It’s been a long and busy weekend, I have just got in and have to be up again in 4 hours, I will eventually get to rest properly…

Anyhow Saturday night my friend Mike Munoz DJed at a new Bar in Tokyo. I went along and took some pictures which you can see over here

I’ll write more later, pictures including men swinging burning balls around their heads and surfers to come later….

Mouse over to see the effect of putting an umbrella between the flash and the subject…

The only other change is a slight boosting of the flash power to account for the amount of light reflected/dispersed by the umbrella fabric…

I think I may have hit the motherlode….

Umbrellas are not cheap in the first place and in Japan they are stupidly expensive ($130 for a 36inch shoot-through anyone??)…

Anyhow I needed at least one new one and walking home from the station I saw some material in the 100¥ ($1) store which I thought might make a nice background. They also had a bucket of what appeared to be thin, rubberised white umbrellas. My ears pricked up, the stem was suitably thin so I figured I’d pick one up and see what I could do with it…

10mins with a dremel later (to remove the plastic handle) I am the proud owner of possibly he cheapest photographic umbrella ever, I shall have to test it to make sure it works as expected but assuming it does I shall be going back for their entire stock…..

As a result of my knee injury I am still unable to grapple consistently (I would be fine for 2-3 sessions then it would get tweaked and I’d be off the mat for a week or two). Therefore I’ve decided to address a big weakness in my game, namely my striking.

As a result I have signed up for a full time kickboxing gym which is thankfully really close to my house. I quite enjoy the fact that I can drop in and train at any time and don’t have to worry about being ‘on time’ for class (not that I ever was). The only problem I have is the absolutely horrifying musical selection being played (think bad Euro trance) and so I decided to take my mp3 player and earplugs last night and all was good…

Hopefully by my Birthday I should be seeing some improvements in my hitting of things technique…

Today it was windy and despite knowing better I didn’t bother to put sandbags on my lightstand with an umbrealla while doing some work outside…

Needless to say there was a strong gust and the whole lot went airborne and came down to earth with a sickening crash. Visions of needing to replace the flash and radio trigger went through my head along with being greatful it hadn’t blown into the busy road which would have caused all kinds of trouble…

Thankfully the only thing damaged was the umbrella which is now not quite the same shape it started off the day as. I guess this is the trigger I needed to order the shoot through ones I’ve been eying for a while now…

Go Go Credit card…

Training updates and my first thoughts about the new Nikon releases to come shortly (I might even get my holiday photos up this week…)

It is currently stupendously hot in Tokyo so I have been stuck indoors for most of the final week of my summer holiday, which is a bit of a shame, however it has given me plenty of time to perfect my procrastination skills.

One method I like for wasting time is taking self portraits. These were taken with a single shoot through umbrella which I am a great lover of and am on the look out for a replacement for as mine is on it’s last legs…

I had a great time on Saturday night out at London Calling and the afterparty at the Ruby Rooms. The lighting setup I wanted to try didn’t happen as I realised at the last minute I didn’t have enough umbrella adaptors, something for the shopping list….

Anyhow, I did manage to get a few reasonable photos so take a look.

Coming soon are pictures from a Japanese toy convention, including tentacle porn, what more could you ask for…

I always like to keep my eyes out for pretty things and I think I have found been linked to some of both at:

Bleu Lulu a one woman jewlery company in the USA, whose prices I had to double check, please don’t let the girls know how little you can buy them exquisite jewelery for… (her watercolour and ink work blew me away also).

Thank you Marie

FJeff is producing some awesome work too so check out her work. I particularly like her pen work which frankly is outstanding. If you bribe her with enough chocolate she will even do custom work, so if you need new flyers for your company, she is definitely your girl…

Tonight I shall be mostly attending the second Tokyo edition of “London Calling”, I am unsure how much photography I will do, as I am pretty sure I am not working. But you never know I as I will obviously drag the camera along. On the other hand I will also be dancing a great deal too…

Actually nights where I’m not working are much more creative for me as I can mess about with new techniques and styles. Tonight I might try something new I’ve been thinking about involving 4 or 5 strobes and a bunch of pocket wizards….

should be fun.

Holiday photos are coming slowly but surely…

I’m still away, I have managed to get as far as Aomori, via Sapporo and some other parts of Hokkaido.

The holiday pictures will be up shortly, but for now, content yourselves with some pictures of a band I saw playing as part of the Hakkodate festival

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Raico