, people don't mind getting their photo taken up close and most rather enjoy it.

Phone-cams get little respect, as do compact 35mm and digital cameras. Polaroids are fun but none of these seem to garnish respect like my Nikon SLR with Speedlite flash. And I love being able to move around the room and jump into conversations if the opportunity presents itself, or shoot a few frames and move along.

Here are a few more photos from Saturday I scanned late last night, and yes I'm still learning how to use the flash.

There's been all kinds of rumors floating around lately as to who might be buying flickr, so I really had to laugh when I opened flickr.com to see their new logo. (you need to be logged in to see it)

I posted to my fotolog for a few months last year and had a handful of favourites I regularly browsed. A year later fotolog.net is completely off my radar and I haven't heard anyone even mention the name until I came across the fotolog.net group on flickr. A place where floggers re-introduce themselves and start threads like "I think Fotolog is dead!". Fotolog still boasts a massive user base of a million users, but no info on how many of that million are active.

Fotolog did have their limits (like restricting posts to one a day, and painfully slow server response at times) but it was free to use and void of advertising, things we lose sight of sometimes. I had to use wayback machine to verify the point about advertising because I see they're using google ads now.

As for me, I've been blown away by flickr and plan on using it from time to time to post photos directly from my phone, until the novelty wears off --- again.

I've been following Vincent's Now and Then photographs of Yokohama since he started posting them in September. His shots of modern day Sakuragicho, Yamashita-koen, Motomachi and nineteen other city landmarks contrasted against postcards of Yokohama during the Meiji Era (1868�1912) are quite interesting.

The inaugural issue of JPG Magazine is now available hot off the presses. I'm familiar with a few of the featured photographers in this issue, Redrick deLeon, Tracey Hoyng, Sam Javanrouh, Rion Nakaya, Brian Utley and looking forward to discovering the others.

I chose the International Economy 'Slow Boat' shipping option so I'll be holding my copy in 3-4 weeks. It's not cheap at $19, but the numbers convinced me. 52 pages, 6 inches wide, 9 inches tall, 20-pound white interior paper, 100-pound white exterior paper, and 0 ads.

Since returning from our holiday in Canada I've built up a fairly large backlog of photos, of which I will try to post one a day, for a while. I find this more interesting than dumping everything in an album labeled "My Holiday", and it allows me to be a bit more selective as well.

All photos were taken with my FM3A, a 28mm f/2.8 lens and Fuji Provia 100F and 400F. I've also let a few trickle in from my new Canon P rangefinder, but more on that later.

It's been a while since I last visited Ryan Flynn's site lighttight and after a few clicks I immediately had to add him to my links page. I'm not sure about Ryan's photography background, or even the equipment he's using, as his info page is pretty slim, but I expect to see his name in a magazine pretty soon if it hasn't yet already. Just check out some of his portraits and see for yourself.

Mooncruise Magazine is another favourite as of late. The mixture of photography and music coexist perfectly side by side. Webites with music usually bug me to no end, but you'll want to pause the iTunes when browsing the ten mooncruise issues. Nudes, architecture, abstract, it's all there.

A visit to Shibuya's Tower Records before the holiday helped me decide on Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places: The Complete Works as my next photobook purchase. From Amazon's product description, Tower records seems to be a great place to check out photography, design and other graphic books, though I'd have to be slightly mad to pay their prices.

And as always featured.nu provides a steady diet of fresh photography links from around the world well worth your time.

If you're interested in Japanese skateboarding then I highly recommend finding a copy of a quarterly magazine called Skateboard Journal. I wish I could point you to their website but they don't have one, or at least I haven't been able to find it.

Quality designed, fifty-plus full page and spread photos on thick glossy paper for 500 yen is an absolute steal considering the price of photo books. The last photo book I purchased was Masataka Nakano's Tokyo Nobody (recommended as well) but also five times the price. Of course photo books aren't packed with advertisements but I'm not complaining, as some of the best photography is found in the ads. And I wouldn't find cool websites like this, makers of the Full Metal Jacket.

The autumn/winter 04 issue highlights local talent Koichi Kitamura, Hiroki Saegusa, Jin Takayama, Hirotaka Akaguma, Shin Okada, Junnosuke Yonesaka, Shintaro Maruyama, Tadashi Muroi, Tatsuya Nogami, Daisuke Tanaka, Hisashi Nakamura, Daiki Hosoda, and Ryujin. And yes, they've been doing that well before the iPod ads.

I've been pining for a wide angle lens ever since our photo developing workshop, when I swapped my 50mm with Jim's 20mm. Having been accustom to 50mm, the 20mm opened the frame up so much I could almost see the back of my head. Yesterday I finally gave in and shelled out for a used manual focus Nikkor AiS 28mm f/2.8, which should be here in 1-2 days. Besides, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to own an SLR and only one lens, well at least that's what I've been telling myself.

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

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.

San Francisco based photographer Todd Hido, master of natural lighting and huge favourite of mine, has a series of photos featured at featured.nu alongside a mini Q&A. Quadruple espressos? Sounds like advice from a lomographer not someone who shoots in very low light. Obviously he's got one hell of a sturdy tripod.

The Japan Photography Mailing List spontaneously combusted yesterday when out of the blue the list maintainer Juergen Specht decided on his own it was no longer worth his trouble and deleted both the list of 250 plus members and more than a years worth of archived messages from his servers with no warning. Those thousands of messages accumulating a wealth of information, reviews, advice and general photography conversation between its members. Thanks Juergen, that was real swell of you. Jerk. Read what Jim, Kristen and Kurt had to say.

The list has been tentatively restarted at Yahoo! Groups so if want to join, or for that matter re-join the conversation send a mail to japanphoto-subscribe[at]yahoogroups[dot]com

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

The above images are the product of yesterday's late night kitchen developing session. This was the first time to get my hands wet with chemicals and despite the fact that I forgot to get a thermometer, bent the film badly on the reel and was pretty drunk, I think they came out nicely. I tried to stick with the Ilford product line (HP5 Plus 400 ASA, LC29 Developer and HYPAM Fixer) but had to bow to the fuji gods and buy their driwel wetting agent.

I sent my FM3A to Nikon to have the film advance and multiple-exposure lever fixed and luckily for me Nikon Japan doesn't know what a grey market warranty is. Now I only have my lomo, yashica, canon and sony digital camera to shoot with.

I'll be showing a small exhibit of photographs at the next sundown session in Shimokitazaka Sept. 19. If you're in the area drop by and check out the musical acts performing. I'll make a separate post on this later on.

For the past few months I've been using a new film scanner, the Nikon CoolScan V ED and the improvements have been phenomenal. The b/w scans I get and the upgrade to digital ice was well worth the price. Now I just have to sell the Minolta Dual Scan III.

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.

I recently contributed a photo to File, an online photography magazine. Other current contributors include a few favourites of mine Jose Luis Martinez, Justin Ouellette, Neal Curley and Eliot Shepard. They're also building on a nice collection of galleries, one in particular that caught my eye was "Three Polaroids from Crete" by Jim Green.

Picked up issue #35 and #38 of lodown magazine, a unique german skateboarding, music and graffiti mag found at murasaki sports. A few too many ads for my liking but the graphic design and refreshing photography was well worth the price, plus English interviews always help. There's also a book by the same name from lodown's art director Thomas Marecki.

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.

I've walked by it thousands of times on the newsstands, yet never picked up a copy. Aera magazine, from what I gather, is a weekly Japanese current events magazine but what makes it different is the cover design. The cover portrait is usually some current newsmaker, politician, business person or celebrity but the style is very simple yet unique and really sticks out on the newsstand magazine rack.

Most current event magazines seem to rely on flashy graphic photos and big bold headlines to attract the eye but Aera Magazine goes in the opposite direction. Not much more then the magazine name, portrait photo, and issue date with a solid colour background. Sometimes the photo lighting looks quite harsh and most of the portraits seem to be shot without any makeup, (with exception to the Lisa Marie cover, they must have come to an understanding during that shoot) or professional hairstyling creating a very simple, clean and realistic look and feel. I don't intend on actually buying a copy any time soon because I would hate to open it up and be disappointed. Rather I'll choose to believe the content is as good as the cover.

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.

Vincent Huang is having an exhibit of his Burning Man photography at Prinz in Kyoto. Prinz, www.prinz.jp , is located near the Chayama station of the Eidan railway in Northeastern Kyoto. The grand opening is Tuesday, April 20th at 6pm. link via japan tribe.net

audio interview with J Grant Brittain, Director of Photography at The Skakeboard Mag. Grant talks about how most of his younger photographers are more resistant to digital compared to older pros like himself.

worth a listen but you have to wait through some ads, thanks to Brian from ShootNewt for that one.

My most recent photo titled "waiting room" was actually taken a few months back at a clinic near our place. The title refers to lyrics by Fugazi "my time's like water down a drain" in Waiting Room (13 songs) easily their best record IMHO. this feels like a good topic to write about. but no time.

new edition of photography magazine 28mm is up with a submission from one of my favs, Justin Ouellette.

lately i've been trying to build confidence by take more photos of people on the street. i've found outside the train station a great place to do this with the abundance of amateur and professional musicians, skateboarders and even old school break dancers all usually willing to have their photo taken.

most exciting for me is the skateboard photography, so if you know where i can find groups of skaters in and around sagamiono or machida sta. willing to be photographed please let me know. thanks.

i recently acquired 10 cheap rolls of film from yahoo auctions. what's so different about this film you ask? well not much, they're all kodachrome 64 / 36 exposure colour transparency film still in the packaging and been expired for 16 years. that's right, best before june 1988. were not talking wine here so age does not improve the quality of film. even if it were frozen for those 16 years the quality must have been degraded significantly. so why buy it? because of the unpredictable results, the possibility of warped, faded, exaggerated colours duh.

little explanation on what happens to film when it ages from the jp mailing list.

unlike milk, film is actually at its perfect best peak when it hits that expired date. the manufacturers know that film might sit around in storerooms or shelves for months or even years before purchase and they also know that over time the film emulsion will shift. this shift in the emulsion is most noticeable with color film, where it goes slowly quietly gently ever so carefully to a total and complete blue. but this takes years and years. generally, this shift, within the reasonable usability of the film, is for most purposes, negligible so, anyway... in the factory, because the manufacturer knows about the shift, they set the emulsion up on this side of perfect, so that over time it will creep over and pass to that other side of perfect. either way a few months, give or take, of that expiration date is when the emulsion is at its absolute prime.

i've heard stories of big time l.a. photographers buying cases of color film and storing it in the trunk of the car so as to prematurely age it. to sweeten it as it were.

thanks to james luckett for this

some more photos from the nikon fm3a. i really should by a scanner now that 90 percent of my photos are now either from my lomo, yashica or nikon. any scanner recommendations? preferably one that can scan 35mm negatives and slides.

My father in-law lent me his Canon New EOS Kiss, known as the Rebel G in North America, so I can learn how to use an SLR and take some black and white photos. I took my first roll in on Sunday and will see the results tomorrow. That is one thing lost with digital, the anticipation.

Just a few experimental shots with the cybershot today. I found a bridge just around the corner from our apartment that crosses route 16. Our living room and bedroom patio doors open up to this very busy road but we have come accustom to it after almost 2 years living in Sagamiono. Actually the noisy road was a nice change from the US Navel base in Atsugi we used to live right next to. The air strip was only a stones through from our last apartment in Sagamiotsuka and we were right in the flight path. In the summer the navy pilots practiced their "touch and go" techniques until 11pm most nights, what hell that was! They would always seem to start training while I was making a long distance call home to my mom and have to go room to room trying to find a quite spot and end up in the bedroom closet just to hear her.