While watering the garden today I had to rescue a tiny little lizard who wasn’t enjoying his bath, I just hope he hasn’t now turned round and eaten my rhubarb…

Today was spent being nice and relaxed, eating food:

Hanging out with fun people:

I might write some more later, but now it’s bed time…

My current gym has a number of non-australians training at it so we regularly say goodbye to members. Tonight was Yuri’s lst night and to celebrate we went out for dinner, then headed back to the gym for some drinks and to watch the olympics. Thanks to Larry for the dinner it was much appreciated, good luck to Yuri in the USA, I hope to see you in the future.

More pictures can be found over here…

Yesterday involved a lot of time doing useful things, including making curtains and planting rhubarb, it did not result in any photographs being taken so you can have another from the beach at Botany bay. I shall make an effort to shoot something fresh and new for today…

In other news I’m enjoying watching the GB olympic team actually winning things, definitely makes a change…

Today was mostly spent at the beach, it would appear that the beach in Australian winters is much less of a survival exerise than the beach in English summers…

In other news, today marks the start of the new football season, as always I am more interested in who the first player to be caught in a “News of the World” sex sting will be, my bet is on Christiano Ronaldo, but I wait with baited breath…

Today I spent most of the day relaxing in the garden, where I found some wierd brightly coloured socks attached to a pair of legs…

I often go through phases where I am unhappy with what I am shooting, especially for myself. These spells can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, during which time I will be moody and disaffected and frankly no fun to be around. Obviously being in such a frame of mind does nothing to help me be creative and so the cycle continues. The best way for me to claw myself out of one of these sulks is to take a picture I’m happy with, which while I was working would usually take me about 10 mins at the start of a shoot and then I’d flip into a hyper productive mood and the world would be good.

Now however I find myself with no compulsion to shoot and myself in a trough. As my friend Eric once said “the best way to be creative is to do lots of something and throw away the bad stuff” (I am paraphrasing terribly as it’s late and I don’t want to dig up the IM log). As a result I will, by fair means or foul, take at least 50 pictures a day until the end of the week and post the best of them daily (I may well continue with this plan after the week ends if it inspires me). I’m going to try some new things, push some envelopes and just see what clicks, hopefully this will see things move in a good direction…

In other news grapefruit are delicious

Nikon D200 85mm f/9 13s ISO 100

So the past few months have seen a few major changes both personally and professionally. The biggest one being my summer holiday to Sydney becoming extended indefinitely. I’m enjoying the weather and scenery far too much and this is meant to be the worst part of the year (though anyone who has seen me in hot climates may understand my morbid fear of the coming summer months).

One big downside of my move is that at present I am not permitted to be self employed due to my visa status. As a result I have actually been working for a living, I can’t say I’m enjoying the whole turning up to the office and doing a 9-5. I am looking into ways to change my visa to allow me to shoot professionally but as I shall discuss later I’m not in a huge rush to do so at the moment.

Part of being a professional photographer especially in the field that I have been in, events and corporate, is something I find deeply satisfying. I derive great enjoyment from seeing clients happy that their memories have been preserved and being able to share in their moments. There are certain boundaries inside which most of your work has to fall. There is this constant voice in the back of my head reminding me that I have to shoot “how the client will like” rather than feeling free to shoot the pictures I want.

I felt that I had started to lose the love of photography and I began to feel that I was plateauing. I wanted time to clense the pallette if you will, before trying to explore some new avenues of the art form. As a result I am going to take some time as an ameture (admittedly being prohibited from working also plays a factor in this decision) and spend some time on some personal projects and giving something back…

So here I am free from the “professional” tag for a while. What does this mean? Firstly it means I am going to be working on some personal projects, things which I have wanted to explore photographically for a while but have not had the time or moxie to do. Secondly I am free to shoot for nothing, so I am on the look out both for interesting shoots to be involved with (any models or bands who want free promo work drop me a line) and may well try to get involved with some charitable work too (again please contact me if you are a charitable group who require photographic coverage of your event). Finally I can grow as a photographer, there are many areas of photogrpahy whch interest me, but about which, quite frankly I know nothing (”fine art” photography springs instantly to mind), I now have the time and energy to study these other areas, take what I feel will be useful to me and hopefully push my pictures to a new level…

I will try to blog more often now as I finally have internet access at my house, I would love to write more but it is late and I have to be at the office in the morning (wow I never thought I would have to say that again)…

Nikon D200 55mm f/2.8 1.6 sec ISO 100

Last night I went out to what I expect is Sydney’s answer to London Calling. Neo Tokyo was a reasonable electro night but I wasn’t really feeling it as far as dancing went. I felt like the DJs were playing songs and not sets, which is fine at a bar but when I’m out dancing I like to have something perfectly crafted with a consistent flow which runs from track to track…

Adding to my angst is the fact that one of my flash units has developed a curious and erratic fault with it’s sync port. If I pop it during a long exposure, it decides that it wants to fire repeatedly and at random throughout the exposure. Now I have found the fault it means a quick trip to the nikon service centre and everything should be fine (I have several spares) however in the dark of a club I wasn’t able to isolate the problem and so had a thoroughly frustrating time taking pictures. I finally came up with a work around involving 3 pocket wizards, some gaffa tape and a clamp (don’t ask), but by that point I was running low on moxie and left for home shortly afterwards…

Enough of my whining and here are some more pictures… (more…)

Good job I didn’t post my phone number yet as I managed t lose my phone this morning. I didn’t get chance to go buy a replacement…

The phone is however stll turned on, so there is a faint chance it hasn’t been stolen, oh the joys…

Nikon D200 17mm f/3.2 8/10s ISO 100

So I survived the move, I’m in Sydney and the weather is awesome. I have found good but expensive internet access so feel free to contact me via e-mail (I will be checking it daily so be a little patient still please). I have a new phone number so if anyone is in Sydney and wants to get in touch you can do on… (guess who can’t remember their own phone number?)

Before I left Tokyo I had a great last night out, visiting Mel Bruce’s party Berzerk at Pantera. Now this night is usually awesome with electro so dirty you think you’ll need a shower, but last Saturday Robert Palmer absolutely slammed it, with one of the best sets I’ve heard in years. Robert Palmer, definitely remember that name…

After Berzerk I drifted a little before ending up at DJ Maluse’s new after party in Roppongi, which was a really pleasant surprise as Roppongi nights are usually marked but drunken sleaziness and horrid music. Electro panic however was marked by drunken sleaziness and really great music thanks to Maluse and Funky Gong amongst others…

Check out the pictures here or buy prints over here

It would appear the weather has turned for the worse, there goes my plan for being touristy this afternoon…

I’m currently relocating to Sydney for the summer, I shall be checking my email and will do my best to reply to any queries as quickly as possible, but things may take slightly longer than usual…

Next post will be from the southern hemisphere…

This week has seen two really big changes, at least in terms of how the behind the scenes will work here at StrikingShots…

The first change relates to the way in which I provide prints to people. Selling prints accounts for about 0.5% of my income and profiting from them isn’t an avenue I’m overly interested in going down at this point. I have however found myself spending increasing amounts of time arranging printing for people, going to the lab, collecting prints and posting them off. I find the whole process labourious and frankly there had to be a better way…

Enter Exposure manager, who will now be handling all of my printing needs (obviously any speciality items will be dealt with by hand) and my albums will still come from one of my vendors.

So how does the system work? All that you need to do is go over to the Proofing Area, find the event you are interested in, find the photo you want prints for and order using their secure online shopping cart.

Less than a week later you should receive your prints. I’ve seen samples of their pictures and they are head and shoulders above the quality that comes from the quick print machines and while costing slightly more ($1 for a 6″x4″ print), are well worth the money…

There are however two drawbacks that I can see, firstly the process requires you to have a valid credit card, which shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The second one however has been the big sticking point with me in the past, which is that the prints are coming from the USA and therefore shipping is a little expensive for non-US residents (though at around 1000Â¥ per order is hardly excessive). I have contacted them to see if there is any way around this issue, but at the moment it remains…

The second big change relates to my workflow which as you may well know runs mostly through Adobe Lightroom. Coupled with photoshop Lightroom lets me do everything I want with my pictures and I am not exaggerating when I say it has changed the way I work…

Yesterday Adobe Labs announced the public beta for version 2 which on initial inspection seems to retain all of the features which I love but has added a number of new features which will help me work even quicker, spending less time behind the computer and more time taking pictures, which frankly benefits everyone…

Nikon D200 85mm f/1.4 1/125s ISO 100

Today I’d like everyone to meet Izabela and Kamil, who had a wonderful destination wedding here in Tokyo, this past weekend. They definitely had the flower gods on their side as they arrived at the perfect time to appreciate the sakura (cherry blossom), something we used to full effect in their portrait session…

After a brief civil ceremony at the Polish Embassy the rest of the day was spent in a traditional Japanese style (though the level of drinking was definitely all Polish), and was one of the most enjoyable weddings I have been to, an awesome way to finish my stint in Tokyo…

I shall put up more images up as the week progresses, but really wanted to share something with you nice and early as frankly I couldn’t keep the pictures to my self…

It would appear my phone company have been a little premature in cancelling my contract and have disconnected my phone, if anyone has tried to call me please email me at Paul@strikingshots.com with your number and I will call you back as soon as possible.

I’m brushing up my complaining Japanese….

*UPDATE* I’m back in the land of telephony, apparently one department had decided seeing as I was leaving, not to send me a bill, while the other had decided that as I hadn’t paid the bill (which they had not sent) to cut me off. $40 later and I’m back to getting 50 spam texts an hour…

On Sunday I was lucky enough to attend the opening of up and coming photographer Kyle Flowers’s first exhibition here in Tokyo, a nice small affair with some excellent music provided by the Matt Stansberry Band.

I‘m unsure if Kyle has a web presence, if you do drop me a line and I shall get you some linkage from here. Anyone with a spare few hours should go and see his work while it is still hanging at Cafe Pikey, close to Ebisu, if nothing else the food is excellent…

It was a very relaxing way to spend a Sunday afternoon after what had been a pretty fraught morning…

Spring is here, strawberries are in season, it’s not quite as cold and now it’s raining. Perfect…

For anyone wodering how this was done, it’s a very simple two light setup, with a single light providing the background, just metered it to f/16 and shot at f/11.

The main subject was lit via a second light being bounced off a sheet of white card held at an angle in front of the strawberry. I bounced off card for two reasons, firstly it gives a nice soft light, but also it gives much nicer “specular highlights” or “catchlights” than just using the flash directly…

Today I’m going to the aquarium so expect to see fish pictures in the near future…

Nikon D200 28mm f/2.8 1/2s ISO 100

I just got home from Fukt, an artists’ collaborative evening. I’m tired and need to sleep but I will bring you pictures (and more words) later today…

Nikon D200 50mm f/8 1/250s ISO100

So as with all good things my time in Japan is coming to an end. My reasons for wanting to stay are multitude but at the end of the day I’ve been feeling myself getting into a rut and I know that soon after I’d cease to have fun which frankly is what life for me is all about.

As a result I have given notice to my corporate agency and have my last wedding firmly booked on the 28th of March. I have a fortnight afterwards to get myself packed up before heading south to spend some time in Sydney. Due to the joys of the commonwealth I have a working visa for a full year with the option to extend it for a further 12 months if things go well.

As a result of this move I will not be taking any new bookings after March 28th. If you think you have an appointment (of the business nature) with me after this date contact me ASAP as you are not in my organiser. If anyone in Sydney is looking to have their event covered please do contact me as I will be looking to work as soon as I arrive.

Huge thanks to all of the awesome clients and friends I have met while in Tokyo, you have succeeded in making the past two years memorable beyond belief. I shall without doubt be back in Japan in the future so keep your eyes open to see when I will be in town…

Obviously this whole adventure is subject to the question which I start every day with…

“Am I having fun?”

D200 200mm 1/200s f/2.8 ISO 800

Yesterday I was able to re-acquaint myself with a little bit of highbrow culture, which I have been missing since I moved to Asia. In the UK I was a regular visitor to the opera and to a lesser extent the ballet as I not only lived remarkably close to the Royal Opera House (making getting standby tickets very viable) but they had regular discounted evenings. In Asia there seems to be no real push to widen access to the arts and as a result the prices remain horrifically high which dampens my enthusiasm.

It did not take my friend Jennifer much effort to persuade me to come and watch her recital especially as she was able to wrangle free entry. Little did I know it would be a children’s concert and so not only did I get a nice rendition of some Dvorak and some Mozart, but I also had some children singing Japanese versions of the Sound of Music and Disney songs, I’m unsure if it improved the day or not…

After the performance my friends Steph, Yonosuke and Keiza joined Jenny and the rest of the Orchestra for dinner at a local izakaya which is always good, mostly as I absolutely love bacon wrapped asparagus which is always on the menu…

Yonosuke then suggested that we go to see some of his friends compete in a dancing contest. This was definitely one of the more bizarre events I had attended recently as it was being held at a nightclub, but the crowd was full of under 16s (I’d guess the majority were under 13 or their guardians). There seemed to be no real rhyme or reason for the various kinds of dnce on display either ranging from hip-hop, to a bizarre comedic representation of several pop songs, to the pictured artistic rendition of Marilyn Manson…

Regardless I had fun and if nothing else it was a break from the normal routine. I’ll organise a larger selection of pictures and do something with them later this week, but I’ve been busy today trying to decide which hard case I want to buy, I’m pretty settled that I’ll go with a Pelican, it’s now just a case of which size and if it’s cheaper to buy in Japan or as is more likely import one…

This weekend sees the return of jumpin’ which should be great fun, see the pictures from the last one here. If you’re going to come a long let me know and I’ll be sure to say hi…

Nikon D200 50mm f/11 1/250s ISO100

This morning I woke up to the feeling that I had had holes drilled into my skull and someone was pouring water into the space behind my eyes. Suffice it to say none of the errands which I was supposed to do today got done, thankfully I didn’t have any clients for today or I would have either been trying to re-schedule or coughing, sneezing and suffering my way through.

The only positive to come out of being stuck at home is that I got some cleaning done and then played around with some photogenic stuff laying around in my room as you can see above. I also got a bit of my backlog of processing out of the way with, though I still haven’t sorted out my pictures from my 2007 trip to Hokkaido…

Nikon D200 26mm f/2.8 1/2s ISO100

This weekend I was invited to the birthday of fellow photographer Mark Oxley. I had planned on staying briefly before heading home, but I failed epically and so what else could I do but take some pictures.

I wanted to put a lot of pictures through my new set of memory cards to ensure they were as large as they claimed to be and to make sure there were no problems and they passed flawlessly which is always welcome.

The party itself was great as it felt very much like it was taking place in a house, despite being at a bar. I got to actually talk to a number of people who I had either met only briefly or knew about by reputation alone. Bonus points for anyone who can spot me in the pictures as I have just spotted that I snuck into one of them…

D200 17mm f/2.8 2.5 sec ISO 100

London calling pictures are up over here. This is a very very loosely edited set with about 160 pictures from the event and the after-party. I’m planning on producing a tighter compilation today for those of you who don’t have time for a big photo set.

Overall the night was great, I wasn’t really on my top partying game, mostly as my hip and to some extent my knee were playing up and I didn’t want to aggravate them by dancing too much…

I‘m looking for suggestions as to which pictures make the ’super cut’ to the condensed gallery, anyone with any suggestions, leave them in the comments…

**Update** The selected set is up over here. It was hard to reduce the pictures down and frankly you needed to be pretty darn awesomely photogenic to make this set…

A very sad day.

Not only does this affect polaroids core market of the casual ‘fun’ snapper, it will cause all kinds of problems for anyone who works with large format film. I can only assume the technology will be licenced by another company but if it isn’t it might be time to stock up on 8×10 sheets…

On the other hand it would appear polaroid is now going to concentrte on Zink which is a technology I think is pretty exciting so long as it can be matured into a real product able to produce worthwhile sized prints…

Nikon D200 32mm f/2.8 1/2 sec ISO 100

So last night I went to the gym and trained which was going great until I was doing “one last round” of light boxing, when I stepped back onto a wet patch on the mats. It’s fair to say I slipped and fell with all the grace of a giraffe on ice and twisted my hip which was quite sore.

As a reault I wasn’t feeling up to Roppongi especially as my cohorts had all called in with excuses. Thankfully for me I was also on the guest list for the VIP lounge at Pure. Despite having the lowest ceilings ever it’s a nice spot and I knew I could turn up, chill out and hear some sweet tunes.

Last night featured a London DJ J Saintil (Warme) who is in town for London Calling tonight and it’s fair to say after last night’s taster I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do in the main room…

Hit the jump for more pictures from last night… (more…)

Nikon D200 30mm f/4.5 6 secs ISO 100

I have nothing work related happening this weekend aside from testing a new consignment of kit which UPS are holding onto for me until tomorrow morning. As a result I intend to go and to party hard and party often…

Tonight I shall most likely be at Midas cafe for their “traffic lights party” which should be fun, I’m undecided if I will engage in any colour related silliness or if I’ll confuse everyone by wearing purple.

Saturday night is London Calling and the all new Trash after party which will be banging it.

I will most likely take a camera or two out so look for pictures in the coming day or so. If anyone else is out do come and say hi, you never know your wonderous visage might grace this very page in the near future…

Now I’m going to get punched in the face a lot as my attempt to get back into training regularly stutters and falters along…

Nikon D200 37mm f/7.1 1/200s ISO100

Sad as it may seem I think the thing that I would miss most about living in Japan, when I finally decide to move on to new pastures, is a soft drink. Suntory’s CC Lemon is an oddity for soft drinks being neither particularly sweet nor particularly gasseous, it has just enough of each to remind you they are there but otherwise lets the sharpness of the lemons come through. I am under the impression that it isn’t stocked in other countries which is definitely a saddening thought…

The fact it contains ridiculous amounts (4200mg in the bottle pictured) of vitamin C is just a bonus…

Tonight I’m going to be at my friend Mel Bruce’s party Berzerk. Sorry about the facebook link, I can’t find a proper website for the night though. If anyone is coming out to play come say hi, I might even buy you a drink…

O a musical note I have been listening to podcasts a fair amount this week, does anyone have any favourites I should be adding? Currently my personal favourites are “Ramdom Thoughts” and “The Smash Mix” which admittedly skirt pretty close to the edge with regard to use of copyrighted music I think there is a reasonable fair use argument…

D200 50mm f/4 1/50s ISO100

Tonight I went to see my friend Mr Mu$ic DJ at Ruby Rooms, it was as per usual a great time. I plan on writing a bit more about things in the morning but frankly it’s late now and I want to get some sleep (I should be asleep now, but I got some good news this evening, more on that soonish, and I’m a bit excited…).

Hit the jump for some more pictures… (more…)

Nikon D200 50mm 1/250 sec f/8 ISO 100

I‘m notorious for losing lens caps, I usually buy the genuine nikon ones, which while not entirely expensive don’t have the most secure fit and regularly pop out. Fellow photographer Ryan Brenizer reccomended using Tamron brand lens caps over on his blog and I must admit they are really nice, with a good firm fit and about half the price. All I need to do now is remove the Tamron badge as frankly I’m way too snobbish to be associated with the consumer grade Tamron equipment…

Nikon D200 85mm f/1.4 1/400 ISO 100

Yesterday I headed out to Yokohama with some fellow photographer’s for a bit of a social gathering. Despite the ridicuously cold weather we had a great time and I was able to get some good pictures. It was great to get out and shoot with some other photographers as noone harrassed me with “oooh you’ve already taken 25 photos of that…” “oh no, don’t take my picture” and so on as can be the case when out with people with priorities other than taking pictures…

Hit the jump for a flash slideshow with more images.. (more…)

Nikon D200 200mm f/2.8 1/250s ISO 720

Today I went to Shinjuku to watch, Masaya, a friend of Ollie’s fight in the DEEP future kings tournament. It was an entertaining if a little long show with some great fights. The winners of the 4 tournaments are guaranteed places in the DEEP professional ranks and it is thus an important fixture in the MMA calendar here in Japan. Probably the only complaint a bout the event that I had was that the newly designed ‘fighting road” gloves seemed to need constant adjustment leading to regular breaks in the action.

After winning his first fight due to a cut to his opponent, which left him drenched in blood, Masaya reached the final of his weight class’s tournament. It was an entertaining fight with both fighters giving their all, unfortunately whilst both Ollie and I thought that our friend had managed to squeak out a decision two of the judges at ringside decided otherwise and awarded a split decision victory to his opponent.

After the fights had finished we headed out for some food at a local izakaya, before Masaya went to catch his bus back to Akita (he planned on arriving in Akita at 7:00am and going to work at 8:15, who says this is a glamorous sport…).

Today started off in less awesome fashion as I have somehow managed to lose my cash card, which means a trip to the bank and an attempt to get a new one, thankfully Ollie was willing to lend me some cash or I would have been unable to buy tickets for the fights today and would have been living on the contents of my cupboards. The moral of the story is to keep some cash at home constantly as I was otherwise down to my last 250Â¥ which doesn’t go far these days…

I also seem to be unable to keep possession of lens caps as I have lost 3 this week, they aren’t expensive and give me something to spend my loyalty card points on at the camera store, it is just annoying to have to go in and get them…

Nikon D200 17mm f/2.8 1/250s ISO200

Ako’s friend Kyoe hosted an entertaining evening this week with a outstanding spread of food, a fun time was had by all even if I did lose badly at chess (in my defense I haven’t played for years).

I managed to make it back to the gym on Friday which was great, touch wood the knee, whilst a little stiff and sore, hasn’t adversely responded so I shall try and get into a routine of going and training.

Tomorrow marks the end of my festive holidays. Whilst I have enjoyed the slack time over the holidays I’ve been a little dissapointed that I have not achieved as much as I would have liked to. To some extent I blame the lack of sunlight and coldness coupled with a lack of structure leading to me lazing at home all day.

All this changes on Monday as I have to get up at 6am to go out for a job about 90mins away. I probably won’t end up getting back into home until at least 6 o’clock and I might even go straight to training instead. Welcome back to reality…

Nikon D200 30mm f/2.8 1/160s ISO100

Happy New Year to all my clients, friends and readers, whenever your part of the world rolls over into ‘08. More pictures from this morning will go up soon, but frankly I want to have a sleep first. I hope 2008 brings you everything you hope for…

**UPDATE: Pictures are up Here**

Nikon D200 23mm f/4.5 8/10s ISO 100

Sooooo yesterday wasn’t the best of days, I managed to kill both of my archive hard drives at once, which means I am spending today restoring what I can from the drives and will have to go and restore the rest from DVD.

I also failed to meet up with Marie-Eve which was *frowns*

Thankfully Jumpin’ rocked and managed to restore my faith in having fun. There are pictures over on the past events page…

and a sizable lump of something hard….

Today I have spent most of the day wrestling with intenet explorer trying to make things which work perfectly in every other browser work with the microsoft monster.

I have also started to move a selection of my past events over into the past events section I’ve been adding some more photos into some of the galleries so you might want to take a peek even if you have already seen the galleries.

Tonight I have managed to double book myself as it is Marie-Eve’s birthday and my friend Sho is also hosting a party I promised I would go to, look for both sets of pictures in the near future…

If you see me out feel free to say hi, I might even buy you a drink..

and possible downtime, may bound the next few days as we will be switching over to a whole new, improved and faintly competent looking re-design of the site….

All should be well by the end of the week

I sometimes develop a mental block towards doing something, this will cuse me to be unable to do it no matter what I try. I currently have such a block towards finishing a blog post and hitting “publish”, I currently have at least 5 drafts of entries on a variety of topics which are at least half finished and a bunch more titles ready to be developed.

I‘m getting increasingly frustrated with my site redesign and am coming to the conclusion that I probably am going to have to use flash to do the things I want to do (I’m sure I could learn to correctly scale pages with java-script too, but then mosre than likely it would break when someone uses internet explorer). If anyone has any experience developing a flash and an HTML site in parallel please do let me know as I refuse to lose my flash free presence, or if anyone knows a good web designer/developer who won’t instantly go “oooh you should use flash for that” then also send them my way….

I have a relatively free schedule the next few weeks until the new year so I’m on the lookout for cool things to see and do, keep your ears and eyes open…

Blur….

All those dirty words
(Jusqu’ la fin)
They make us look so dumb
(En plein soleil)
We’ve been drinking far too much
(Jusqu’ la fin)
And neither of us mean what we say
(En plein amour)
Well you and I
Collapsed in love
And it looks like we might have made it
Yes, it looks like we’ve made it to the end
What happened to us?
Soon it will be gone forever
Infatuated only with ourselves
And neither of us can think straight anymore

Well here we are at the end of NaBloPoMo, it’s been remarkably enjoyable posting every day however I’m not entirely sure I shall keep it up. I will however be posting far more in future than I ever have done in the past.

Tomorrow I shall be producing another version excursion as this is one of favourite sections, feel free to let me know which of the columns you have enjoyed and I’ll be sure to make the effort to keep it going…

Via MSN:

Marie said:I request the ugly bird….

The bird in question truly is a curious animal and I can honestly say I had never seen one before last week…

*Update* I have been reliably informed it is a Shoebill Balaeniceps rex and is apparently quite rare…

Nikon D200 105mm f/2.8 1/320s ISO 400

My friend Elizabeth is a member of a re-enactment group who took part in an event in Gyoda last year which I attended…

Nikon D200 80mm f/4 1/1600s ISO 800

The day featured some really impressive armour and was an hugely enjoyable day out. I’m unsure how long Japan will be able to retain it’s historical roots, I fear that within the next generation or so many traditional customs will have been lost to the ages which is sad.

Growing up in England it is easy to see the risk of letting your customs disappear as it can cause people to lose any concept of what it mens to be “English”. Then again in England, and for that matter Britain as a whole, we have gained so much from being open to foreign influences I am very glad that we do not have an insular and closed community which sticks rigidly to traditions, I just find it remarkably hard to answer questions such as “what is England known for?” or “what English foods are good?” and so forth which I get asked by people pretty regularly as I travel in Asia…

This is the last call for requests for tomorrow’s wishlist Wednesday, and this might be the last one ever as the feature doesn’t seem to be getting much traction and the month of November is nearly over, so if there is something you want to see, leave a comment…

Nikon D200 38mm f/2.8 1/40s ISO 100

Today I am under the weather so I shall just leave you with a picture so I can get back to my lemsip and napping. I shall pump myself full of stimulants and will survive my afternoon which is super routine…

Hmm it’s Friday, and today was a national holiday, which was nice for most people in Tokyo, but for me it didn’t make the blindest bit of difference as I was working. This is ironic as the holidy in question was Kinro kansha no hi or labour thanksgiving day where we are supposed to commemorate production and celebrate workers rights.

I am going to use this as a very poor link to work in a comment on the case of Bilal Hussein who has been under arrest for the past 19 months without charge for working in Iraq. While I don’t think this is the forum to discuss the merits of the US army’s case against him I’m sure that it shouldn’t have taken 19 months without legal representation to bring this man to trial. I feel it sets a dangerous precedent if members of the press start being arrested and detained, as it can do nothing to help them give an unbiased account of what they see if they have to be worried about detention if they report unfavourable news (there is no such allegation here, but it seems like a slippery slope to me).

I‘m a trained economist and so am very cynical when it comes to unionised labor. I did however find this video by currently striking US writer Harlan Ellison very amusing and relevent to any cretive endeavour. Viewer discretion is advised as he uses some grown up language to make his point…

Another economic concept which is near and dear to my heart is the availability of credit, something which Kiva is trying to make easier. I am unsure what the balance is between a profitable organisation and a charitable foundation with Kiva or how much interest the end user is being charged yet, but the concept interested me as I’ve long been a proponent of using subsidised loans rather than straight up grants to promote growth in the developing world. I plan on doing a little more research and I’ll let you know what I find out, anyone with more information should feel free to leave a comment….

Thanks go to A photo-editor for the Harlan Ellison video and David Hobby for the Kiva link…

Nikon D200 200mm f2.8 1/160s ISO100

I‘ve been busy all day it’s late and I have stuff to do, so Wishlist Wednesday is going to get postponed until tomorrow, as none of the requests I had were things I have in the archives….

The upside is you now have an extra day to get your requests in.

To remind me to still do the post, here is an elephant as they never forget…

Nikon D200 55mm f3.2 1/160s ISO250

Today I bring you two pictures both taken in a very aisan institution, the Kareoke room. Whilst I had sung kareoke before leaving the UK it had always been a very communal activity that took place in bars (most notably at my student union on a Wednesday night after rugby fixtures) where part of the fun is subjecting poor innocent bystanders to your horrendous rendition of 80s power ballads and ‘catchy’ dance tunes. It is generally seen as poor form in my experience to actually be able to sing and would cause all kinds of grumbling and heckling unless of course you were a pretty girl who could also sing which would lead to you being signed up for some kind of reality TV show….

D200 27mm f4 1/160s ISO400

Nikon D200 44mm f5.0 1/50s ISO200

Today’s picture was taken from a wedding this summer, the image above is what I put into the final ‘album’ (the client’s wanted their images delivered on DVD), and personally I was really happy with how it turned out. However today I’m going to walk you through some of the other ways I could have treated the image…

 

First up is the image straight out of the camera, some of you are probably saying “that looks just like the final image” and you’d be not too far off. Whilst I went through most of the steps shown below I felt that the picture was best suited by a very clean and pure presentation. I hope this highlights how important getting your pictures close in the camera is. The first thing I did was to clean up a few skin blemishes which were never going to make it into the final image and fine tuned the white balance. I then created a snapshot which I could always go back to at any point in my editing process…

 

The first look I attempted was to try to give the photo something of an aged look, to do this I muted the colours a fair amount especially in the skin tones. Next I reduced the contrast and shifted the hues to slightly cooler tones. I like this look on a lot of portraits as it can give people’s skin an almost porcelin effect, however in this case it just made the whole picture look cold and almost maudlin which is definitely not where I wanted to be heading. To finish the image in this style I added a slight vingette but frankly it did nothing to help things…

 

Next out of the bag came the greyscale conversion, this is an old standby and can give an image which lacks identity added punch. It can also soften an image which is looking too harsh, help save an overexposed image and deal with any really stubborn colour balance issues and as a result is often over used by photographers. “Black and White” also has connotations of newspaper and it gives images something of a reportage feel which is nice when dealing with wedding candids. Personally I prefer to work in colour but with our Monday column I’m experimenting with various forms of monochrome…

Despite working with various channel mixes I couldn’t get anything that really spoke to me and I realised this was definitely an image which would work best with at least some colour. It was around this time I realised quite how blue the girls eyes were and this led me naturally to the next attempt.

 

Hand colouring, selective desaturation or cut-out, whatever you wish to call this technique it can be as effective as it is cliched. For those of you wondering the easiest way to perform this technique is in photoshop using a desaturated layer, you then just paint back in the parts you want coloured. Personally I prefer to retain a little of the colour in the whole image and this is easily controlable using the layer method as you can reduce the opacity to suit your own preference.

After about 20 seconds of thinking oooh that looks quite cool. I realised I was contemplating delivering a cutout image and sanity kicked back in, unless someone specificaly asks for one, there is no way I will ever produce one. They can look mediocre on a motivational poster but never ever in a wedding album. (*disclaimer: I reserve the right to change the above opinion when someone shows me an utter jawdropping cutout*).
 

Having ruled out using a subtle approach I wondered if something a bit more vivid would give me the bite I wanted from the image, so I pushed the saturation of the image right up. I definitely think there is merit to this approach but it didn’t sit well in the context of the other pictures I was putting out. That said I think that if I was put on the spot and told that I couldn’t use the image I did, this would be my fallback position.
 

I then started to question the crop of the image, I have always been a firm beliver of the mantra “If your pictures aren’t good, you weren’t close enough” and it has served me well in the past. In this case however the composition of the image worked well in it’s original form and none of the other crops that I could find really cut it. I like the picture to the right, but it just makes me think “I wish I could see the back of the gentleman’s head”.

The ability to heavily crop images with minimal loss of quality is probably the biggest plus to using a camera with a high pixel count (along with capturing very fine details and being able to make obscenely large prints) which has helped me out in the past especially when I desperately need a portrait picture and all I have are landscapes and vice versa…

The final version I’ll show you today is what happens when I start to get a little bit too funky for my own good. This picture involved a major push of the contrast levels, a decent slice of hue and saturation blending along with a desaturated overlay layer. While this treatment might have worked really well with a twenty something model from a gritty fashion shoot, once again a wedding picture of a young child is not the place to be pushing this far….

 
After all of this too-ing and fro-ing I ended up back close to the original image which suits me absolutely fine. What do you think, did I get the right edit? Should I have tried a different approach? Let me know in the comments.

Check in tomorrow for a pretty sunset, yay, everyone likes sunsets, right, right, hey guys….

Nikon D200 50mm f/2.8 1/80s ISO 400

Thursdays shall be, until I get bored with blogging, triptych day…

From Dictionary.app:

Pictured is the wonderful Marie-Eve Methot, a girl who I’d love to call a friend, however she is far too busy being awesome and creative to hang out with me…

We met through a mutual DJ friend “Shokkaboy” and the above pictures were taken during his set at club Ota back in May, it was one of the most fun nights out in Tokyo I’ve had, it is fair to say that I shook it pretty hard that night…

Don’t forget to get your requests in for next weeks “Wishlist Wednesday” and check back tomorrow for “Photo Free Friday” where I try to entertain you without the power of photographs (though I reserve the right to use video)…

Here we are with the very first Wishlist Wednesday, without further ado onto the requests….

Marie said:

“I hereby formally request to see bits.

You may interpret that as you see fit.”

Nikon D200 50mm f/14 1/200s ISO 100

Here you go Marie, some bits, from my dremel, which unlike the ‘bits’ which you were hoping to see required me to make full use of my macro lenses. Taking this shot at f/14 has reminded me that my sensor desperately needs cleaning and so one of my D200 bodies will be going on a short vacation to the Nikon service centre…

Antoine said: (via email)

Hi Paul,

I just commented on one of your blog’s pic- I would be interested to
see more of your MMA pics if possible.

Regards

Nikon D200 50mm f/14 1/200s ISO 100

This is a nice image taken earlier this year at a smackgirl show. Showing a relatively unusual occurance in that show, as Smackgirl only allows 30secs of groundwork, a submission victory via straight armbar….

I hope this has whetted your appetite and inspired you to send in your requests for next week, or else I shall be forced to invent readers, and that could have dire consequences…

If you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you” - Massive Attack ‘Safe From Harm’.

Nikon D200 50mm f/10 1/200s ISO 200

Welcome to the first “Tuesday twosome”, where we link two pictures. This week is relatively easy to work out, above we have a picture taken with a Sigma macro lens of a lensbaby and below we have a picture of the Sigma taken with the lensbaby. Two very different lenses each giving a rendition of the other…

50mm (ish) f/2 (ish) 1/250s ISO 100

Until it’s mediocre build quality took it’s toll and consigned it to paperweight duty, the Sigma f/2.8 18-50mm was my main workhorse standard zoom lens. It was tack sharp and was able to focus close enough to give a 1:3 macro. The focus was motor driven and so was not as fast as the Nikkor with which I replaced it but otherwise it definitely was one of the best value lenses I’ve owned.

The big qualifier to the lens’s value however is that it broke on a shoot. Something small and rattly broke off inside, jamming the lens at a zoom of around 24mm. Trust me when I say there is nothing more panic inducing than having a piece of kit fail, and this lens aside I have been relatively blessed with good gear fortune in my career to date. Thankfully I had a full bag of lenses with me and was able to continue shooting, but it could have been disasterous if it had been during a time critical event like a presentation or a wedding ceremony. This is yet another reason why I now steer clear of “consumer” lenses (and always have backup everythings).

I have written about lensbabies before and it is fair to say that this is not the correct lens for taking product shots with, also for the price it is far from a good value lens. It does however have one HUGE redeeming feature and that is it’s great fun to use, and frankly you cannot put a price on fun.Many people question using the lensbaby as they say you can get a better effect by creating blur in photoshop, which might to some extent be true, but I have yet to see anyone who has accurately recreated the wierd distortions and out of focus effects that the lensbaby gives and as such it is a useful tool to keep in the bag, though it does only get very infrequent play….

Tomorrow is “Wishlist Wednesday” which is a day when I ask you the reader to suggest what you would like to see pictures of. You can be very specific and request that I discuss a certain image or you can be vague. I shall do my best to satisfy everyone if not this week at some point in the near future…

Nikon d200 200mm f/3.5 1/250s ISO 400

Pro fighter Shinya Kumaza receives instructions from his corner before his fight in Shooto. My third passion in life (well it varies sometimes it rises as high as first) besides photography and dancing is MMA. Whilst the sport is relatively new to mainstream america and still stuggling to shake off a chequered reputation, it is a long standing and well respected endeavour in Japan. Karakuen hall where this photo was taken may not be the largest venue in Tokyo but the amount of history that has taken place within it’s walls is undeniable.

Whilst the UFC may now be the biggest promotion I think it is fair to say that Shooto is the most structured and organised running a whole spectrum of events from amateur grappling all the way through to full pro MMA. It can take a fighter several years of dedication to climb the ranks and gain a coveted Class A licence which allows the fighter to compete at the highest level.

I have covered MMA for magazines with ringside access in the past, however this picture was taken from the stands as a paying fan. I only had a second or two to get this picture as it occured as the lights were changing, so I was once again blessed by having a high quality camera with me, that let me switch to manual exposure mode a higher ISO, spot metering and release the shutter without having to start delving into menus and wading through option trees. At first I thought I had completely messed up the exposure as the histogram was giving me all kinds of rief abut underexposing, but I’m pretty happy that I have it spot on.

The image once again is straight out of the camera, though there was a little bit of noise reduction and colour correction done to clean things up…

It would appear that Radiohead have brought the release date for their new album forward from the ‘Early 2008′ that was expected. The latest slice of aural pleasure is due on October 10th and can be pre-ordered here…

It’s fair to say I’m both excited and also considering buying the boxed set edition too…

I do think I am going to have to have words with my neighbour who feeds the stray cats in the area. Whilst the feeding in and of itself isn’t an issue the constant sound of howling cats outside my window is not entirely condusive to sleeping. This combined with early morning meetings has led to me being anything but refreshed and bouncy…

Ithink this weekend shall be spent mostly sleeping and catching up on my processing which has reached a critical level…

This week’s printed personal pictures all come from one evening spent at my friend’s house whilst having drinks for her birthday.

Hopefully they’ll come out nicely when put into the book…

It’s been a long time since I’ve made any decent sized prints for myself. I don’t even make that many prints for clients these days most either want to arrange it for themselves, are going to add copy or are never going to let the pictures escape fromt the aether that is the digital domain. I will admit I do not even have a current printed protfolio any more as frankly I haven’t been asked for one in such a long time…

I miss having something tangible for my efforts and frankly there is something decadent and rewarding about having 8″x12″ prints made, frankly any picture will hold up to being printed notecard size but you know you nailed a picture when it holds up to being examined at these dimensions…

To satisfy my lust for paper I went and had a bunch of large prints made at the various printers availiable to me to see which one would be most suitable for my needs and budget…

Of the prints which came back I selected the 18 which I liked the best and were printed acceptably (*note to self* if something is cheap it probably isn’t worth it) and have mounted them in a leather folio. I can’t stress enough how different it is to viewing pictures on a screen, although I’m not entirely sure which is better and I definitely know which is more convenient (guess who creased a 5 dollar print being an idiot…)

My intention now is to make 3 new prints every week which will be added to the book, with the 3 weakest entries being removed (and probably either framed and put up on my walls somewhere or palmed off onto someone who wants them…). I hope the book will serve as a nice snapshot of the current state of my work and if nothing else will force me to make at least 3 good personal images a week which I figure will keep me creative (I’m making a point not to put work pictures into the book)….

If you want to make me happy, ask to see the book if you catch me out and about, chances are I’ll have it with me…

In what appears to have been a glitch in the matrix I mistakenly thought I went out on Saturday night. Apparently I didn’t and I didn’t have a good time taking pictures of people (if anyone would like copies of the images which I thought I took, email me), sorry to anyone who was upset by this abberation in space time, it won’t happen again…

It’s been a long and busy weekend, I have just got in and have to be up again in 4 hours, I will eventually get to rest properly…

Anyhow Saturday night my friend Mike Munoz DJed at a new Bar in Tokyo. I went along and took some pictures which you can see over here

I’ll write more later, pictures including men swinging burning balls around their heads and surfers to come later….