3 Strangers in Shibuya
Today I went out for a photowalk with Michael one of the backers of my Kickstarter Project. We shot at a bit at Zojoji Temple with my wife Mayumi. I shot film so it will be a while until I can post those photos. After that Michael and I headed to Shibuya to try some street photography. I have shot flash in a while so I decided to stop strangers and try to get some good posed shots with flash. It is different than the flash I do at parties as you can simply bounce the flash and you are in fairly constantly lighting conditions once everything is set up. Outside on the street is a completely different deal.
It was an interesting exercise. I typically go out shooting a lot by myself and often stop people and have a really good success rate. Surprisingly the success rate wasn't nearly as high with a flash in my hand. Perhaps it is intimidating. Perhaps because I had someone else with me. Not sure what was different this time but if you just keep rolling with the punches you find people that are willing to stop. Oddly it seemed just about anyone with a hat I asked to stop to take a photo say 'No'. It started to become a bit of a running joke.
I ended up stopping around 25 people or so for pictures. Shooting like this later becomes an exercise in self editing and selection as you get some good shots but you often get a lot of bad shots. It is not a quantity but a quality game when you shoot this way. I continued to keep paring down the selection until I had the pictures that I was really happy with.
I shot about 125 pictures. A lot of them were test shots. I typically shot a few pictures of everyone I stopped but 3 is what remained in the end. Ironically they all have hats on. I guess the hardest shots to get turn out to be the best...
Today's Configuration: Leica M Monochrom with a Leica SF-58
When you photography a lot you find things you are really good at so it becomes easy to go out and continue to repeat that same recipe and find success. It's fun to go out and challenge yourself on new projects from time to time. I bumped into my neighbor Gonzague who is capturing hundreds of cool videos of Tokyo.
I'm off to Fukushima tomorrow. An NHK film crew (Japan's biggest broadcaster) is coming along with me to film me shooting Fukushima! Thanks for stopping by today...
