I had long heard that Tokyo was the Mecca of film camera stores and always dreamt of going. So when I discovered a need to travel to Japan for work, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to see if I could find some time to check out the famous stores.

I did not have too much time to prepare, so I went to Japan Camera Hunter and found a map with a ton of stores around Tokyo. I downloaded this to my iPhone and off I went. I arrived on a Saturday night and had the full day on Sunday to walk around and check out the stores. 

Below are the lessons I learned, and some recommendations to help you get the most out of any shopping trip in Tokyo. 

1. There are indeed a TON of film camera stores all over Tokyo but they seem to cluster around each other.  Go into a particular neighborhood and you will be able to visit several shops.
   
2. The stores are not cheap. Do not believe that just because there are plenty of stores, you are going to find a steal. Sure you can get lucky, but most of the gear is well understood and priced as per market rates or higher.
   
3. The condition of the cameras are usually very good. The weather in Tokyo is very forgiving for camera equipment (40-50% humidity) and culturally people seem to care for equipment.  
   
4. There is no bargaining. The price you see is the price you will pay. Asking for a discount may get you thrown out. If you are looking to buy two cameras or a camera and a bunch of accessories, then you can ask if they can give you a special rate.
   
5. Ask before you touch and if you do touch be very careful.  You will see when the store personnel touch the cameras they will be very delicate and you need to match them. 
   
6. I would recommend that you look to cameras made in Japan. You will find plenty of German made cameras but frankly I do not see the point. When in Japan why not try to buy something that was made there. There are plenty of special releases of cameras that were only made available in Japan.  Here is your chance to own one of these.
   
7. Most places I went to offered a warranty which was between 1 week and 3 months. This depended more on the camera in question and less on the establishment. Buy a Nikon F3 and you will probably get a 3 month warranty but if you buy something more delicate, expect less. 
   
8. Don't forget to look at accessories. Sometimes you can be so excited about a purchase that you overlook some of the accessories that may be available. I found some inexpensive, original manufacture eyepieces and the like.  Just take your time, and look around.
   
9. If the neighborhood looks to be expensive, as in there are luxury brand stores around, then the camera store will be expensive too. I found these stores often charged twice what other stores did for the same level of condition.  I suggest going to cheaper neighborhoods and you will find better deals. 

For those curious about what I bought....I finally got my hands on a wonderful Nikon S2. I was going to leave it at that but at the last minutes I decided to pick up a Nikon F3T.  I have the Nikon F3 but always dreamt of the F3 Professional and the F3 Titanium.  I found a mint F3T for about USD 550.  Like I said, not a steal but given the condition of the camera, a very respectable price.  I will share pictures soon!

I ran across the photography above while doing a history "string" search.  This is what I call it when I find something interesting and begin searching for more information than is readily available. This takes me from one person or event to another, as I trace back the "strings" that link all events and people together.

In this particular case, I was searching for the "Ross Sisters" and act of three very talented sisters that became popular in the late 1940's.  This is one of the sisters after her performance life had ended with her husband.  This picture really struck me because it is a perfect travel portrait of the 1950's as we see the airliner in the background, the couple is dressed up and all smiles. 

This got me thinking about today's travel portraits, so I went on Unsplash to see how modern photographers interpret the concept of travel.  

So how has travel and travel portraits changed over the years? This seems to be a topic fit for a dissertation and something that could never be properly covered in a blog post. But I still believe it is worth looking into, however superficially it might be.

Travel photography has changed, because our notions of travel has changed. In the 1940's the world was at war. People were focused on helping the war effort, or surviving it. As the 1940's came to a close, a booming economy developed as the world rebuilt itself. As the 1950's came, people had money and wanted to travel to see the world. Aviation had gained considerable ground during and after the war so people took to the skies.    

Airliners competed to offer a more opulent experience, catering to upper class people by promising luxury.  Flight attendants and pilots were viewed as people embracing the modern era. These were the jobs of the future. People, focused more on the travel and less on the destination. 

We see this approach to travel throughout the 1950's, 60's and into the 70's and then things begin to change. In the 1980's the goal was to bring travel to the mass population. Competition from rival airline companies was making it impossible to only focus on the upper class. If they wanted to grow, they had to find a way to make it affordable. 

Cheaper fares meant putting more people on board the airplanes, this meant less room and less time for service. Airports needed to find faster ways to move people around, tarmac boarding of planes took too long. Skybridges were created, separating you from the mode of transport you were using. 

As we enter the 1990's we see the transformation accelerate and as airplane flights became more economical it lost the social status it once had. Airplane safety became a concern with hijackings and accidents. Entering airports became less of a runway to show off new fashion and became a security process. In short, people began to hate travel. And so we focused on the destination.

And so our notion of travel changed and we began reconsidering the destination and reason for travel. A concept began being perpetuated that travel means personal growth. Young people finishing high school began traveling before university.  This began extending to young people looking for ways to continually travel.

YouTube today is filled with "van life" concepts or "making money while traveling". The goal of travel is no longer about a destination it has become a way of life. The social pressure is not about buying a house, having kids or even getting a good job.  Social pressures are about how to avoid all of those things for as long as possible. 

As travel changed, so too has our approach to travel and our images of it as well.  So the next time you look at an image of a young person living out of a van, or finding themselves in some small isolated town, hut or mountain, you know the history of how they got there.  My only question is where will they go next?
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Travel photography can be a great deal of fun, however as Sally Mann is found of saying, some of the best pictures can be taken around the house. We had a party at the house this weekend, and some friends brought some wonderful flowers that really needed to be photographed.  

A black curtain hung next to a window, some soft, natural light and everything was set for a picture. I wanted a straight vase and ultimately selected an old wine bottle, dutifully emptied of its original contents, which held the flower nice and straight. I found a suitable table and draped it with a dark cloth. For lighting I directed the natural light with a reflector.  

Once set up, the simple part is the actual photography.  Key to these still life, is to use spot metering on the brightest area. In this case, the flower petals proved to be the brightest area. Once the exposure was set to keep all the highlights from being blown out, all that was left was to recompose.

The challenge of such a shot is that the preparation takes so much longer than the actual execution that the end result hardly seems to justify the expense of time and effort. In order to compensate for this feeling, the photographer will often shoot too many images of the flower, expending an entire film roll or occupying too much memory.  

I suggest that you consider what other items could be photographed with a similar background and gather those. Once the "foldable studio" is set up, there are plenty of things that might benefit from the setting.  

I took the liberty to shoot this flower both in digital and on film. For the film I finished off a roll of 120 HP5+ at EI 1600 that I had on my Hasselblad. I also had a roll of 35mm also of HP5 at EI 200 that I shot as well. The end result, three or four digital images followed by ten or so images on film. 

I heard it all before, it is not worth the money, it is a camera made for people with too much money and too little ability, it is a status symbol.  And the crazy bit, each of these has an element of truth into it. The Leica camera is ridiculously priced and I did not purchase it for a full year after it came out. I could not bring myself to part with the money. I love my Leica ME and the M10 did not introduce too many new features that I absolutely needed.

But this year my wife and I celebrated 20 years of wedding happiness. When she asked me what I wanted, I could not think of anything else. With so many of my fellow photographers criticizing the purchase of the Leica M10, I thought I would openly explain my logic.

The answer can be found deep in my Lightroom archives. A few years ago, I wanted to see if it was necessary to carry three massive lenses on vacation.  I was shooting my Nikon D800 and usually took a 70-200mm, 24-70mm and 14-24mm lenses. So I went back to my previous three vacations, and had Lightroom tell me how many of the pictures I took were taken with each lens.  My next vacation I left the 70-200mm lens at home. Nice simple. I love the lens but I was not shooting it very much and it was not worth taking.

A few months ago I was looking back at some of my favorite images and I noticed an odd trend. The vast majority of my favorite images were taken with the Leica ME. I had several favorite images shot with my Nikon D800, however these were images I had planned, set up and prepared for. This was with the full tripod, remote trigger, lens filters and so forth. 

In fact, it would have been much cheaper if I never saw the difference between one camera and another.  But I did. When I walk around with a Leica ME I do not really feel that I have a camera. I feel that it is part of me and that people will not be bothered with my use of it.  When I pick up my Nikon D800, I am clearly shooting and I know people will be bothered with such a massive camera pointing at them.

This picture above is an example of what I am talking about. It is not a wonderful picture, but it is a picture I would never have taken with the Nikon D800.  I took this picture, and several others, and the man to my right never even looked at me. These are the kinds of pictures that I take with my Leica that I do not take with my DSLR.

This picture above is one of my all time favorite shots.  I was in Covent Garden and was wondering around trying to get a good shot.  Not sure what it is with Covent Garden, but it is a wonderful place that is frustratingly difficult to shoot.  As I wandered around, I saw this entertainment show. Now I should explain that there are shows there everyday and they are selected carefully.  Only the best of the performances are allowed there.  

I found myself near the wall of a Church that sits opposite the Garden.  As I turned I noticed that a show as starting and I was behind the performer.  My instinct was to move but while I did, I pulled my Leica ME up and snapped a single shot and then I walked off for the show to start.

This image would never have been captured without a Leica and what is worse, I would not have gotten a good image of the Garden. 

This is what a Leica M gives me. It gives me the ability to shoot images I want to shoot, but a DSLR makes it impossible to shoot. So if I wanted to continue to shoot the images that I want to then I needed to continue shooting a Leica.

So why buy the M10?  Simply put, I wanted the better low light capabilities and it delivers. I would not have gotten it if it had come with a EVF, or some other gimmick.  I wanted a simple camera that got out of my way and allowed me to forget it was there. 

​Is it worth the $7500 price tag?  For me it is.  I am willing to pay this to continue to shoot the images that I love.  

So six photographers were asked by Canon to shoot the same person, however each was given a different background of the person.  The six photographers shot drastically different photographs based on what they thought they knew of the person.  You can see an article on PetaPixel here.

This interesting experiment highlights the impact that a photographer has on the images they take. This is why, when I find a photographer I like, I need to dive deeply into their lives to try and understand their perspective. But in so doing, I am reinterpreting the image through a different lens, and this can cause problems.

Here is my own experiment to highlight the pitfalls of interpreting a photographers perspective.

Here we have two photographs by the same photographer of two different ladies. Both are interesting shots, the first an intimate snapshot of a woman who is caught on a toilet and manages a coy smile. The second, is a graceful posed image of a beautiful woman with a striking off camera gaze. Both were shot by Lartigue.

Anyone can look to these two images and see an eye for photography. Anyone can see the obvious talent and in spite of the very different photographic styles, it is clear that Lartigue executed both wonderfully well.

If one begins to look deeper at Lartigue's life, one finds that the first photo is of Bibi, his first wife. It was shot during their honeymoon. She was his main subject for years, both before and after they were married. As the marriage began to fall apart she asked for a divorce and left him. Lartigue then got together with Renee Perle who was a model. She became his muse and he shot photographs of her all over.

When you compare the images of his first wife, candid, unposed and innocent it is easy to believe one sees happiness and joy.  As one continues to look at the images of Renee Perle it is easy to believe that one sees fake poses, an act for the lens that must be covering up something that is missing...perhaps the joy we saw before.

Looking back up at the two images, we see them very differently now. We see the intimate joy of a young bride being photographed by her new husband and on the second a false pose, an image that could have been shot by any fashion photographer.

But these interpretations are adjusted based on our understand of Lartigue and his life. You can read his diary and see his thoughts of each woman, you can marvel at how his style changed and even feel a bit sad that his first marriage failed. But these things are not captured in the image. 

In this two dimensional representation of three dimensional ladies, we have wonderful images. We have gesture captured wonderfully, we have grace and we have composition. It is our biased attempt to extrapolate the photographer's intent based on our understanding of what was happening to his life that alters our perception and appreciation of two fine photographs. 

A photograph can be a simple snapshot that you glance over for a few seconds and move on. Or you can linger over the photograph and conceptualize it, but then you can go deeper and attempt to understand the photograph. Through each stage your perception of the photograph will be altered tremendously when the image itself has not changed a bit. 

As Canon proved in their experiment, a photographer will impact an image based on their perception of the subject. But as shown above, the viewer will impact the interpretation of an image based on their perception of the photographer. So a well thought out image is the product of the photographers bias intermingled with the viewer's own bias. 

Page 2 of "The Photographer's Playbook" and I was stumped.  All Dan Abbe was asking me to do, in this first photographer's "play" was to figure out what game I was playing.  It would have been much easier to skip over this first assignment and move on to photograph the moon, or myself in a mirror.  But that would have been cheating.  

I spent the next few days trying to define the game I am playing, and once I began to be able to articulate it I really began stressing as Dan Abbe then asked me to learn my game. Well that means that I not only need to be able to articulate it, I need to be able to measure some form of progress to in my development. 

So I threw out everything I thought about art and photography.  I chose to forget that I lack talent, I chose to forget the gear I have or want to get. I forgot about digital, film, storage and display.  I needed to articulate my game and here it is.

I want to be able to approach street, landscape, portrait, architecture and still life photography and deconstruct it to a simple image with an emotional involvement. The idea is to create an image with "kando". This is my game.  Now how will I learn my game? 

Photography as an art form is made to be shared. Just as music is written to be heard, a photograph is taken to share. So I needed to take my photography in each of these genres to others and more specifically to people who understand photography.  I needed to be critiqued.  

So I divided up these understandings into a simple roadmap for my "game".  Below is the version as it sits now.  I am sure this will be altered over time, but this is where my thinking is at.

1. Study the genre and know 5 masters of the genre and what sets them apart, their philosophy, their style and their approach.  Two of them must be contemporary (still shooting today). This is the academic foundation which I consider vital.  
2. Go out and shoot.  Build a portfolio of 20 images with kendo within the genre and print them. This can be a darkroom print or a digital print. 
3. Get my portfolio critiqued but people who know photography. I can start with friends and move on to photographers I know but the goal is to have it professionally critiqued. Go back to step 2 and repeat.

There it is, I have defined my game and I have set out a roadmap to learn my game. I have included establishing the academic background, shooting, printing and sharing. The "end game" is when I have a portfolio that can stand up to a critique and images with kando. It only took me a week to do.  What a crazy photo assignment this turned out to be!

The second lesson I wish I learned much earlier in my photographic journey is actually a lesson within a lesson. When I first picked up a camera to start making art, I thought I was after the beautiful image. We all know the one I am talking about, wonderful clouds, colorful horizon with crystal clear blue sky with some warm foreground element to balance off the shot. I traveled the world looking for these shots which I kept seeing in all the on-line photography classes. This perfect image must be the pinnacle of photographic expression, if it wasn't then why would all the experts be teaching it?

Only years later did I realize that the wonderful postcard perfect image of a sunset, with brilliant colors and sense of depth was...crap. The reasons all the experts teach how to capture those images is because it is the easiest thing to teach. There really is very little art in those images. It is about capturing a perfect scene. 

Those same experts, then take the photographer indoors to practice shooting with lights, modifiers and reflectors. Again, a place they could control, easily teach and sell a bunch of gear in the process. I do not blame them, I would do the same if I was making a living off photography courses. 

What I learned is that Art can be at its strongest when it is simple. Removing the complications of life, the clutter of advertisements and the noise of messages can create a powerful image from a simple object. The lack of busy messages can carry the strongest message through an emotion. 

The image of the bulls above, is actually a work by Picasso where he deconstructs a bull in order to be able to transmit a message with as little information as possible. The goal, ensure everyone who looks at the drawing knows it is a bull, but remove all unnecessary things. This deconstruction is amazing to me, and the simplification it brings is astounding. 

This idea that art is not perfection, but the communication of an emotion and the power of transmitting that emotion with some very simple objects changed by view on photography.  I have not shot a sunset in ages, as I focus more on the details of a persons hand, face or silhouette.  

The lessons I learned right after this one is that of size. When I first began printing images, I wanted to print the largest size possible. I printed massive prints, then bought a printer that could print on a large scale only to print largely forgettable images. I thought this was the best that could be done and went about my life. 

Then on a afternoon in Paris, I went to a Museum to see an exhibition of my favorite photographer Josef Sudek. I had seen his work in books and on the internet but had never seen one of his actual prints. Imagine my surprise when the image I thought was going to be large was tiny. I was dumbfounded! Here was a master photographer who was printing small images. I stood there wondering why, and then involuntarily took a step closer, then another and another. I found myself getting close to the print, closing the gap, and focusing on it. The rest of the world drifted away and there was only me and this print. A astounding little print.

As photographers develop in their skill set and abilities, there are some lessons that are learned rather late yet can have a very strong impact on the quality of images captured. I decided to make a couple of posts on the two lessons I wish I had learned years sooner than I actually did.

The first lesson I learned from a website that has long ago disappeared. The concept of the site was to bring together photojournalist techniques with the "dad photographer" job role. When I first visited the site, I was taken aback by the quality and honesty of the images he would take.  I was so drawn to it, I began to look at the techniques he was employing and then realized that they were the same ones that famous war correspondents would use.   

Photojournalists do not take pictures based on a preconceived image. They take what is there, in the most factual way possible and record the event. Dark circles under the eyes, odd clutter around the subject and distracting lighting are all included. 

This is not to say that photographers like Emma Goldsmith is wrong, they are professionals and when families go for professional shots, they expect images that are "perfect".  Emma did a great job on the image above, and it is an image I would be proud to show. But there is a difference between a photoshoot and life at home. 

I want images of my kids growing up, surrounded by all their toys, and clutter that make a house a home. Looking at my photography as a way to capture their "truth" set me free from worrying about the perfect pose, perfect lighting and the absence of noise on the image.  

There are some tricks to this approach to photography that are worth mentioning. 

1. Shutter speed is important. While movement can be blurred, the image needs to be in focus. Sacrifice everything for composition and focus. So push the ISO to "Automatic" or set it high and forget the noise.
2. Post processing should be very slight. The goal is not to capture an imperfect image in camera, only to spend hours making it perfect in post. The idea is to capture an image which is as close to the true scene as possible.
3. B&W is your friend. Color images are less forgiving in terms of grain and they require a different compositional approach. Just as Emma Goldsmith did above, if you shoot in color you want to make color a pleasing part of the image. If not, you will have a jarring affect. This might not bother you, but if it does, I suggest B&W. 
4. Go to where the action is. What I mean is get on the floor if you have pets and kids. Roll around with them and keep shooting pictures. 
5. This is not a moment to show off your manual focusing skills, or that you can use a camera on manual. This is the time to set everything to auto, and just capture the moments as they present themselves. You will find that if you are not asking your kids to smile, or to pose, they will enjoy the experience greatly. 

It has been awhile since I did a deep dive into one of my own photographs.  I like to do this as an educational tool, but I need to be in the right frame of mind. The objective is to find what works with the image and what doesn't. Sometimes I find that my link with the image is emotional and that the photograph really is not well taken. Other times I find the key that makes the photo work compositionally.

So here we have an image I like to call "People & Light".  As many might notice, the image was taken in the Pantheon in Rome. This is an amazing building, built in 126 AD and it is a marvel of engineering and mathematics.  The best part, it is free to enter as it is a Church now, and while people should be respectful of the services that are conducted there, it is free to walk in and look around.

I took this image many years ago using my D300 camera a the 24-70mm lens that I still use. They do not allow tripods and there is little light for a camera with such basic ISO performance. 

What I wanted was an image that would do this building justice and I only found two unique attributes.  The first is the ceiling that is a massive dome with a hole in the center. I first shot this ceiling and then realized that this is what everyone shot. So I looked around and my eyes settled not he door. 

What Works:
The image was to highlight the size of the building by keeping the tourists in the shot. The massive door in the background gives a sense of scale compared to the people, and the columns outside help break up the bright light flooding in. I would not have the dynamic range to keep the highlights outside the door and the darkness inside in the same image. So by allowing the light to be blown out, but shooting at an angle I was able to break up the bright light a bit. 

The door frame support columns, fall on the lines of thirds along the vertical. Horizontally the horizon is below the bottom third, accentuating what is on top. While the people are in the frame, they help the shot as they give everything perspective. A bit advantage is that no one is looking at my while I take the image. Tourists looking at the camera when an image is taken can be very distracting.

Even the square hole on the upper right side of the image, was left on purpose.  This is the hole that Michelangelo made in order to study how the Pantheon was built. 

What Doesn't:
Due to the poor lighting, some of the people are hidden in shadows. If you are going to have people in the frame, it is important to be able to see them.  

The curve of the building gives a bit of tension in the shot. I like this tension but it contrasts with the people standing around. If the image had some movement, a person walking or running, this would tie in better with the tension of the curve in the building. 

Conclusion:
I believe this is one of the best images I have taken of the Pantheon. It is a rather unique vantage point while making it instantly recognizable. Overall a nice capture with some interesting elements that allow the viewer enough to look at to stick around for a little while. 

I was recently looking at some Leica lenses and was surprised to hear about how "flawless" the image was. The ideal of almost zero distortion, no color fringing and pin sharp from center to edges. It struck me as a very clinical way to approach an artistic pursuit. We all understand that it is not the gear that makes an image, but can the gear be too perfect to allow some character? 

If you look at the image above, you have a wonderful little Chinese girl, dressed in a traditional hat during their National Day Celebrations. This image is one of my favorites because of the girl's expression, her hand gesture and the lady eating noodles in the background. When I look at this image, I am not thinking of the perfection of the glass, in fact, this image would be wonderful with any glass.  

As a photographer, I am not interested in capturing the truest rendition of a scene. I am interested in conveying a feeling, and image detail does not carry through to the emotional. A shot of a temple in Xi'an China can be photographed a great many ways. Each visitor attempts to create their own memory of the scene. Some look to some detail of the building, others try to capture the entire magnificence while others focus on the light and shadow to convey a feeling.

Irrespective of the approach the photographer takes, the clinical perfection of how a lens captures the scene is not important. In fact, we use modern digital filters to dumb down the image, to add color casts and to remove detail. Why do we do these things if perfect rendition is what matters?

The answer is simple, in the digital world we are able to capture a perfect rendition of a scene, and so is everyone else on the planet. We need something to stand out, to let the world know that an individual took this image. We take the straight photography movement, championed by the lines of Paul Strand, Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz and return back to pictorialism where the artist feels the need to make an image unique. 

What Man Ray did in his darkroom with techniques like Polarization, is now being done on computers, cell phones and various applications. I do not criticize any of these movements, it is the world of art, and it will change and move depending on the pressures in society. I do however wonder why seek the perfect lens, why not go after the one filled with character?

I recently bought the 7artisan 50mm lens for the Leica M mount. This is a f/1.1 lens, making it the fastest that I own. I bought it for about USD 360.  Every review I read compared it to the Noctilux (a USD 10,000 lens) and argued about all the limitations the lens has.  When I took the first few images with the lens I really liked it. The images have all these odd, results that make it unique. The lens is imperfect and this gives it a character and that is what I want my images to have.

So the next time you are looking for a lens, why not try some old, used lens with scratches, dust and yes, even fungus? You might be surprised at the artistic results it gives you!