Zōkyō

Since late last year, right around the time of our dear savior’s birth, I have been working literally non-stop on a new project called Magnesium Photos (.com), The world’s most respected photo agency™ with a few photographer friends. It intends to be a new kind of photo agency and despite having started it just 3 weeks ago, I am very impressed and proud of what we have put together so far. The idea has been incubating for over 3 years and is finally coming to fruition in a whirlwind frenzy. We are still working out the kinks but looking forward to a good year. Keep your eyes on it…

Here’s a little excerpt from a piece I am working on for it:

For more about it, check out magnesiumphotos.com.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Yesterday, I dropped by my mate Koga san’s awesome bookstore cafe, Tegamisha in Tsutsujigaoka and had a coffee and some sweets. The cafe is located in an unsuspecting location in the courtyard of a giant drab apartment complex.
The people living in the area are very lucky to have this enclave of goodness at the center, serving up its amazing concoctions with extreme attention to beautiful detail in the way only Japanese do. Although I didn’t eat anything, every dish that came out of the kitchen made me giggle with mouth-watering delight seeing such wonderfully thought out dishes.

The coffee was amazing and served in a beautiful hand-made ceramic cup that kept my hands warm while I perused many of the awesome old books there.

I found one old book from maybe the 70’s that featured 100 Japanese photographers. I got to a page that looked somewhat familiar by an artist known as Hiromichi Moriyama.

Upon closer inspection there was no mistaking it was Daido.

Here are some close-ups.

Haha, so cool…

Anyway, you should go check this place out. Its really cool and well worth a walk over. Here’s a map.

Chimpanzee

This was taken with a Leica M8 on loan from Joi. I have been having a lot of fun with this camera a enjoying the ease of workflow that comes with working in digital. I’m quite impressed with how similar the photos from this camera look when compared to the film versions although I find that I am shooting ten times the amount of photos with it and perhaps tend to not take as much time to get it right the first time. While its a same form factor as my M6’s its a totally different shooting style, but one I am quite enjoying. Looking forward to using it more…

Spectators from Shimokitazawa Matsuri, 2009.

A lovely portrait (if you don’t mind me saying so) of two lovely people. My dear friends Dan and Dana.

Keeping in line with my Walker Evan’s ripoffs that John Sypal so graciously pointed out…