_valerian

I picked up my first color prints that I shot with my new pentax 67 from my local fuji-color shop yesterday. (120 film is sent out somewhere else) Blazing across the envelope that the prints were in it said FUJICOLOR DIGITAL PRINT. I thought they looked a little funny, not like 160NC portra at all.

damn.

So these are rough scans of digital prints (cropped by the printer-machine). The film scanned was 160 NC Portra. The acutal prints were extremely sharp. I will probably put somescans of black and white prints (that I need to get to anyway) up next week or so.

This is how ads in the train look from how I see them.

First, keep in mind that there are about 12 million people in what most people consider as Tokyo. This is not Lincoln, Nebraska, where I without fail I would see someone I knew everytime I left the house.

September 2004:
At Narita airport, after seeing a friend off I felt a tap on my shoulder while in line at McDonalds. I turned around to find Noriko, the JTB travel agent who came to Nebraska a few months earlier, looking as suprised as I was to see each other.

October 2004:

In a yamanote train car I met Nozomi as she exited at Ikebukuro staion. This was actually the content my first post ever.

November 2004:

On the joban platform at Matsudo station, Yoko and I recognized each other, the last time we met was at Senshu University in 2002.

December 2004:

Once again at Matsudo station, I met another Senshu student, Naho, who had come to Nebraska a few years ago.

Other Times-
I should have kept better track because I am confused with the dates. From here I will work backwards from last night.

Last night:

At Starbucks in Shunjuku’s Lumine department store I saw Tomoko Irie, a former teacher of Japanese at the University of Nebraska in 2001.

About two weeks ago:

While sitting at the same starbucks (where I meet my recently married friend Rie for english practice) Ayako, a former RA at the kokusai kenshu kan international dorm at Senshu University came to our table to say hi. I had not seen her since Senshu’s graduation in 2002.

About a month ago:
While waiting for Rie at the South exit of the Odakyu line, Aya’s sister Mayuko came up to me and said hi. The weird part was how it took my brain a second or two to recognize her and who she was. I know her well enough but it was the combination of the person and the place that threw me off .

This spring:
I met my friend Jun in Shinjuku by accident, but I don’t want to count this because we were both going to a nomikai that night anyway, but we did meet an hour earlier than we were supposed to, and in an entirely different location than had been set before.

I met Aya in the Nikon Salon by chance in February.

In Shibuya after seeing Arakimentari I soon came across a Mayu, one of Mistugu Onishi’s students whom I met at her class final exhibition(That is her on the far left). I took her and her friend’s picture as they took mine (she is the second in from the left).

So that is about one person a month that I meet by chance. Or fate.
One other thing though– Before Onishi Mitsugu’s slide talk in Shinjuku 2 months ago or so, I had a chance to meet his wife and daughter (「大西先生、二人の娘がいったっけ」と私が言った）. I went back a few days later to see the show again and his wife was there as well. We got to talkin’ and she said that her daughter’s friend (who was also there at the slideshow) had seen me before. She then asked if I had ever taken photographs at Waseda University- and I have. In December we took interested students from our 3rd year jr high class on a campus tour, and I did indeed snap a few rolls of film. Whats more, this daughter’s friend’s american boyfriend said that based on her description of me, he remembered seeing me sometimes at Matsudo station, despite the fact that we had never met. And there is no way that that friend who saw me at Waseda knew that I live in Matsudo.

So, “random” chance meetings are now expected, about once a month.

someone is going to find me

Every night after I get home I get 5 rolls to developing and then I sit down at my kitchen table for my latest task at hand: Portfolio Negative Searching.

I cut my negatives into groups of 5, then I used to file them into negative files (of all things) which have 7 pockets but I used to only use 6 of them. This was to make it easy when I decided to go through and make contact prints. Clever readers will know that a roll of 36 frame film will not fit into 6 rows, as this will usually leave you with one little stub of 2 or three frames extra. The reason whay is that 6 rolls is the maximum that will fit on a standard 8×10 sheet of paper.
For a long time I just made orphan-sheets and put all the little ones into the same file- which made it kind of confusing because I would have six #36 and E frames in one file. Like I said, I planned to do contact sheets but after sheet 400 (By the way, Fuji has 100 count negative file sheets for like, 1200 yen. I grab a few at a time) I was all like, screw this Ain’t no way I am going to spend 2oo dollars on photo paper just to see these, so I started just usinsg one sheet per roll, and save for the 6×7 negative sheets, Contact Prints are not in my future.
But the real meat to the search is this: I go through a binder a night with my little light-board, a loupe and a pen and paper. I look at each frame and when I find the one I am looking for, I write the roll number (#1 was when I arrived here) and the frame number. Then I draw a little sketch of the photo and write keywords to remind me which one it is. Usually this gets me so sleepy I end up in bed by like 10. The goal is to get through all 500 or so rolls and print the maybe 100 (out of 18,000 pictures) Good Ones during summer break.

that
is
my
system