Jiyugoaka is fill with hundreds of little shops…
If you are looking to pawn your gold…these bears can help.
It is very busy but yet very peaceful compared to a lot of other parts of Tokyo. You see a lot of people just hanging out…
Even late afternoon on Sunday Acid Panda Cafe was still going hard from the night before…
There are lots of great bread shops all over…which is great because I love bread.
Found some illegal parking…
This couple was sitting outside Excelsior Caffe and were very interested in my camera. She was shooting a Canon 7D. They were kind enough to let me take their picture (and without a peace sign!). Shooting at f/0.95 I could decide if I should focus the glasses or the eyes. If anyone has experience let me know which gets a better result. I probably should have shot both.
They have sales everywhere…
Papa Crepes…
No Parking bokeh…
This happy man kept smiling…
Lots of people just hanging out…
Now this is where I wish I had a long lens… I spotted this bird’s nest right near the station. Their mother was flying back and fourth feeding them.
I thought I would provide an example to my Leica Exposure Lock tip the other day…
If you shoot in A mode, with your shutter release set to normal, if you find your subject and half press the shutter you can lock exposure so if you recompose your exposure stays locked. You can tell when it has locked as a little red dot will appear next to the shutter speed number. It is very handy but takes a little while to get the hang of it as the shutter is pretty sensitive. Since I focus and recompose a lot this will be super helpful and much quicker than manual mode but achieving the same thing.
Here is an example when where I focused on the bear and then recomposed the shot. You can see the exposure was set on the store lights making the bear far too dark.
On the second shot after focusing I half depressed the shutter to lock the exposure… much better!
I had a late night at the office tonight so grabbed some Subway for dinner…
Dave Powell is a photographer based in Tokyo, Japan who shoots with a Leica M9. He is the publisher of ShootTokyo, a friendly daily photography blog which he calls a “labor of love.” You can follow him on Twitter @ShootTokyo and visit his photo blog site at http://www. shoottokyo.com.
