I was watching an interview with the great Jay Maisel on KelbyOne the other day. Jay is an iconic photographer and has been in the business for 60 years and is a wealth of wisdom. He is retired now and teaches photography workshops in NYC. In the interview Jay talks about a question he asks his students. He asks them 'How often do you go out shooting?'. I remember he asked me this question when I took his workshop. People say 'once a week', 'twice a week', 'once a month', or something like that. Jay says from that question alone he can tell who is going to become a great photographer. He says you have to always carry your camera with you. You have to do visual pushups everyday. Weightlifters don't go to the gym once a month. Dancers don't practice dance once a month. Photographers don't take photos once a month to become great. You have to take photos everyday and to do that always carry your camera with you.

His point is a great one. If you are only shooting when you plan to shoot you end up bring far too much stuff with you. You end up bringing a couple of extra lenses, maybe you should include a flash, what about a tripod, etc. By the time you are done you have way too much gear. Don't making taking photos too hard. Always carry your camera with you and shoot what is in front of you.

I think I may have forgotten that a bit in the past few months. I think I had my camera with me but often in my bag and not around my neck. It's pretty hard to take a photo when your camera is in your bag. When you are always on the hunt for photos it sharpens your senses and keeps you looking for subjects to shoot. You may notice something that isn't extraordinary but perhaps you found it with just the right light on it, when it was still wet from the rain or just the right amount of shadow falling on it.

It's not about always having fantastic subject matter in front of you. It's about finding what is fantastic about the subject matter in front of you. Today's images are things I just captured while out and about in the past few days. Mostly it was shot while I was commuting to work.

I love this sign... please don't graffiti here. It's a long pure white wall around a construction site. The wall is several hundred feet long. I am shocked that this doesn't get spray painted.

Today's Configuration: Leica M9-p with a Summilux 35mm f/1.4.

While you don't see graffiti much in Tokyo you do sometimes and this one made me smile...

OK, seriously? It is really starting to get to me. I think I have a pretty good working knowledge of the cone situation in Japan but this one has me very confused. Someone has spend considerable amount of time on these. They filmed them with cement. They painted one gray. They wrapped broken sticks with wired and attached them to sad gray cone. The cones are actually drilled into the cement to ensure they aren't taken off. The gray cone even has broken pieces from other cones tied onto it with wire.

Is this an art project? What's the deal?

I have been an Audi guy forever but the more I see these Japanese speed machines the more I like them. I don't think I'll be trading my S5 in anytime soon but really like this.

I am really fascinated by the vending machine business. How did they decide to put one here? Do they have someone driving around looking for 5 feet by 3 feet plots of unused land to put vending machines on? Does the building owner contact the vending machine company and rent them the space? If you look at the base it is on it matches the house so it was purposed built into the design of the house.

The sky was full of these HDR like clouds yesterday. Perhaps nature if tired of fighting with Instagram Filters as one of my clever friends said on Twitter yesterday.

If you have any thoughts on daily shooting, explanations of what is doing on with those two cones, insider knowledge of the vending machine industry in Japan, or any other thoughts leave a comment below.

Thanks for stopping by today...