_valerian

With some more pictures from each month and I might talk about something that probably concerns them.

In april I took photos of Azusa in Yanaka when the sakura were all out. None of which can be seen in the photo BUT you can see something weird about my nostril when the loopy end part of a Capital A is placed over it. I don’t know what is ever expected from our photo shoots- I enjoy taking the photos and she sure does like to be photographed, and despite not giving her the color 35mm prints until later in the summer (and not even yet printing the black and white from these sessions) we both have plans to have similar outings in the future.

This was also the month when Mike and I walked from Minami Senju to Shinjuku. Coming across Nippori station we “found” this TanTanMen shop that makes their noodles loudly by hand in a small shop that is painted red and black with large windows. The sakura trees outside reflect nicely in glasses of water and it is this kind of picture that makes me really like digital phtotography for the ease. The soup was great but just a day or two before (?) I had a wisdom tooth pulled and it was not as easy to eat as I had hoped. Repeated visits have proved it to be A Good Shop for food.

I went to Akihabara once this year. At a shrine they have this statue and I promise you that is not a peach.

With some pictures from each month and I talk about something that probably concerns them.

One of the cameras in that picture cost about 1/10 the price that the other goes for used. One of the cameras belongs to a student in the Yale photo grad program and if you have not figured it out yet that person is not me, but the Leica is mine.
I started 2006 out the same way I did for years 1979 to 2004 (excepting 0h-1 and 0h-5) and that was by simply “being in the Beef State”. On my last trip back I met Brad at the Coffee House (a coffee house!) to show him some recent pictures. Talking with UNL photo students like Brad or Justin or Ian is extremely and frightfully interesting. Me talking about photography with them is like me showing up with a nerf turbo to a knife fight. Not that they attack me in any way but in how they are super sharp and Get It. With my pictures I’ll be all saying things like HEY THIS FOAM FOOTBALL IS PINK AND BLACK AND TWISTY SHAPED and they would reply and point out something and it would be like if they said “Oh check this out, I can cut right through pepsi cans and then go back to thinly slicing tomatos and your expectations with my intellect”. But as they are shredding (articulating) concepts my mind keeps spinning and learning. Stupidly the best I can say is “yeah… I think so too” which is in no way false, because I agree. My mind flutters around for a Szarkowski quote to spit out but in the end it is still a good time. I leave from each meeting feeling smarter.
So I am excited to see who I can in the next 2 weeks. Sorry we can’t meet this time Brad. Justin if you got time email me.

The Nikon Salon is on the 28th floor of the Shinjuku L tower in Shinjuku(!) and a floor below or so is a large Toto showroom. They also seem to have gotten the contract to outfit the same building with their wares. Plus each restroom has some big mirrors. The second month (and hardest to spell) of the year was also the beginning of the Fourty Millimeter experiment (part A).

I like it. Having primarily shot with a wide 28mm lens for 5 years previous to purchasing this lens, the strange flattening (of space) that the extra twelve milimeters the Nokton gives to my pictures has made for some interesting learning experiences. It is Just Enough.
40mm framelines would be nice but I’d have to buy another camera and we all know how that is totally not my style. What do I look like, some kind of guy would do that? Yes if you look at the photo above. No, I have enough cameras. 0h-7 will be more about film and paper AND pictures. (and a portfolio website)

In late Feb. Taro got into photography and decided that for his first camera he wanted to shoot medium format. The result of his research and desire and a few trips to Map Camera was that he took home a Mamiya 7 and a 65mm lens. I have not been able to see any of his pictures because he moved to Nagoya. Soon after he offered the camera to me for about a grand because what he really wanted was a pentax 67II and I regret not buying it when I still had a way to contact him. TARO IF YOU READ THIS DUDE EMAIL ME.
Also, thanks to Taro I was introduced to Miles Davis. He got Photography and I got Music and that is a fair trade.

March in Japan is when the weather finally gets nice, and also kids are graduating all over the place. Each year I attend the Kindergarten graduation ceremony and shoot a lot of film. These are digital though.

One very interesting thing that I’ve noticed recently is that with Digital Photography, parents do not seem to hesitate to let their children take the camera and run off to snap photographs with child-like abandon. It will furthermore be interesting to see if this does something to photography in general in the next 20 years. It’s one thing to start photography as a 16 year old with fairly set ideas about what images better look like but if you are 5 and are just excited to see something you just saw pop up on the screen of your camera- and this excitment is what keeps you interested (digital is fun) then what is to come? One just hopes that they are not taught too soon how to take Great photographs.

Metallica
Fight Fire with Fire
Play count: 4
It starts out you know, all like Victorian and you think Stairway to Heaven is about to start but then the guitars come in like really bad-ass jigsaws cuting through an awesome sheet of plywood that is not well held down. The other guitar sounds are like droplets of liquid rainbows raining down from Huey Helicopters (their rotors provide the drumming sounds duggaduggaduggaduggadugga). When this comes on in the darkroom I get too excited and might bump the table that holds the enlarger, blurring a print.
In this way Metallica has direct influence on my work.
Rating: AAAAAAAAA oh man this is tough, and by extension, so must I be for listening to it.

Eminem & Tupac Shakur
Soldier like me
Play count: 10
It has a Piano played in the begining, and Tupac talking about how he is Tupac. And he also says he and his friends are (were?)  soldiers, creeping in their Jeeps. “Ain’t nothing jumping but these buckshots” he says. He will not be held down. Whoops now he is, by 6 feet of dirt. Which is too bad, because he was a great rapper. There was a girl in one of my high school art classes who liked Tupac. Imagine a skinny white girl in Nebraska in 1997, slicked back oiled hair that was curled past the ponytail or bun, big hoop ring earrings, and baggy hip hop jeans with a pale blue sports jersey. All I remember about her was how she liked Tupac and also making mean faces from across the room at the special ed student who would then lose it so bad from that to the point where he would get violent and bark and had to be pulled out into the hall to calm down.
Rating: C for being pretty lame for how Tupac raps “Jeep” and also for folks who keep it real by teasing the retarded.

Radiohead
Electioneering
Play count: 1
I can’t remember actually listening to this the one other time my computer says it had played, but it does have “More Cowbell” than probably any other song in my computer.
Rating: C for … man I don’t know. I just can’t get into Radiohead as much as I would like.

Project Pat & Three-Six Mafia
Break Da Law 2001

Play count: I have not been able to get through it once yet, despite trying many times and laughing so much.
 HA HA HA HA HA HA I love the continous strings in the background, plastiky casio keyboard drums, with more blips and ploinks over all that, AND proclimations of toughness using words that barely rhyme by guys who can probably barely read. This kind of Rap is like the funniest parts of Pro Wrestling or Nebraska State Politics. Maybe they are just really clever comedians, and this should be stocked in the Comedy area of your local Best Buy with the Weird Al CDs. It ended up on my computer via copying a sweet little indie DJ album by a guy called “Flex” titled The Mix Tape, Vol. 4: 60 Minutes Of Funk.

Rating:
In reality F.
In bizzaro-land, oh man straight up they get an A+ for how they just always break da law and rap about doing that.

The White Stripes
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
Play Count: 8
Whats up with all that feedback and roughness? How come if we can have Digital Cameras that make everything so sharp, why can’t we have like, you know, digital guitars to make the sound sharper and by that I mean better? HAH forget that.
This song is audible Tri-X.
This song sounds so good, the only thing that might be better than what you hear is what you see (and how it is shown!) in the video that Michel Gondry directed for it. That is one of the 5 videos I show in my Music Video Lesson to my 9th graders. I show a few videos by Gondry or Spike Jonze on our Bose Speaker/Sony Projector outfit in the AV room at school, and at the end of this one I ask the students “Where do you think Meg went?” and each time time in every class a kid raises their hand and says, “実家に帰った。” but it should be in English: “To her parent’s house”.

Rating: A