My Congregation

This post leads into the last shot I posted of the city. I took a couple of steps back and snapped off some shots of the other people enjoying the observation deck. There are usually quite a few people with DSLR’s pressed up against the glass, trying to find the right angle to eliminate glare from the sun and building lights while avoiding the atrocity I call window smudges! I messed around a bit in Lightroom to convert it to black and white, then just exported the unaltered shot into Nik Softwares Silver Efex Pro. This program is just amazing for black and white conversions. I don’t think any other software is quite a match for it! I thought my Lightroom version was looking pretty good, but Silver Efex Pro just seems to know something I do not and bested me and my Lightroom sliders.

Skyline

My weakness in Tokyo.. Architecture. I have to shoot it.

Second Chance

I always enjoy going back to Shinjuku for a chance to shoot all of the many buildings and man-made structures that are abound in this area. Some of my favorite shots were from these two vantage points below. I already have shot both of these structures below from almost the exact same spot. This time I just tried a slightly different angle of view and differences in processing.

Admiration

Sneak attack from behind!

Zombie

Zombie? This picture isn’t a zombie, I am a zombie. I have a bunch of pictures I have been meaning to process from the beginning of the Japanese flower viewing season (hanami), but I have been operating on a temporary graveyard schedule with my wife this week which has proven difficult to get used to. Since my waking hours are spent in a drooling stupor– completely devoid of any and all motivation in life– I will have to post a photo devoid of any cherry blossoms or nature.

This is looking up at the Sanno Park Tower which is the same building I took the photo in “The Process” blog posting from about a week ago. This photo is frustrating because it looks like crap in my Flickr stream when it is a smaller size which seems to be the complete opposite of how most photos look in a smaller size. That and this photo has a bit of a “murky” cast that I was not able to shake.

Bizlicious

I took a trip to Akasaka last Sunday with the wifey. She wanted to see one of Tokyo’s renowned hair stylists so she could show up and ask for a haircut and style that would be most appropriate for her facial structure and hair type; the kind of makeover you see on TV where they tell you how they are going to cut it instead of the other way around.

I dropped her off and took a little walk about to an area I had been before. For once I left my tripod at home and really, really regretted it. Pretty neat little area, but I still keep getting my ass kicked by my D80 overexposing shots, but on the LCD screen they all look like they are spot on. I need to permanently dial it to -1 EV whenever I am using spot or center weighted metering which is about 95% of the time. Luckily, I bracketed a lot of shots and ended up with a few that should turn out okay.

And if anyone has a wife with naturally curly, caucasian hair and was wanting to get a ‘makeover’ from a trendy stylist in Tokyo.. Well, 3 hours later, wifey looked like someone put a high-powered tazer in her hair and juiced it up with 1,000 volts of electricity. Basically, what I am saying is… Beauty is subjective!