So after the past few days here is what I have seen:
Today- Most of Enoshima Island, Some of Kamakura, and the views out the windows of a monorail that we took to Ofuna.
Yesterday- Smoking Mt. Asama seen from a temple built on the lava flow from the volcano. Everything was still covered in about a foot of snow.
Recently- The Shinkansen, a lot of Karuizawa, and a mess of other things and places. One of the higlights of the week was when the Vice Principal, a Tokyo Univ Art school Opera major, sang “My Way” on stage in the school gym to an audience 700 jr high students.
As photography is considered, the freedom of shooting in official Tourist Locations is indeed something great- People don’t care if you take their photos, and like I said before, one can take many, many photographs of Other People Photographing. That could be a title to an exhibition…
I took 24 rolls today- and a few yesterday. Hopefully I can get a day or two in of printing before school starts again.
Tomorrow’s plan: The Asakusa scene, and later visiting my friend’s father’s law office building in Odaiba.
In a few hours my family will arrive at Narita airport, and for the next week I will get to be a guide and a tourist. This is great because I will be shooting the entire time. There is a certian freedom that one has with a camera when you are at a place where everyone else is taking pictures, too. This lets me keep working on taking pictures of people taking pictures. I figure if someone has a camera in hand, they are fair game. There is something interesting about seeing pictures of people getting their picture taken.- how we present ourselves and what-not. The plan is for a day at Kamakura, and a night’s stay in Karuizawa. I will probably also be taking more of pictures of temples and shrines too.
Also, from this week Nick is off the bench and now down with the Japan blogger scene. He already has a Mac, a Japanese girlfriend, and witty writing skills. Enjoy his take on the country and life in general, as I sure do. Add him to your bookmarks and links. He will be living in Tsukuba city, which has a mountain that I can see from the 4th floor my school.
Film-wise I finally got caught up on developing those remaining rolls that were waiting so patiently for me to get to them. I filled negative sheets # 419 to 429 this morning. Part of me thinks I ought to take a month off of shooting and instead just print like crazy. I have yet to make any contact sheets, and to do so now I would have to spend about 200 dollars just to buy the paper for them. It would probably be cheaper to get a negative scanner and look at them that way.
Anways– check back this week if you want, there might be more here to see but maybe not.
Aya put some new photos up on her blog. Head on over there.
In continuing with the violent analogies from the other day, This is the newest weapon in my arsenal , the delightfully named Konica Big Mini. I believe that the other names that were in the running were “Little Biggie”, “Camera Fantastic” , and “You Don’t Need a Zoom Lens, A Set Thirty Five Milimeter Focal Length Is Good For You And Your Photography”. The Big Mini was made popular in Japan thanks to the beautiful Hiromix, a young female photographer who was incredibly popular a few years ago but now is not around so much. She did have some photos in Esquire two months ago though. You can see ALL of Hiromix for a few sweet seconds in Arakimentari, or for as long as you like in Araki’s book, “Araki by Araki”.
The Big Mini has a nice little set 35mm 3.5 lens. This means if you want to zoom, you have to manually pick up your feet and walk towards the subject. I ran a few rolls of “Konica 105 yen a roll” color film through it. The results were quite nice. I found the camera used at MAP camera for 3000 yen. Usually this machine is at least 8ooo yen used- The reason mine was so cheap was because it is broken. The camera functions fine- it’s just that the wires from the camera body that feed into the back door have frayed from door swinging use. This means the data back does not work. This is not a problem, but then again the film counter screen won’t work. Neither will the buttons that allow you to turn the flash on or off. But what I have is actually what I wanted- a small fixed lens point and shoot with a flash that is completely automatic. A Ricoh GR-1 would have been nice but for the price of one of those I could have bought like, seriously, 27 more broken Big Minis, or 10 good ones.
After I bought the camera (what could rightly be called an Impulse Buy), I shot a few rolls around Shinjuku with my M6. Those will be posted sometime this month, once I get them printed and scanned. After that I went to Shimo Kitazawa to meet up with some people off of the Japan Photographer Yahoo Group. I met Martine, Phillip, and Mark. We went to an izakaya and roughly 64% of the edamame were consumed by me. It was fun to meet people that I had only previously know from the internet.. Suddenly you have voices to match to blogs, and a feeling of realization that at any moment I might be held accountable for anything that I had written in the past. A good time was had by all. If you are reading this and in Tokyo, by all means come along with us next time.
It was too dark to take Phillp and Martine’s pictures in the izakaya, so you will just have to trust me that they were there. The two photos above do prove that I did meet Mark though. Mark comprises one third of probably one of the most photogenically cool families around. Evidence of this fact can be found in his photographs of the other sixty six percent of his family. The remaining 1% is uh.. let’s see.. The Populaire.
