An 85mm portrait lens has been the obvious gap in my Nikon prime kit-bag for quite a while.

This one came mail-order from Fukushima (!) for 13,000 yen. It’s manual focus, but compare the price to the 85mm f/1.4 (69,800 yen used) or the 85mm f/1.8 (29,800 yen). Bargain.

Seems there may be some variation in quality between the lenses out there, but look at the photos below. Mine is as sharp as any Nikon lens I have. The colours and bokeh are gorgeous. The lens is smaller than both the other 85mm lens, and even the 50mm. (Looks like Ken Rockwell got a good one too, if you want more details).

To date, I’ve used my workhorse 24-70 f/2.8 zoom for environmental portraits or a 50mm f/1.4 for up-close and bokeh. But time to practice my manual focus for a portrait shoot with this beauty.

This is beginning to turn into a proper photo project. (Previous shoot here).

More Tokyo Parkour, this time with a Japanese flavour, early morning in Ueno park in the middle of the cherry-blossom season. (It was beautiful but very cold).

I used a 16mm manual focus fisheye on my D700. Not easy to find the right angle with that lens. Some of the shots had me flat on my back.

Night-time Parkour shoot next I reckon.

Wouldn’t it be great to make household items just by downloading instructions from the internet and turning on a 3D printer?

The digital fabrication revolution started at MIT in the US a few years ago and last spring it came to Japan. I was really lucky to be one of the first people to visit FabLab Kamakura. I even got a FabLab made holder for my reporter’s notebook!

As a photo job, the main challenge was the somewhat small and static location. ’Fabmaster’ Hiroya Tanaka set up in an old sake storehouse. Very beautiful, but very dark and pokey.

The FabLab concept has all sorts of benefits. It’s eco-friendly because it removes the need for distribution. Its creative because you can make anything if you have the right design and the right machine. And it’s fun.

Tanaka-san and others are giving FabLab a bit of a Japanese twist. He told me they are cooperating linking up with some of the many traditional artisans based in Kamakura.

The FabLab concept reminds me a bit of the mingei movement actually. (The Mingei museum in Komaba is one of my favourite spots in Tokyo).

Quite a few people believe that digital fabrication will be a transformative technology – on a par with the invention of electricity or the internet. I wonder . . .

This was a fantastic commmision. How much more photogenic can you get than people doing acrobatics in the middle of the city?

The principle behind Parkour (AKA freerunning) is pretty simple – the quickest, most natural way from moving from A to B. There are a couple of Parkour groups in Tokyo, but it’s not that popular here.  According to Sullivan (in the night shots below) the number of Tokyo ’traceurs’ is in the low tens.

I knew almost nothing about Parkour before this story so I was surprised to learn it’s influenced by Western military training methods, Eastern martial arts, and even the films of Jackie Chan. Interestingly, there aren’t any Parkour competitions. It’s more a discipline than a sport – about training your body and mind to overcome all sorts of obstacles.

I called this blog (and my story) Tokyo playground. Parkour started as kids testing their athleticism in the playground. Its philosophy is to make a playground of the whole city. Quite a radical idea when you think about it. Tokyo is so grey and crowded. In a way, it’s one of the most alienating cities in the world. Good to see it from a completely new perspective.

Don’t suppose I’ll be doing backflips on the train platform any time soon though.

December 31st 2011. A near deserted beach in Chiba prefecture.

Iron seagulls. Broken shells. Coloured glass tumbled smooth by the sea. Sunlight on peeling sky blue paint.

In December Japan has ’forget the year parties’. Change the mind’s tatami, throw away yellowed memories.

Nothing much is happening here.

Once, I used to psyche myself up to take photos. These days I try to calm down a little.

Photojournalism is news. Happenings, or happened.

Not much in these photos. I’m not sure what makes them worth sharing.

Nothing much.

A new year.

My first shot at photos of kendo, at the All Japan Kendo Championship last December. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan ran them in their January issue.

I did Kendo for a few years when I first came to Japan, so this shoot brought back a few memories.

As usual, the annual event was held at the Budokan in Tokyo (it’s easy to forget that the Budokan was built to host martial arts tournaments, not just rock concerts). It’s open to the public, but I got my press pass and a competitor’s eye view from some friends at the excellent Kendo World magazine.

I think that the grimacing competitor in the main photo had just lost. It looks like a mixture of pain, frustration and exhaustion. The tournament is a long, gruelling day for everyone – competitors, judges and photographers alike.

I had a fairly pained expression myself after several hours sitting on a cold gymnasium floor waiting for the one winning strike in each bout.

I took a few hundred photos, mostly of ’zanshin’, the kendo name for the moment after a strike. It’s not easy to catch the decisive moment in kendo.

Perhaps video is the answer? There’s youtube video of the end of the last bout after the photos. It’s pretty dramatic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each January crowds of people visit Meiji Jingu shrine in Tokyo for “hatsumode” - first prayers of the year. I took these portraits right in front of the main shrine. Some people bent their heads for seconds, some for minutes. I was hard not to imagine what people were praying for. Perhaps for a better year in 2012?

This is about as intimate (you might say voyeuristic) set of street photos as I have tried. I used a 70-200 zoom to get in as close as possible. I was only standing a couple of meters away for most of the photos but the crowds made it very easy to go unnoticed.

Incidentally, given the huge number of visitors, I was expecting to have to queue for ages to get to the shrine. And I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to stay at the front long enough to take photos. In the event, I was at the front almost immediately and was able to do my thing without any bother at all. Thanks Tokyo police.

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous 2012!

(From last year’s Daruma Fair at Jindaiji temple in Chofu near Tokyo)

http://www.jindaiji.or.jp/event/darumaichi.php

Wandering around the wilds of Chiba prefecture a couple of months ago.

By the time I took the last photo I was hopelessly lost and eventually someone had to come and find me.

My mobile phone battery had run out and,  as I discovered, there aren’t many public telephones in the Japanese countryside. Apologies to my father-in-law

The Tokyo Sky Tree isn’t scheduled to open to the public until next year but the good people at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club organised a press tour late last month. Here’s a story I did for the press club magazine.

It was a good trip, though the weather was terrible; quite a view, even on a very dull day. Just lucky I don’t have vertigo. The only time I got a bit nervous was when I was pressing my camera against the glass and looking down. Suddenly became aware of the almost 400m drop!

I have to admit to being a little skeptical about these super-tall towers and buildings. One Tokyo Tower is enough for me, although I’ve no doubt this will be incredibly popular with Japanese visitors, and probably foreign tourists too.

“The tallest self-supporting tower in the world, the 634m high Tokyo Sky Tree is scheduled to open in February 2012. On October 30th, the observatory deck of the tower, 350m up, was opened to overseas journalists for the first time. The tower is still under construction.

The structure is almost twice the height of the Eiffel tower and gives spectacular views over Tokyo. As well as serving as a broadcasting mast, it is set to become a major tourist attraction. It is a short train journey from Tokyo station and close to the historic Asakusa temple district.

The tower employs the latest architectural technology to protect it both from earthquakes and high winds. A cylindrical concrete core is structurally separate from the tower itself and acts as a counterweight to reduce the effect of tremors. It is an adaptation of the central column of traditional Japanese architecture, known as a shimbashira.

Work on the tower was well underway at the time of the March 2011 earthquake but the tower suffered no damage and no workers were injured.

The tower is made from wide-bore high strength steel pipes. They were made at plants around Japan in sections weighing up to 30 tons. The largest sections at the foot of the tower are 2.3m in diameter.

As well as two observation decks (350m and 450m) shops and restaurants in the tower itself, the surrounding development will house offices, museums and academic institutions.”

Tokyo photojournalist on Facebook