December 28th, 2006
A glass of bourbon casts shadows at a coffee house on Spain-dori, Shibuya. February 2005.
December 27th, 2006
Pagoda of Kannonji temple, Asakusa, rises behind a banner for a fried chicken vendor. February 2005.
December 26th, 2006
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.
December 25th, 2006
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.
December 24th, 2006
Looking down from Soto Kanda into the crust of Akiba. May 2006, at the start of Golden Week.
December 23rd, 2006
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.
December 22nd, 2006
Barn-like building in the middle of Kawasaki-shi near the Tama river. April 2004.
December 19th, 2006
Northern Shinjuku, after following the Kandagawa towards Waseda. April 2005.
This picture may very well be quite uninteresting to most people, and you may get the feeling like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel now. You’re not the only one. When I was setting up the shot a man was walking in the opposite direction, and after he passed me, he turned around with a confused expression on his face and looked down the same sight line as my camera, obviously perplexed as to what I could be taking a picture of. This happens a lot, actually. I guess the saying is, “Simple pleasures, simple minds.”
