27_OH_EIGHT_dot_NET

Arcade

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:14 -0600

One of the main reasons I fell in love with Osaka so quickly was because the people and the atmosphere were so incredible. Osaka is known for being a blue collar town which in part reminded me of Edmonton, it's also the most liberal of the bigger cities in Japan so things are a little more excentric. Osaka may have a had a slight advantage over me simply because of the fact that our visit to the city happened to coincide with Japan's Golden Week and the vibrancy that already existed in the city was only multiplied tenfold. Either way, Osaka would be the first place I'd return to given the chance to go back to Japan.

Osaka, Dotombori Arcade.

The Neighborhood

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 00:12 -0600

Lack of posts = lots of renos done. Almost have the entire upstairs of the house finished, pretty pumped.

This was the scene about 2 blocks from where we were staying in Osaka. To the left is the Osaka Aquarium and directly behind me is the Suntory Art Museum, in front of me is of course the largest free standing Ferris Wheel in the world (or so they claim, not sure if it's true.) The Ferris Wheel itself is attached to a mall just outside the Aquarium. The street to the right was filled with small restaurants which included the usual goodness, at least two Tako Yaki shops and one very good little Okonomiyaki place. As for the bridge... Well it's big but I have no idea what it's called. Definitely a good neighborhood to start our Japan trip in.

Untitled

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:44 -0600

Osaka Aquarium. I like how this one turned out.

Pachinko!

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:23 -0600

What's Japan without Pachinko? Honestly...

Seriously though, I don't understand the obsession with Pachinko. We played Pachinko once while in Tokyo and it made absolutely no sense whatsoever, just many balls falling and random button pushes. I'm not a huge gambler to begin with but at least I can understand the draw in slots, you have a bit of control in your chances of getting things to line up. As far as I could tell with Pachinko, it's all just fluke chance. Oh well, it's definitely popular in Japan and obviously making someone a ton of money judging by all the crazy Pachinko parlors on every street corner.

This one can be found in one of the many covered arcades in the Namba/Dotombori area of Osaka. I'm sure if hadn't been carrying way too much crap and looking like the biggest tourist ever the Pachinko parlor guy would have asked me to put the camera away... Maybe street shooting in tourist attire is the best way to get around security?

Untitled

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 08:53 -0600

One of the biggest reasons I loved being in Japan was the cluttered claustrophobic streets that lay around every corner. This is Osaka, around the Namba/Dotombori area.

I really enjoyed Osaka, not sure if it was because it was the first place I had ever been overseas or if the atmosphere was simply more attractive to me. Osaka was definitely my favorite city of the 4 we visited however. Maybe it was the blue collar work ethic combined with the liberal flamboyance of the city that reminded me a bit of Edmonton, not sure. Whatever it was, it's the first place I'd like to go back to given the chance.

I had planned on posting photos chronologically from the trip, however that would mean a ton of aquarium shots in the beginning and not much else. Going to mix it up a bit instead. Fish after fish could get pretty boring.

You Lost?

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 01:17 -0600

Is this photoblog dead? Well I'm not about to deny it, it was. Now I'm hoping to revive it, I do feel bad for neglecting it for so long but sometimes life can takeover and all the free time you had to update your photoblog can disappear pretty quickly.

So what have I been up to? I finally graduated from University, now looking for a full time job that might pay back all my student debt which I finally had to inevitably break down and buy into. I moved in with my girlfriend as well and we're renovating her town house. Doing it ourselves seemed like a good way to save on money but it is taking a little longer than we had expected. The good thing about that however is that we're turning one of the spare bedrooms into a small studio. I guess that was more my idea than hers but it's pretty easy to change an empty room into a guest room / whatever. Until then I'll have the opportunity to play around with some light in a more controlled environment which has me fairly excited. The space isn't huge but should allow for some good portrait opportunities, look for me to post some new stuff coming out of that endeavor.

Another development in the past few months has been the death of my entire photo archive. I had all of my 15,000 or so RAW images on a single hard drive, never really had too many issues with hard drives in my life... In fact I think that's one of two drives I've ever had die, so the idea of having them all on a single disk seemed like a good idea. However, when that drive dies and you've got no way whatsoever to recover that data without the help of about $3500, you really start asking yourself why you didn't backup to DVD. I guess we all learn from our mistakes. I'm now backing up to HDD and DVD. Losing that many photos really sucks, my biggest regret however is losing all my concert photos I had taken over the past year...

Luckily, I've just returned from a 3 week vacation to Japan. Returned with a decent amount of photos to post so much of the new material I'll be posting in the coming weeks will be from that trip. Can't guarantee it'll be a steady stream of photos as I have about a million things to still accomplish on my plate but I will try as best I can to post a photo everynight. So yeah, this one was taken at the Osaka Aquarium. I'll explain a bit more in coming posts.

Shout Out Out Out Out!

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 23:46 -0600

Shout! Out Out! Out Out! Shout! Out Out! Out Out!

Nik7 getting the crowd pumped for another night of mad robot love and jazzercise kicks at the CBC Radio3 Tour a month back or so. Nik is the main reason the Edmonton music scene is white shit hot right now... If anyone got the chance to catch the Shout Out boys at SXSW this year then you know what all the hype is about.

I have no idea how the hell I'm going to get back to updating this site regularly. At the moment I only really get to shoot at concerts and while I'm at a lot of them, I never have time to process photos and I'm a perfectionist whore. So, I have no idea what to do with this site. It may die, it may document the Edmonton music scene, I dunno. The music scene thing is probably boring to the average viewer but since there's probably like 2 of you who keep coming back here I'm not sure it'll matter much... Anyways, hope to be back soon.

Lost in the City

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 00:35 -0600

Dude WTF...

Yeah yeah, I've been lost forever. I tried to get things rolling and completely bombed, I'm not going to deny that. Simply put, my last semester of school was the busiest I've ever had. So busy in fact that it was really difficult to carry a camera around with me as I was carrying so much other crap related to school. This also meant I didn't really have a lot of spare time to get out and shoot, and when I did I was too tired to do so.

Recovering from the cluster-f*ck that was last semester has been more difficult than I had anticipated and to tell you the truth I really haven't had too much insentive to pick up a camera. In fact there's probably more to it than that, towards the end of the semester and over the Christmas holidays I found myself trying to shoot more like "other people". I was trying to create crisper, well exposed, regular toned images. Shoot in SRGB cause it's "better" and the more "professional" thing to do. Well I've learned the tough way that trying to be someone you aren't really blows... I just went back to my old setup two days ago and I'm finding that I actually LIKE the photos I'm taking as they're coming straight off the camera. They're chunkier, contrasty and really moody. Those are things I enjoy.

I'm going to try desperately to get myself out of this funk and carry my camera on me daily again. I've decided to do a photo essay as my final project for my Soc 345 class (Cultural Studies), so at the very least I'll be forced to go out and shoot for that. No garantees on daily postings but here's hoping...

Edit: I recently updated to Pixelpost 1.4.3 + Antispam addons as I was getting a ton of comment spam. The upgrades seemed to have borked the site a bit, especially in relation to the way the archives work. Going to try and get that fixed in the next day or two, bear with me.

Columbus - Sept 11/05

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:43 -0600

Holy Hell!!! I'm not dead, and yes I am still taking pictures. I apologize for the prolonged downtime but this school semester has been absolutely INSANE for me and I've been swamped with work. I have managed to go to a ton of concerts over the past 3 months however and because of that have a ton of concert photos to share. Sadly I can't garantee I'll have them up right away as once again I'm heading into final exams and the next couple of week are again filled with work BUT... I'm going to make a concerted effort to get more stuff up in the coming weeks so this site isn't quite as lame as it has been recently.

I had this whole post written out about the local music scene here in Edmonton but I accidentally closed the window I was working in and lost it all... Needless to say I won't be typing it again right now as I've got a lab report to finish and a midterm to study for. Hopefully I'll get around to it in the next post. Until then, check out Limeworld for some music commentary and pictures of local Edmonton shows =)

Dead Disco!

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 16:53 -0600

Dead Disco
Dead Funk
Dead Rock'n Roll
Remodel!
Everything's been done!
La la la la la la la la la la la la

Emily rocking out at her keyboard... On a side note, yesterday a bunch of us Alberta Photobloggers got together for a little meetup, while I haven't had time to go through my photos yet a bunch of others have and the results can be found here.