Visited a wetlands the other day. Was this amazing little 3km of land dedicated to the natural biodiversity.
Shame that power lines have to spoil the environment. Still, I guess this is why the land was handed to them in the first place to create the wetlands. No one else wants to be around them.

I was looking at my archive today and found this shot hidden away. Sometimes it take a year or two for me to finally see something in a shot. In this case it was not the foreground at all but the background craziness I had ignored up till now. Shame there is not more interest but still, I quite like the painterly feel.

It’s an old shot that I guess I’m re posting. Shot late afternoon near my house at the park with a Rolleiflex and a Rollinar 2. I ended up trading that camera in. It was a mistake of sorts to do that but I think I’m better for it. Less focus on cameras more focus on picture making. Still, the Rolleiflex had an amazing balance between sharpness and softness. If you have a chance to use one (f/2.8) I recommend it. But don’t go taking candid street photos at night with it. It’s even harder to use in that situation than the Hasselblad.

This is one of my failed kodak T64 shots that needed a LOT of contrast to give it any kind of personality. Not having a lot of luck with these 20+ year old films

So the sharp eye will notice that the book is not covered nor is the regular shape of a Japanese novel. The guy reads English! It’s the little thing’s like this that make the train journey interesting (for the most part).

The almost failed B+W shot on my last adventure to Kawasaki. Gotta go back soon.

So I’m looking for faces to shoot. I will be shooting in black and white with film so the image above is not really true to what I am trying to achieve. Actually I am trying to develop a particular style and so require a lot of people to shoot. Male, female, young or old, it does not matter to me. I imagine that I will use the images as some kind of photo series at some point but I have no real fixed plan.

Obviously I am not going to use your face commercially but if you choose to participate your image may end up on this blog or on my site sometime in the future.

If you are interested in having your face shot by me please send a mail to sean-at-50mm-dot-jp
People who’s picture I take that provide me with an email address will receive a copy of the image if it is to my liking (i.e. if I think I’ve done a good enough job)..

Asked this guy if I could take his picture. Still like the contax lenses even if it is non square. Shame I can use the lenses on anything else.

One from an up coming collection

Clemens shot with this camera at THE BAR on Friday within the last year or so.

Late night bike parking.

Late afternoon down the street.

A different way to see Harajuku.

The 14 to 35 crowd seems to do it a lot but the over 50′s? Nice to know the subway is stable enough for her to take care of fine details without getting battered around by the moving car.

Shinjuku station, about 12am. Rain is starting to fall and he’s…

A recent comment on a Tokyo Tower photo I took a while back prompted me to write this post.
I shot the photo with a early 1900′s Kodak Autographic Brownie no.2 using a Fuji Polaroid back. The camera originally took a different kind of film that is no longer made. After checking the camera I thought I might be able to get away with using 120 film but could not work out a way to modify the original camera back without destroying it. And given the camera is actually not mine and kind of on permanent loan I figured that would not be a good idea.
So I though perhaps I could connect a Polaroid back to it.
After checking the size of my Hasselblad back with the camera it looked like the idea was going to work. But I needed to find a back that did not have a little window (like the Hasselblad or Mamiya) but had the film area fully exposed when the dark slide was out. A trip to the local camera store immediately paid off. I found myself a Fuji back in the junk bin for ¥525 which was quite lucky because I didn’t want this little test to cost me and end in failure.
I figured the easiest way to connect the back to the body would be with electrical tape and that once I had proved it would work I’d figure out a more permanent solution.
After reading on line and discovering that the aperture would be around f/9 at it”s widest I took a shot and hoped for the best. The image you see above is the result I got. I was quite surprised at how the image turned out.
You will see from the other images below how I modified the camera and the controls it offers. F/9, f/19, f/22. T, B, 25th, and 50th of a second shutter. And a viewfinder that is very cool and at the same time very hard to use.
Feel free to share your old camera mod stories in the comments area below.

I had met this bunch a week before. They had these amazing bikes. And at the time I had B+W film in my camera. I rewound it and stuck in some colour (still yet to be developed!) and shot some frames. I thought these guy’s would be a great story for my mate Skorj so I asked them if they were around the area much. They said they were in Shibuya every Friday so I said casually that I would be back next week with my mate. He usually shoots for a few foreign bike magazines and I figured it would be a good match. In the process of trying to reach Skorj and arrange him to shoot these bike guy’s I discovered I had somehow given them the impression that this would be a full blown shoot for a big magazine (There was definitely a good bit of imagination being used by the bike guy’s at this point). The next Friday came around and Skorj was busy. I sent a mail to them explaining it was off and they called me up and got all pissed off. Joy! So, rather than giving up and making enemies of them I explained that while my mate could not make it, I could shoot them then try to get them onto a CNN site. At worst they would have a set of nice pics and at best they would appear on an international website.
That night, the usual bunch of photographer friends were turning up to the usual drinking hole about the time I was due to shoot the bikes and I was loathed to meet up with them because I knew I would have to explain my early exit and all the gear I was carrying and I know these guy’s are all like Vultures when it comes a shoot and would basically take over and claim the entire plan as their own. Lucky for me everyone was feeling semi respectful and didn’t completely take over what I had organized. And, as it happens it was good thing a few of them came along. Brian and Eiichi were there to lend a hand with interviewing the guy’s which was really lucky cause had they not done that and also been kind enough to send me the recordings / notes I could not have written the little story for CNNGO.

So, all the drama kind of paid off in the end.