Traffic Trails
Comments: 18
Yamate-dori north from 246: 30" @ f16, +1.0EV, 28–70mm
A friend, whose opinions on photography are always worth listening to and arguing with, gently suggested that she would like to see more movement in my pictures. Enough with the staid formalism already, I think she wanted to say, live a little, for chrissakes. ;-)
I explained that I listented to too much Philip Glass and Steve Reich at a formative age and can’t help myself.
Well, OK … but first we have to get some clichés out of the way (the waterfalls will come when I can find some). I’ve never made traffic trail pictures before but here are some — the first step on the road to movement.
Yamate-dori south from 246: 30" @ f11, +1.0EV, 28–70mm
I thought the three streams here would be enough to make this interesting, but they’re not bendy enough. Is it bendy or winding we need? Winding, probably … one does not motor along bendy roads.
246 east of Sangenjaya: 13" @ f16, +0.3EV, 28–70mm
Trying for the whoosh off the freeway exit down onto 246. It took me longer to cross 4 lanes of traffic to the island than it did to set up and grab the frames.
Kan-nana south from Setagaya-dori: 30" @ f16, +0.3EV, 28–70mm
Oh, OK — one waterfall picture then. Find the right stretch of road, photograph it with a long lens to compress the distance, and you might just be able to get a decent waterfally picture. The oncoming lane here really needs another bump in it.
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Posted to Photographs • 2003.12.06 (Sat) • 14:01
Comments
Posted by Zelnox 2003.12.06, 14:39
It looks quite nice. ^_^
Posted by dowingba 2003.12.06, 15:28
I love the “246 east of Sangenjaya” one. Amazing, that one. Of course, I don’t look at traffic-trail pictures often.
Posted by patrick h. lauke 2003.12.06, 22:27
funny you should mention philip glass…as i looked at the pictures my eyes drifted over to the koyaanisqatsi dvd on my shelf :)
Posted by Mike 2003.12.06, 23:00
Very nice Jeremy, esp considering these were your first attempts. We appreciate you risking life and limb on the obviously busy road thingies.
I need to get a decent tripod before I attempt anything like this (and more comprehensive life insurance). Thanks for adding the extra info (helps newbies like me).
Any chances of playing with ‘camera panning’ shots ?? That’ll keep the ‘movement-suggestors’ quiet. :)
Posted by barnaby 2003.12.07, 02:25
Try some “synchro sun” daylight flash photography: set the shutter speed longer than the flash speed. You’ll get a sharp image surrounded by some blur, even if you photograph a still person. If you photograph against the sky, you’ll get a cool “shadow on the sky” effect. Balancing the flash and shutter speed (and aperture) takes some experimentation. If you use this technique with a moving subject, what you get will depend on your camera. Most cameras sync flash with the beginning instant that the shutter exposes the entire frame of film. This will give you a counter-intuitive “speed trail” in front of the moving object. But some cameras (I believe Canon makes one), can alternately sync just before the shutter starts to cover the film. This produces a nice speed trail behind the moving subject.
Posted by Scott Johnson 2003.12.07, 05:21
Nice shots! I love shooting anything at night. And it seems you have quite a knack for it yourself.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2003.12.07, 13:49
Here’s a vote for your “staid formalism”. Not that I really know what you mean by that, since I don’t have any photography credentials. But just in the last couple of weeks, some of your other photos have stood above even your typical level of excellence: the opening of the Apple Ginza store and the building made of sky, for example. Oh, and I also liked your composition of stools in the sento.
Posted by Jean 2003.12.07, 20:13
Those pics are beautiful.
Posted by frank 2003.12.08, 01:29
excelent
Posted by Ben Shewmaker 2003.12.08, 02:48
Wonderful photography Jeremy.
BTW, I think that some Steve Reich would fit perfectly with those photographs.. the incessant, nonstop motion of something like Drumming, Six Pianos, or maybe Eight Lines really goes along with them.
Posted by Barron 2003.12.08, 04:02
Great photos! I love night photos of the city. Speaking of the obligatory waterfall photos, I took a few of them in Shinjuku. I don’t remember where exactly, but it was a place where they used to have a flea market on the weekends. That was several years ago, though. I used a ND-4 filter, I think. The picture is somewhere on my site typhoon-design.com
Posted by pixelkitty 2003.12.08, 16:55
absolute stunning photos (as usual).
and I voted - often :)
Posted by Richard Anderson 2003.12.09, 11:49
I generally enjoy your photos, as I lean toward static compostion in my work as an architect. Perhaps what one should consider here though is not movement in the literal sense but more dynamism in composition. Photography can imply dynamism in time that is not about blurs et al — subjects and compositions coming under the guise of “capturing a moment” — when a photo tells a story beyond the split in time captured on film. Look at the work of Robert Frank. On the other hand, I always like to recommend that people stick with either a) what they know or b) what the enjoy. Then again, growth is good. Have fun and keep bringing us the goods.
Posted by Steven Downs 2003.12.12, 03:30
Nice job. I had the same luck with my first attempts. Nice site, too.
Posted by royger 2003.12.13, 08:16
Did you use a normal camera or a digital one? I’m interested in buying a digital camera that can do this kind of photos. I own a Casio Exilim EX-M2, but it doesn’t take very good pictures, and at night they are even worse. Any recomendations for buying at xmas?
Posted by Mr. X 2003.12.13, 15:55
Although I think those pix are very very nice. I find it a little ironic that you decided to capture movement by showing its trajectory in whole, blurring any sense of what to me is the essence of movement: time. The results seems very static to me. But I like it very much! :)
The tranquil zen stillness I find in a number of your shots is one of the qualities I appreciate the most in what I believe to be your style.
The irony I was referring to above is that instead of finding movement in your photos, you found stillness in your subject :)
Posted by yonderboy 2003.12.14, 08:08
Too much Philip Glass? More likely not enough, start with Philip On Film.
Posted by Richard 2006.01.14, 03:17
Hi, Those clean white lines remind me of something good. Thought you may like to know that tfom tonight (13 Jan 2006) Radio Icebreaker on totallyradio.com is playing the premiere of Icebreaker’s realisation of Philip’s Music With Changing Parts, a realisation sanctioned by Philip, and the first performance of the work in Europe for 30 years. It was given for the Tate Modern, London, in July 2005, and the radio relay is that performance. You can access it directly through www.icebreaker.org.uk or www.totallyradio.com. As a Glass aficionado, please give it a listen and tell us what you think of it.
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