I have always been someone who kept odd hours. I'm usually the last person to go to bed. I tend to retire around 1 or 1:30AM. I also tend to be the first person to the office which means I'm getting up around 6:30AM or so. Keeping these kinds of hours gives me a good amount of time in the morning before work and evening after work and family time to dedicate sometime to the things I care about; studying Japanese, photography, working on ShootTokyo, and learning guitar.

It has been a challenge to balance all of these for me lately. When I was in LA I was hammered by jet lag. I was falling asleep around 11PM each night and wide awake at 1AM. I would spend a few hours trying to fall back asleep eventually giving up and trying to be productive only to fall asleep again around 5:30AM for another hour or so. You end up being a complete zombie the next day and then the cycle repeats itself.

I slept really well on the flight home. I was asleep before they served dinner and woke up after they served breakfast. I slept a solid 9 hours. I figured I was over the jet lag but I've been exhausted this week. I'm really tired in the afternoon and falling sleep before 11PM. I returned home one night, pulled my car in my driveway, shut the car off and didn't get out right away. I ended up waking up an hour later. I never fall sleep like that. It's been a killer for my productivity this week so hoping I shake this off soon.

The one benefit of the odd hours I keep is I can find a little time late at night for photos. I always keep a cameras laying around. Sometimes I find shots I forgot I took.

Today's Configuration: Leica Monochrom with a Summicron 28mm f/2.0, Summilux 50mm f/1.4 and Noctilux 50mm f/0.95.

I love my little town of Jiyugaoka (gee-you-gaw-ka). It's a quiet place so makes it very peaceful to walk around and shoot at night.

My local shrine looks a bit more scary at night. It's very peaceful looking during the day.

One of the stores in my town is called Today's Special. One of the products they sell is a water bottle that is apparently very popular in South Korea which drives a lot of visitors on the weekend. Almost every weekend as I'm walking around town I can hear someone in broken english with a Korean accept asking the crossing guards or police "Do you know Today's Special?". I watch the police and tourists try to communicate and ultimately get pulled in to give directions. I never knew this store existed but I have given directions so many times now I know all about it.

I was able to catch up with my good friend Charles while in Singapore a few weeks ago. We first met at a work event 5 years ago where we were the only two people in a very large crowd carrying Leica Cameras. We were at 1 Altitude Level 63 at One Raffles Place in Singapore where we were able to get some pretty amazing images of Singapore. Charles and I have remained friends ever since.

I was reminded of this evening a few days ago. I often reverse image search my images and disappointingly I find people using them without my permission. Most of the time I remind people of my license policy and depending on the situation I ask for proper credit and backlink or ask them to secure a proper license. Some people are super gracious, apologize, accommodate my request and then tweet out a few of my posts or link it in future articles as a peace offering. I think this is a really good way to handle it.

Other times people want to argue why they should be allowed to use it. That they have no budget in their huge corporation for photography. That giving me 'credit' is their way of rewarding me. This happened to be one of those times. It can be a very tiring discussion. I'm glad I don't rely on photography for my income.

If you have never tried reserve image search it's pretty amazing. Grab your favorite image and head over to Google Images and rather than typing something in the search bar click the camera icon and upload your image. You will now see all of the places on the web where you photo appears. On my more popular images I also check TinEye as they sometimes have different results than Google. I have a few popular images that routinely will found being used.

One thing I found was that when someone is pulling the image directly from ShootTokyo they tend to properly credit me and link back to ShootTokyo. When they pull the images from my Flickr or 500px account I am rarely credited correctly and if they backlink they do it to those accounts. I never use either account and they drive no traffic to ShootTokyo so I'm thinking of deleting the accounts to cut off the source.

Has anyone has similar experiences?

We decided to eat at my favorite place in Singapore. A little unknown spot called Mag's Wine Kitchen just off of Boat Quay. It's not traditional Singapore but I love it. If you haven't eaten here I highly recommend it. Excellent selection of wine a small home made menu with a mix of 3 or 4 starters and 3 or 4 choices of entrees. Try the Kurobuta Black Pork.

Details: Mag's Win Kitchen, 86 Circular Road, Singapore, +65 6438 3836.

After dinner we headed to headed over to Fine Spirits by La Maison du Whisky. It is located on The Pier at Robertson Quay 80 Mohamed Sultan Road. If you like rare whiskey this is the place to go. It's a very relaxing place to hang out.

Charles was kind enough to let me shoot with his Noctilux. He was trying to seduce me to get one again. While I miss the beautiful bokeh it produces I don't miss the size and weight.