Thanks Grant
The mystery of the missing mid-tones – solved!

Peter

Peter,
I would tend to agree with Grant regarding maybe losing some of the details in #5 & #6, but the contrast in both of those certainly out weighs the loss of the details.

The photos are so interesting and sharp. One has to take time to study all the details in your photos, like the small child with some sort of bubble protector over their head. What a cool contraption. And what a cool capture #3 is with the woman so in focus but the background has a motion blur. How did you manage that? And how are you able to upload your photos at the limit of 800 pixels and for them to come out as sharp and in focus as they appear? The clarity blows me away.

One last thing, I am amazed that there are so many signs written in English.

Peter, maybe when you upload a series of photos, leave a space in between each one, it is easier to look at them. I can change that if you’d like me to.

Thank you for your comments.

Lots of points for me to address:
Photos #5 and #6 I reworked to reduce contrast.

#5 The ‘bubble protector’: it’s a bicycle rain cover for the child. These bicycles, known as ‘mama-chari’ are designed for mums to transport their young kids around. Very often you’ll see two or three kids perched precariously on the bike, with mum dodging traffic on her way home.

Motion blur on #3: I used a Leica Summilux 50mm f1.4 shot wide open. Bokeh is fantastic on that lens. Backgrounds can swirl and blur like nothing else (except the Noctilux, which I used to have but sold on, as it’s an utter bugger to carry around). Manual focus, of course, but then rangefinder focusing is excellent, so I don’t have a problem with that.

Sharpness: I agree these look pretty good. Mostly I just download the 800px version of each photo from Flickr, so maybe that helps.

Spaces: yes, it might be better to have space between each picture. Generally I like to see them all together as a group, so that’s the way I put them up. If you’ve ever seen an exhibition by Daido Moriyama you’ll know he often pastes photos up against each other, which leads to interesting clashes. The chaos can work well for street photography. However, I’ll change that in the next post for ease of viewing.

English signs: Japan is the original ‘Empire of Signs’ and that’s still the case. Everywhere you go, in the city, you’re assaulted by words/signs/images/noise. Increasingly Chinese as well as Japanese and English.

Cheers
Peter