While leaving Harajuku, I saw this person (I assume person, not creature of the night because they do have that cool look about them) walking toward the action. I still had on my 50mm prime and I wasn’t quite close enough, but they had the right stride, so I took the shot. I cropped in quite heavily in post, and then I ran one of my Lightroom Preset filters on it…
I love all the umbrellas in Tokyo! I captured these two girls that were giggling away while looking at some Christmas decorations just as it started to snow.
Have you noticed how Japanese girls cover their mouths when they laugh? You know why that is? You’ll never guess. I’ll get some of the details wrong on these dates. Before the Meiji period of the late 1800s, women would often die their teeth with a black lacquer to show adulthood or marriage. They often found this embarrassing, so they would cover their mouths when laughing. Even though it stopped 150 years ago, the tradition continues, passed on by daughters watching their mothers for generations.
Nothing beats a light rainstorm in Tokyo. Well, maybe except for a snowstorm, but I’ve never been lucky enough to be there for those. I probably took over 1,000 photos this night in the rain. I didn’t have any protection for the Sony A7r Mark 3 either… and it held up perfectly. I think I had on the 24-105mm lens the whole time… it was getting absolutely soaked, but it never missed a beat!
Thank you very much to Takahiro-san for taking us to this place!
He took my friend Tom and I here one evening and helped us to find some really interesting angles of this awesome loopty-loop thing. The only way I was able to get the whole structure in was to use the fisheye —my rarely used Nikon 16mm Fisheye!
One thing that surprised me about this shot was the pattern the lights made on the water very close to me. It was like laser-light painting!
This is just yet Another Amazing Part of the city. At first, when I went here, I thought that it would be a big city like New York, but, just, you know, Japanese. But it’s really so much more vast in terms of the buildings and the lights and the action (and the safety!). There are literally so many places you can go to and see this kind of scene that it is mind-boggling. Even though I have been there, my mind still boggles.
I think this is my new favorite area of Tokyo! It’s close to Shinjuku and it’s composed of about 3 small streets (almost alleys), and each one has about 30 bars jammed into it. But most of the bars only seat like 7-9 people. It’s so cool! Some disappear up into dark stairs and the great unknown. Some bars are quite old, and you can go there if you’re a regular, and buy a big bottle of sake and they will just label it and leave it there for you, every time you come back. I’ve only visited two bars here, but I’m about to up those numbers when I go back.
Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
After Google hosted me for a huge PhotoWalk, we ended at this Italian restaurant atop a building in Harajuku. There were over a hundred people inside at the party. I gave a speech about the effects of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints on the Impressionist movement and how this tradition now continues as we all influence one another.
Right after that, I discovered there was a huge balcony out the side door with an amazing view of the city! I went out there with Vic Gundotra, Bradley Horowitz and a few others to grab a shot of the view.
Harajuku, Tokyo, Japan
I was trying to find this image for a little project, something for Nat Geo, and it turned out not to be in my Smugmug but was on Flickr… which means it may never have made it to the blog! So here it is, a fun shot from Tokyo with the X1D as a little palate cleanser before more Burning Man images.
Of all the Blade Runner-esque parts of Tokyo, Shinjuku is probably the most intense. Japanese people are quiet, polite, and perhaps even a bit shy, and the environs are often the exact opposite.
Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
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