Blog

The photographic blog of Sean Wood (aka motionid)

Stark Mt. Fuji

Outtake from the trip a few years back. Shot with the Rollei f/2.8 d

Koga san

This was shot on an outing with Thomas, Jon and Koga san when we were visiting Aoki Gahara (suicide forest) near mt. Fuji. A great afternoon after the rain had stopped for thirty minutes and given us just enough time to take a few pictures on lake Motosu (the the right of the picture that you can't see) which resulted in some of my best during the trip. This is just before Koga san became a dad. Oh, this was shot with the Rolleiflex f/2.8 d.

Path up Nokogiri

Shot this last winter using the Holga at midday. Cold as hell and not much in the way of nice foliage. You have to get a bit further up the mountain to encounter snow. I think by that time my fingers didn't work and I couldn't release the shutter. Love the way the Holga screws with the focus position though. I always tend to forget how it screws with the image. Built in atmosphere :-)

Stephan

And so my friend Stephan is leaving Japan for the US. He will be missed and I wish him well. I am glad he is following his dream and I look forward to hearing about his adventures.

The Journey Home

One day soon when I get motivated I'm going to shoot more of the route I take to and from work by bike. The route that follows the Tama river goes for around 11km and is really only accessible by bike. The above shot is a sample of the kind of thing you see at night along this stretch of river. Hopefully more to come.

Mountains and Sea

Over the last few weeks I've managed to do a reasonable amount of riding. Several times to the mountains near where I live and also to Katsuura in Chiba.The Chiba ride was my second time but the first time to the route via the mountains. The first trip was extremely hot and ended up almost passed out on a set of pallets outside a warehouse in the shade 3/4 of the way to the destination. This 2nd attempt, while hot was a much more enjoyable experience. The mountains might have made for a more challenging ride but the cover the trees provided (and the breeze you got) was a welcome relief.

It's been raining every day here for the last few weeks which has made the mountains wet and misty. Perfect for a few pictures with atmosphere. All pictures shot with the iphone. Just way easier to carry and manage while on a bike and riding 150+km than a regular camera (provided the battery lasts!)

Izu Peninsula Part 4

Suruga bay. A place I'd like to explore more of. Actually the whole Izu peninsula is pretty interesting from a visual point of view. I've not yet been to the mountains but did have to drive through some to get home. Even that journey looks like a great bike ride. More to be explored.

Izu Peninsula Part 3

Izu Peninsula Part 2

As usual, in the summer there are only two good times of the day. Very early morning and late afternoon. Everything in between is uninteresting. Shot at 4am.

Izu Peninsula Part 1

In June I took a short trip to Izu. Stayed over night in Shimoda. Went by car. It was only short, just two days in total but was great chance to investigate some of the south coast. I'll be going back for sure when the weather is a little cooler and atmospheric.

As an aside it looks like a brilliant place to ride a bike. I could be up for a riding trip around the coast as well.

Brett

World traveler, great photographer and writer and now father. Learn of his adventures here.

Coffee after lunch

Access to good coffee in Tokyo is getting better and better these days. It's only taken until now (how many thousand years!?) to be able to get a decent cup. And while Starbucks rules the land here for now the scene IS getting better.One of the places on the lunch route is Kitsune. I managed to grab these few shots with a new, extremely versatile compact toy that does a great job at delivering extremely sharp, high resolution raw files. If you're interested in tracking down a few other good coffee shops I suggest picking up a copy of the latest CasaBrutus magazine, Tokyo City Guide 2013: http://magazineworld.jp/casabrutus/159/read/

Afternoon downpour

Spent golden week (read - a few public holidays) driving around the mountains I usually ride. Was a relief to be carrying the camera in the car rather than lugging it 100+km on my bike. The weather turned bad late in the afternoon which brought hail and a huge downpour. I felt sorry for the few people we saw doing a reverse climb of Matsuhime pass. Images all shot with the Canon and various lenses and tweaked in lightroom. Oh, and the pics, as usual appear in the wrong order. One day I'm going to fix that.

Trip to Atami (熱海市)

A recent trip to Atami. I'll be going back for sure. Actually the trip along the coast looks more interesting than the destination.Once my bike is fixed (hit by a car 2 weeks ago) I should jump on a train in the morning and spend the day riding around the coast road to check locations.

Ume closeup revisited

Japanese advertising photography has this trend of creating a very flat, no contrast image with a very particular blue / grey tone as the background. It's quite a unique style and very particular to Japan I feel.Anyway, in place of actually shooting anything new I thought I would revisit a few of the 100,000+ images that are sitting on my computer and see if anything could be done to an existing image. I failed to replicate the blue / grey tone but felt I came up with something a little different in terms of colour and softness. I'll be thinking more along those lines this spring.

Wasteland

The long Grass

This was shot at the start of the year. I think this river near my house is becoming the new muse.Winter is drawing to a close and the that great winter light is going to be replaced by something horrible and sharp unless I choose to wake at 3. A shame inspiration and motivation have taken such a long time to take root again. Hopefully I can sustain this new found enthusiasm.

Scouting locations

The other day Curtis took me on a little scouting trip to a building he found not too far from where we work.This place is going to need a revisit soon with a film camera and a tripod. I've been quite poor at posting for the last year or two so I thought I'd better post SOMETHING. Even if it is from an iphone for now.

The last day

I knew I could see Mt. Fuji from Tamagawa on a clear day but I didn't know how great the sky was going to be when I set out to take a shot of the sunset. I figured I'd shoot a few digital shots to see what I could come up with along the river. So I took my 24mm and the 50mm with me. What I should have done was take to 70-200mm and a monopod. I think that might even be the plan for this afternoon. The interesting thing about this river that's got me all excited is the fact that I can see further than 3 feet in front of me. Typically in Tokyo you can't see into the distance and being from Australia where that's all you can see it begins to be frustrating. This must feel like of like a return home of sorts.Anyway, if you have no idea what you are looking at, just below the sun to the right is Mt. Fuji.

On the River

After recently moving house and being closer to Tamagawa I've taken to doing a bit of shooting and riding. Unfortunately the only camera I can be bothered to carry more than 20km is my iphone at this point. I plan do a few film shoots but not on exploratory rides. The shot of my head was what happens when you are fumbling with phone, gloves and inner gloves. The order of the images is frustrating me to no end. I need to sit down and fix the bug in the wp theme code but I know it's going to take for ever to track down so I'm living with it for now.

The images were taken at the end of the ride.

My App for choice for shooting with the iphone has to be kitCam. It's by far my favorite photo app. The iphone is also the only other digital camera I own apart from the Pro canon I have. I expect more iphone images to appear here as I attempt to post more often.