Shio Mikuni modelling in an abandoned bus on Route 20 through the mountains in west Fukushima.

The wonderful red shirt was kindly loaned by renowned Japanese fashion designer, Emi Nakanishi.

Gear & specs on this shot?

• Nikon D700
• 14mm f/2.8
• Couple of speedlights through an umbrella behind/to the right of me. Couple more behind the model.
• Shot at 3570K white-balance
• Processed in Photoshop and Nik Filters to even out the exposure a little & slightly change the colour tone.

See this shot on the cover of our new magazine, Stekki, here.

This is the second or third time I have seen this car but the first time I have seen it race. The first two times I saw it were on its trailer.

The Lotus 35 was an Formula2 racing car built for the 1965 and ’66 seasons.  It is in my opinion one of the finest, most slender, sleek and beautiful racing cars of all time. I once had a Scalextric slot-car version of it. Seeing the real car up close and getting to shoot it race were a great pleasure.

Tony Ito was there with two cars; this Lotus 35 and a MGBGT touring-car. Both,. I believe, come from the AC Minds garage near Toyota City.

I shot this from a vantage point behind the pits, looking back across to corners 8 and 9 on the Sodegaura Ccircuit; great position that allowed me to get such a low aspect onto the car.

Gear?
Nikon D700
Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 ED-IF

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I’m currently involved in shooting some pics of Japanese racing legend Tetsu Ikuzawa, for the official Porsche 911 ’50th Anniversary’ book.

This one probably won’t make the book as those shots will be portraits of him and his 911s, shot at his garage in Tokyo. But I visited him recently at a race near Tokyo, at the Sodegaura Forest Raceway, just to make friends and get a few shots for b-roll.

Lovely day out. He’s such a gentleman. Lovely guy. The whole day was a beautiful experience.

Looking forward to shooting Ikuzawa-san at his home and garage soon… and,of course, seeing his amazing collection of Porsche 911 cars.

Gear?
Nikon D700
Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8IF-ED

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I’ve been going to this building since about 1999 and I can still find a new angle on it.

Sorry for being absent from Google Plus recently but it’s been a very busy few weeks of work and May is looking even more busy.

I spent a few days in here last week as I was doing two photo tours, for corporate clients, and did two lessons around here too.

I typically shy away from the super-wide in here, cos that’s the easy lens in a place that simply screams ‘shoot ALL of me at once’. So I often shoot the 50mm or the telephoto in the Forum.

But I happened to have the 14mm on me last week and found this angle.

The strip of light at the bottom right – which is the beginning of the final ramp to ground level – is what caught my eye.

Gear etc?
Nikon D700
14mm f/2.8
Black and white done in-camera
Resized in photoshop. No other post-pro

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After two years of thinking I had a whole hard-drive’s worth of shots from 2008-9 corrupted, today I found a mirrored copy of the files on another drive I hadn’t used in ages.

Can’t tell you how happy I am, not least because all the shots I took on a trip to Fukushima in 2008 were on there.

I’d moved a bunch of files from one external drive to another, which I don’t ever recommend you do… because USB read-write and buffer speeds can fluctuate and I ended up with thousands of JPEGs that were greyed-out halfway up.

I tried everything to get them back, including even trying to re-write individual headers in the images: no joy.

Finding all the original RAW files today was like a dozen Christmases and Birthdays rolled into one.

The trip I’d made to Fukushima in April 2008 was to spend time with my wife’s family, who all live there still. As well as shooting some of the cherry blossom in our town, I’d spent a couple of days on the coast north and south of Shioyazaki Lighthouse; an area that was devastated in the 3/11 tsunami.

I was there last weekend in fact, shooting and filming a documentary with NHK World.

Not that there were many ‘wow’ pictures, but it was memories… memories of a place I’d been a number of times but that had changed forever.

The most interesting shot I’ve found so far is this one, shot just north of Shioyazaki on a section of coast that is very, very different to this now.

For all the hardship Tohoku and Fukushima has been through, was pretty blown-away that I’d captured this almost heart-shaped flock of birds on the coast one day, three years before the way I look at the sea [especially in Fukushima] changed forever.

Gear?
Nikon D300
50mm f/1.8 AiS @ f/11

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Very strong wind and rain yesterday in what was, I suppose, the first typhoon of the season.. all be it rather early.

As is usual after a typhoon, the skies the next day are wonderful: full of clouds, characterful, dramatic.

Today was particularly good and ended with this amazing and somewhat threatening cloud formation near our house.

Gear?
Nikon D700
14mm f/2.8 @ f/5.6
1/8th sec handheld
800ISO

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After the first sakura season I lived in Japan through, back in 2008, I rarely felt the need to return to Ueno Park.

There are places in Tokyo to experience hanami [flower-watching] once and from then on to avoid: Naka-meguro, Ueno Park, Shinjuku Gyoen, Yoyogi Park…

Although this is a generalisation and there are exceptions……

1. If I am drunk
2. If I am in the area
3. If I am in the area AND drunk

So, seeing as I was in the area and drunk one night last week – and that I was out with my good buddy +Paul Church, we decided to float through Ueno Park, have yet another beer and see what we could see.

As is the way with Japan and especially hanami, random shit happens. Pretty much the first thing we saw upon entering the park was this girl lighting a birthday cake.

…had to take a photo. Didn’t take many more.

Gear, alcohol intoxication levels, processing?

Nikon D700
Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 Ai [manual focus lens]
3200ISO
Shot with a ‘Portra’ simulated film curve in the camera.

Shot after having drunk five, 500ml, cans of beer.
Shot very quickly.
Shot with the lens set to 3metres, from the hip, at f/1.2

White balance sorted, shadows lifted a little, noise reduced in post.

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Spent a little of yesterday driving around and scouting for locations for a photography workshop.

My daughter came with me as she’s staying with her grandma in Fukushima until Friday.

She was just finishing a chocolate ice-cream as I shot this….

This is at a little section of beach by the village of Joko.

There are a few lakes around the area of Mount Bandai. We;ll be doing a day of the workshop around two of them: Inawashiro and Hibara.

News later this week of the workshop, with some more scouting shots from this area and an area around the river near Ishikawa-machi.

Gear & Processing?
Nikon D700
Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 ED IF
RAW converted to TIFF
Into Photoshop and then cross processed.

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Drove on Route 20 through Fukushima yesterday, on the way from the Ishikawa-Iwaki road to get over to Koriyama. Found this bus just near where the ’20′ joins Route 349.

Spent a little while shooting inside and got a few of outside too.

Would love to get a fashion model in here…

Gear & Processing?
Nikon D700
14mm f/2.8 lens
RAW converted to TIFF
Processed in Photoshop with Topaz Adjust 3′s exposure equalization filter, to get a little more out of the shadows whilst protecting the highlights.

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Yanaka Cemetery is a wonderful spot for seeing the sakura in Tokyo, with its long avenue of trees and the great light that percolates through them.

It’s not the best place for partying under the hanami because space to do so is limited. But at various places along the street it’s perfectly possible to sit in small groups and enjoy the scenery.

Pleased how this came out. The taxi helps identify the scene nicely as Tokyo.

Gear?
Nikon D700
Nikkor 300mm f/4 ED
Shot straight to black and white in the camera

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