Old man shoplifting make-up at PARCO

'moblogging' from my mobile phone for the first time.

The one day I don't carry my camera with me and i miss a chance to shoot the apprehension of a shoplifter in Ikebukuro's PARCO department store. I did manage to capture a single shot with my phone. I saw that this older gentleman had a few cosmetics in his pocket.
note to self: don't leave home without your camera！

Do you know HUMAX?

All clear now?

Ikebukuro Police Checking Foreigners' IDs

I noticed these police in the station doing random checks of foreign looking people's identification. I started shooting them, and they got pissed and told me that I couldn't take pictures ("Shashin wa dame!")

I held my ground, and we got into a heated debate. I told them to check their law books because I clearly understand there is no law that forbids a photojournalist from taking pictures of police. They asked me to prove I was a journalist so I gave them my business card (which says White Rabbit PRESS and also Publisher. They eventually gave up and started harassing other foreigners.

I kind of feel bad about the whole argument because I repect the police here (they're quite a relief from the sexually pent-up ex-marine macho American mentality I'm use to back in Texas). But I just think that random checks is a pretty inconsiderate and ineffective way to find illegal immigrants.

Ikebukuro is crawling with hordes of foreign prostitues--especially Chinese who have moved to places like Ikebukuro to escape police raids and other efforts to clean-up Kabukicho. Why don't they just do some undercover work because Chinese girls on the street are asking me all the time, "Massage? Sex OK!" (In Japan, you can buy and sell anything except intercourse and be on the right side of the law.)

I asked one of the officers why they were working in the station, because I'd never seem them doing this guy of thing in the station before. He said it was because it was raining outside (which was true).

For a gallery/slideshow of more photos from this series click here.

PauseTalk Photo Pool

We recently setup a flickr Photo Pool for our PauseTalk design group.



What is PauseTalk?
PauseTalk is a monthly meeting of Tokyo-based creatives. We meet on the first Monday of each month starting at 20:00 in Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can share and discuss their current projects, meet other creatives for potential collaboration, and keep their thumb on cultural currents. PauseTalk was founded by Jean Snow who writes about design in Tokyo and works at White Rabbit Press where he is co-producer on a top-secret project.

IWGP homeless shelters

Click image for larger view.

I think I'm done shooting homeless at night for a while. The cold is too painful. Felt like my feet were frozen the night I shot this one.

Ikebukuro West Gate Park at Night

Not really sure if I like this photo much or not... what do you think?

Click the image for a larger view

Ikebukuro Night Shot

Here's one of the shots from some night photography I did in Ikebukuro last month. Nice colors. Click the image for a larger version--they always look better.

One cold night with the homeless in Ikebukuro

The Swedish Dånk! collective has been invited by Stadmuseum (the city museum in Göteborg) to do an audio-installation about homeless people in Gothenburg and in other cities around the globe. They've asked me to contribute some field recordings from where homeless people can be found in Tokyo for the project. Here a link to some of the photos I snapped during the night I recorded. Some of them are crap (shooting at night without a flash is always a challenge), but I like enough of them to share:

Link to photo gallery

The makeshift shelter in the photo above is on a median between several lanes of high-speed traffic and below a pedestrian bridge, elevated freeway and train overpass making it very noisy and polluted with carbon monoxide. The man who sleeps here has to cross the road and climb the fence to enter and exit.

To let you know how cold it was that night, by the time I got back home at 6 AM it was snowing.

The audio file below was recorded from the same pedestrian brige where I took the photo above. It's unedited except for having added a one second fade in/out on the ends and coverting from the 96Khz/24-bit recorded file down to this 3.7 MB mp3 file (the original three minute recording is a whopping 106 MB).

I think the Gothenburg designers are going to do some kind of remixing with them. If there is a website component to the project I'll supply that link at a later date.

It's always interesting to do these kinds of field recordings, because during the process you really become aware of the various rhythms and textures which we normally just seem to filter out. I guess it's kind of like fishing--often it's just an excuse to spend some time in nature. Some of my nighttime exposures can take several minutes, which gives me some time to let the surroundings really sink in.

It was pretty loud on location, so turn up the volume for the full effect. See if you can identify the low rumble of the train passing, the creaking and groaning of the overpass and pedestrian bridge which was bouncing from the traffic load above. The car traffic comes in waves--modulated by the traffic signals further up the street. I like the sound of the motorcycle which passes a little before the 3 minute mark.

audio/08012301.mp3

Pictures shot with a Canon EOS 5D with help from a Canon TC-80N3 timer remote controller. Lens is a Canon 28mm/1.8 prime.

Audio recorded with a Sony PCM-D1.