Howl

While some go gentle into the night, others, like these two, apparently go screaming. I might be wrong, but don't think these two are singing folk songs. Anyway, someone must be in charge of choosing the burial markers, and I wonder how they go about making their decisions... 

Insect Architecture

There certainly were plenty of interesting and new-to-me aspects of Japanese culture to experience on my recent visit. But, if I'm honest, I also became a bit obsessed with some of the more obscure stuff. The hornet nests tucked away in the eaves of many temples and shrines, for example. You most definitely don't want to perturb these insects, but since they are dormant in the winter, I decided to document their architecture, as I'd never seen anything quite like it before. The photo shows an example of a small nest. When I go back to Japan with my wife, we are going to have to remember to bring plenty of epi-pins. 

Just Bones, Man

No deep symbolism here, no veiled messages about our finite time on this mortal coil. None of that crap, just a good lookin' pile o' bones. Just a big blank black hole where the eyeball used to go and some dirty teeth. That's all, nuttin' more.  

Framing

One of the more interesting challenges I confronted while taking photographs in Japan was simply framing the image. My experience of the visual field was that it always seemed cluttered, full of information, and so I was always a bit uncertain about exactly where to point the camera. And after the fact, I have been struggling just a bit with what to include and exclude in my edits. As we become increasingly familiar with an environment, I suppose it becomes more obvious what should be included or excluded in an image. Perhaps I'll make some new discoveries about composition in my images from Japan. We'll see...

  

Street Food

Just a photograph of street food being prepared in Tokyo for your enjoyment. (The photograph, I mean, not the food.) Ha! I am afraid the jet lag has kicked in.

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveler.

 

Saying Goodbye to Tokyo

It is time to say goodbye to Japan after a fun but cold visit. One great feature of Haneda Airport is the outdoor promenade from which you can observe the skyline of Tokyo. I don't know offhand of any US airports where you can stroll outdoors after passing through security. But anyway, it was good to take a look at the city one last time before the 12 hour flight home.

Off The Wall

This unique temple is an easy walk from my brother’s place near the town of Komoro, but since it was so bloody cold, we drove instead. I was a bit nervous about going up there, but didn’t really understand how precarious it was until I came to this spot. 

Breathtaking

We drove up a narrow single track road with plenty of switchbacks, ice, and potholes to finally arrive at a coffee shop in the mountains from which breathtaking views of the Alps could be had. The air was sparkling, with just enough clouds to keep things visually interesting. I’m not sure a photograph can record an experience in any meaningful way, but I’m still pleased to have snapped a few anyway. 

Look Down

It was snowing lightly on a recent visit to Nagano city. The abstract image of fallen twigs partially covered with snow caught my attention immediately. It’s my kind of thang, this kind of composition. I also knew that soon everything would be covered in snow and that this particular view of the world would never exist again. 

Free Coffee

On a cold winter morning, we drove up Mt. Asama to a place with a pretty spectacular view of the mountains and the city of Saku, which is located in a wide valley. When the air is especially clear, as it was on this day, you can sometimes see Fuji-san, which lies some 200 km to the south. It was a phenomenal view. Plus, on days when Fuji is visible, coffee refills are free. Nice! 

Tasting notes: Photograph taken with the telephoto lens on an iPhone 14 Pro in RAW format, and cropped some in post. Count me impressed.

Patchwork

I had some time on my hands while waiting for my brother, so I did a little exploring on my own. It was snowing gently in Nagano and the light was flat and cold, but even. The walls of this structure had clearly been cobbled together from materials at hand, but not at all in a slipshod manner. The scene made for a nice abstract composition.

Making All the Local Stops

We passed a local honey shop on the way up the mountain and decided to stop in to see what kind of honey was available. The mountain bees produce a clear, light honey the color of Pinot Grigio that is also quite viscous. It has a very clean and mild floral flavor that is nothing like what you find back home in the States. 

The Japanese Alps

A weather front blew through the area yesterday and cleared the skies, so we made the ninety minute drive up into the mountains where there is a spectacular view of the Japanese Alps. Just enough clouds were present to make for an interesting composition, and the atmospheric conditions ensured a crisp image. A great outing. 

Winter Scene

It was cold as hell, but on the positive side, there were almost no tourists around when we visited Matsumoto Castle the other day. There was no photography allowed inside the structure, unfortunately. But the weather outside was clear with a more than pleasant view of the surrounding mountains. The appearance of the swan in the frame was just icing on the cake.

Local Firewood

When the rain we’ve had for the past couple of days finally stopped, I decided that I needed to stretch my legs, and took a walk around the neighborhood with a camera. As I crested a small hill, I came across the place where my brother and his wife get the wood for heating their home in the winter. You see, the kerosene heaters just aren’t enough when the temperatures really drop.

Strawberries in the Shadow of Asama

The snow covered peak on the right is Mount Asama, an active volcano, as seen from a parking lot near my brother’s place. In the photograph above, the fluffy white stuff in the sky is a combination of clouds and steam from the mountain. Strawberries are grown in the fields in the foreground.

It’s Not All Temples And Rainbows

The farmers in the area are all burning their fields at the moment and this changes the quality of the light. The inversion layer doesn’t help. As a result, I’ve struggled with the color balance of my images. The atmosphere is a little smoky is all. But there are any number of greenhouses scattered throughout the landscape that have caught my attention. They are interesting to photograph, with no tourists to contend with as an added benefit. The real Japan you might say.

The Grid

Apparently, from what I have heard and been told, classic wooden structures like this one are disappearing quickly from the Japanese’s landscape. That said, I found and photographed an interesting example near Nagano the other day. Grids and greenhouses are two of my favorite things to photograph. 

Marks and Meaning

Usually I’m a bit reluctant to include any text in my compositions because you never know how a viewer might react to a fragment of text, how they might read it. It can be a real distraction, and even run counter to my overall intent for the image. But since I don’t read Japanese, text becomes a simple graphic element to play around with. Here for instance, I just like the overall composition, and possible misreadings of the text don’t enter into it for me. If you’re Japanese you might beg to differ.

Treating The Phone As A Serious Camera

 

Given the quality of smartphone cameras these days, I think I have to start treating mine as a serious tool for photography. Sounds obvious, but many photographers of a certain era define themselves as such by virtue of a ‘real’ camera hanging around their necks. Fact is, the phone is all you may need for documentary work. When I get home I’ll have to print some of my iPhone photos to see how they hold up. I haven’t done that in a few years.

Near Ueno

Photographing on the street is a little easier here in Japan, I think, for me any way. The sheer size of the crowds and the number of other visual stimuli all around are certainly factors. Regardless, people seem less concerned about invasions of their personal space in public spaces, so as an introverted photographer, I feel much more comfortable including humans in my photographs. That’s my initial impression anyway.

Islands

Pretty much anywhere, you’ll find holdouts of various kinds. Throughout Tokyo, there are any number of these architectural islands to be seen — older structures, usually homes, surrounded by an array of modern buildings. The colors and lighting here were what appealed to me the most on a cold and very windy day. 

Tokyo

After a 14 h flight, my skinny ass was pretty damned sore, and I was definitely ready to stretch my legs and walk. But my brain was jet lagged and in the end, I ended up only making a few photographs. This is the one decent one. It appears that some form of sub-conscious attention is required for what we do.

Best Laid Plans

We, that is, my wife and I, were all set to invest in a condo, but sadly, the project ran years behind schedule. In spite of it all, when the day finally came, the old building demolition was fun to photograph. I was shooting Ektar in a 35mm camera but cropped to square to make it look like medium format. Ha!

Traveling to Japan

Albus & Fergie World Headquarters will be temporarily relocating to Japan for the next two and a half weeks. I hope to post some images as I travel. In the meantime, this photograph was taken by my mother on a trip she made to Japan in the 1950s, before I arrived on the scene and before she was married. Enjoy! 

The Modern Humans

These images taken in and around my wife's old studio (circa 1996) were shot on Seattle Film Works film. I can still remember the novelty of getting films scans in the mail on 3.5" floppy disks and looking at them on my computer screen! We were such modern humans... 

The funny thing is that the original digital files are lost to the sands of time, and to see these photos again I rescanned the negatives myself.

A Splash of Color

These chairs are always scattered around the entrance of a local art museum in different configurations. I like to wake up my eyeballs by shooting them -- a little visual sun salutation of sorts you might say. 

Hope you find some time to do a little visual workout this weekend, fellow traveler. 

Digital Noise Is A Solved Problem

Over the past year or so, I have been piecemeal reading Kim Biel's 'Good Pictures'. It is a book that lends itself well to such an approach. Fortunately, because that's the way I read these days, alas... 

But anyway, one of the concepts that keeps coming up for me as I read this book is the notion that as technical barriers to capturing photographs are overcome, what were once 'challenges' become aesthetic choices. As modern film emulsions were developed, for example, older technologies, now collectively described as 'alternative processes', became aesthetic possibilities in the image maker's toolkit. These days, between hardware and software, I would argue that digital sensor noise is a solved problem. So, is it surprising then that using old digicams, with their noisy sensors and funky color rendition, is kind of a thing now? Today's image, smooth as a baby's bum, was taken at ISO 8000. Digital 'grain' or computational perfection? A choice I made as I processed the image.

Tilt and Shift

The use of tilt-shift lenses comes in and out of fashion among photographers. About a decade ago, the use of these lenses to create a 'miniature' effect was all the rage. Thankfully, that application has gone somewhat out of fashion, but, of course, there are other ways to bend a composition using such a lens, should you be so inclined (see what I did there?).

 

Tuesday Morning Chaos Theory

A kind of reductionism appears to be popular in photography circles these days. Lines leading to an obvious subject, a vignette applied (subtle, but there), extremely selective focus, 'depth'. Nuttin' wrong with any of that delicious stuff, of course. But here's a photograph that celebrates chaos, detail, the harsh light of afternoon on a clear winter day, and the flatness of the picture plane. Enjoy!

Floating In A Most-a Peculiar Way

Sometimes you need to really shake things up to make changes. Totally commit to a ketogenic diet to drop a couple of dozen pounds, for instance, that kind of thing. One of my hopes for 2023 is that humanity becomes aware of life elsewhere in the universe. Intelligent beings from some far out planet hurtling toward Earth in a crazy ass version of the Starship Enterprise. How would we handle that? Anyway, such thoughts arise when my eyeballs record chilly scenes of winter but it is in the 70s outside.  

Happy New Year

The flat surface of the glass with its scratches and marks templates the growth of ice on a window. When I was younger, I thought such observations might hold deep secrets about the nature of things. Nodding of heads, stroking of chins. The unification of forces, all of that. These days, I just try to notice things as much as possible.

Happy New Year. Here's hoping for a good 2023.