The Wander

It is 9:20 in the am and I am boarding a shinkansen bound for Niigata. I am on the lower level of a MAX TOKI bullet train. Think of an English style double-decker bus, paint it white and speed it up to 300km, well you get the idea. I am leaving from Tokyo, traveling North West to the Sea of Japan.
Niigata is my destination, a skier’s paradise during the winter months and a typical port city during the summer months. There is a lot fishing done off these shores and I look forward to some local fare on my dinner plate tonight.
My photography work will keep me pretty busy through my stay here. I doubt if there will be any time for personal shooting, but if there is I will do what I love most, wander.
There is nothing like a good wander around a new place to get into a creative space. On a side note it also a great way to familiarize oneself with the surroundings and maybe even how to better use local flare in your professional work.
When I wander about, often one camera body and one lens will do the trick. I shoot this way mostly as a means to keep moving, as well as to keep me approachable. My lens preference is a fast prime, typically a 24mm f2 or a 85mm f1.4. However a good old 50mm f1.4 can be pretty nice too.
I like the fast primes because I will be shooting from the hip so-to-speak, and in a variety light from bright highlights to dark shadows. Also because prime lenses are lightweight and low profile. The main reason for choosing the prime lens over the zoom is because I will create a ‘geographic portrait’ of the location.
A ‘geographic portrait’ is a way approaching a location that allows me to create a likeness of the locale that is more similar to a portrait then to say a journalistic or documentary style. I approach each subject whether it is a flower, shop, building anything really, the same way I would approach taking someone’s portrait.
And just how do you do that? Two parts. The first part is the technical side of the portrait. I love a single pane focus with all of the necessary details of the face just breaking that pane with everything else fading back in layers sharp, soft, and creamy. You can achieve this by shooting in the f1.4 to f2.8 range (you could even stop down a little more depending on the background and your subjects distance from it).
Part two, the story. Each person and in this case each location has something to reveal. This is where each person has to reveal a little of themselves to find out what is to be revealed to them and how to best capture it. In the case of the ‘geographic portrait’ I am looking beyond what is tourist about the locale and in to what might be a real, everyday story to tell. After all that is what we all do in one form or another, tell stories.

Jeff

EkiBen and Beer.

Whats that you say? Eki means train station, Ben is short for Bento, which means boxed lunch and Beer, well that is universal. Put it all together and you get boxed-train-station-lunch and beer. On second thought it sounds better in Japanese.

All summer long i will be bullet training, driving and flying around Japan. For each leg of my trip I am going to share some of my thoughts on photography and being a photographer on the road, or train as it is today. I will share some shooting tips, tricks, ideas and any insight I may gain along the way.

In fact my first tip to share is this: every photographic job/experience no matter how mundane or exciting, how crazy busy or whatever I try to take something from it. There is always something learn from any situation and all that is required is that you keep your mind open to the possibilities. i would go even one step further and suggest that you should leave something of yourself as well. A fellow photographer once said to me, “…isn’t every picture we take really just a self portrait?” My thought to that was if it isn’t it should be.

Any way, back to lunch, beer and scenery whipping by at 300km

Jeff’s Japan