alexwatanabe's photostream

I am many things, and until recently I thought I had most of those things pretty well figured out, but now I’m not so sure about that. About all I can say for certain at this point in my life is this: I am a 21-year old half-Japanese, half-American who was born and raised in the USA, but have been living in Japan for the past 3 years; so I feel as though I bring to the table a good understanding of both cultures.

I think I have a fairly good understanding of photography, starting shooting with a Nikon F2 (35mm SLR) almost 3 years ago now, and acquired a Hasselblad 500C/M about half a year ago.
One of the aspects of photography that appeals to me is the mixture between technical knowledge (how ISO, aperture and shutter speed interplay to produce a photograph that has the depth of field and exposure that I am going for) and ‘artistic’ vision are necessary (or at least help) to realize the end-result I have in my mind’s-eye.

I do have a dedicated 35mm film scanner(konica minolta dimage scan dual IV), which I use to digitize slides and b&w negatives. I started out working exclusively with black and white because I found color distracting, that, and I wanted to learn the whole process from before the shutter is released till pinning up prints on a clothesline to dry.
I didn’t buy my first roll of color film until a year into this whole process; at which point I was smitten by velvia’s supersaturated characteristics. A few rolls ago I started playing with kodachrome64 (there are still labs that process it in Japan!) and I really do like the results.

Non-photography stuff about me: I live in downtown Tokyo, more specifically Kagurazaka (located in "Shinjuku"-ku). This gives me easy access to many great spots to photograph around Tokyo – however I’ve concentrated mostly on the southern/new half of Tokyo (mostly Shibuya/Shinjuku/Omotesando/etc). I’d like to explore the northern side which is more run-down, cause I think it’d force me to develop more as a photographer to turn these ‘uglier’ buildings into aesthetically pleasing photographs.

Currently I am a junior at Waseda University. However I was able to schedule my courses in such a way that I only have classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, the other days I should be shooting but I manage to find excuses to lay around (and feel guilty about it) most of the time.

Things I manage do when I manage to not lounge about: read (mostly Murakami, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Heidegger, Nietzsche and other stuff), write, play around with other visual mediums (sketching/doodling/woodblock prints/watercolor).

PS: I just came home with a canon 8600f, not a great scanner, but at least now I can scan/digitize my Hasselblad's neg's/slides.

Alex Watanabe