autumn tactics

Do you remember my eyes? How they shift between blue and grey depending on the weather? The amber ring in the center that catches the sunlight?

Yes, the circumstances have changed, but my eyes and the soul behind them are still the same.

Just a short note to say that this morning I processed and got another album up in Gallery. This time the subject is my walking trip of Kyoto during last New Year’s. A number of interesting posts came out of the trip, so you may enjoy reading them again while watching a slideshow of the photos in the background.

Cheers!

Though I’ve been taking pictures of raves for seven years, I rarely ever post pictures from them. However, last weekend I went to Tenrinsai in Fukushima, and was set on taking a substantial number of photographs. I planned for varying weather conditions (Centuria), as well as extremely low light levels (Super Presto 1600, pushed to 3200). In the end I got through six rolls of film on the A-1 and Macha’s borrowed Holga, with a couple snapshots in between with the PowerShot. There are some very show-worthy shots, though if I can successfully integrate them into a theme is another issue.

I have some reflection to put up along with these, but for now just take a look the pictures, and get a little taste of Japanese country psytrance.

At 1:25 this morning I stared into the flowing Kandagawa and I saw the past. I saw it rushing by awash in garish fluorescent light, unnoticed and trivial. But leaning on the aluminum bridge railing with a crumpled Camel hard pack in my breast pocket, nursing the wounds of my termination, I knew there was nothing to be said or done. I knew it before the night had even started; I knew it in winter last year as I undertook the most visceral and pure session of my limited photographic career.

I have been, and always will be, a lover; born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.

And I’m sorry it had to drive us apart.

So, Design Festa has ended, much sooner than I expected, actually. Friday night I toiled updating my poems and assembling my concept summary until morning, returning from the Southern Tower Kinko’s as the sky grew light at 4:30 Saturday morning. After sleeping for two hours and being dead to my alarm, the impatient calls from my ride at seven threw me into a dash of assembly until 12:15, over an hour past the show opening. I foolishly thought that being the second time around I’d be more prepared and installation would go smoother, but again this time I had nearly twice the materials as the last, and my booth setup was more complicated than my previous outing. Thank the Lord I had friends with me to put it together. Without them, there would have been no show

Then with a sweat-frosted brow, I stood proudly in my skiing cowboy shirt, eyes alight nostrils flaring, continuing on energy that came from some sort of environmental tap. Balancing on my toes, rocking over my knees I smiled, beamed, and gestured. I explained what Tokyo meant to me, what my goals were for the future, how the buildings and the colors, the stories witnessed and imagined all drove me nearly insane with ardor that simply must be redirected onto these two dozen pieces of coloured paper.

I didn’t eat for thirty hours, just absently sipping plastic bottled sports drinks between the waves of young girls that drifted in and out of my booth. When I sensed someone was not in a hurry and genuinely looking at my wrinkled black canvas, I intruded making a slight bow and offered a headset playing a remixed version of Leonid’s Crater. The ambient river that I coaxed out of the microKORG mingled with samples of clacking heels, passing bicycles, and slowly withdrawing automobiles. Birds warbled and summer cicadas sang: so much shuffled and tinkling green tea powder over a sublime layer of mint cake. The sound was well-received and led to conversations, long moments where I forgot my humility and sped on feverishly, taking every question and using it as a springboard into a clammy reel of my philosophy. Perhaps too emphatic, after finishing a complete revolution of my spiel, conversation often dropped off sharply and my exhaustion precluded common sense, ending each meeting with a weak smile and a passing of my business card.

I sold a dozen or so postcards, gave away a handful more, and at the end of the day had so much in my mind of how I would improve upon it all next time, during packing up and the train ride home I was virtually catatonic.

Already a bushel of future concepts have risen up in my mind like sprouting weeds after a long summer rain. I don’t have time to enumerate them all right now, because this is the stream of consciousness post, and I don’t have the gallery assembled yet anyway. Give me a day or two and then you can see the collective fruits of my efforts (and maybe even hear them).

Today I got started late in the day on things asset management wise (failed attempt at starting this season’s gardening), but I did find all the originals and make a Gallery album for Artificial Horizon. This was the last dedicated collection I made in 2004. It has a couple of interesting shots. Check it out if you have the time.

Kasuga Jinja, Nara Park. September 2005.

Tunnel rave in Shimoda-shi, Shizuoka. December 2006.

Ebisubashi, home of the famous running Glico Man in Osaka. Summer vacation, August 2004.

A glass of bourbon casts shadows at a coffee house on Spain-dori, Shibuya. February 2005.

Pagoda of Kannonji temple, Asakusa, rises behind a banner for a fried chicken vendor. February 2005.

Fluffy cat visited at a kiri tanpo (absolutely delicious Akita winter stew on a ground rice base) party. November 2006.

This picture has a lot of flaws, but I only had my digital camera and little choice but to use the on-body flash or suffer mortal blurring from my impatient subject. So while yes, she is inside the focusable near plane of the lens and overexposed, the background is almost painfully sharp. Not a good photograph, but an interesting artifact. This a half-rotted, incredibly green pumpkin of an image. Consume the parts you like and pick around the others.

Volkswagen near Hikawa Jinja in west Honmachi, February 2005.

A long time ago, before I even hade my first digital camera, my crude photography sometimes garnered feedback. While working on an third-party contracting job for a HTML medical information navigator, my employer (who among other things did contract photography) commented that my shots made good use of The Rule of Thirds. I’d never heard of this, as I’d never done study of any kind. The way I framed pictures was completely instinctual. But the “rule” is nothing more than an extrapolation of what is pleasing to most peoples’ eyes. So, I am in the general populace which can see the intersection of dominant lines. I can also occasionally reproduce them without thinking about it too much.

This picture feels strong to me; strong, aged, and loved.

Looking down from Soto Kanda into the crust of Akiba. May 2006, at the start of Golden Week.

This was a house across the street from mine in Honmachi. Here it’s in the process of being torn down so an ugly concrete slab apartment building can be put in its place to garner more income for its elderly owners. June 2005.

Context is something very important for photography. You weren’t there, so you have no idea what existed outside of the frame. To me, this is less important because I remember with vivid detail what did, and what I choose to focus on is only the heart of scene. So pictures like this may turn you off. For yesterday’s picture, I very nearly put up an image of just the upper-left corner of the red building, but in the end I went with the full shot because the closeup, “sucks”.

Oh well, sometime for you, sometime for me.