Rues of Roo

60 year old man on skates in Shibuya

I must admit, at the risk of sounding rather trite, that coming back to the Japan photos is rather tiresome. I suppose as with all things new, after awhile, they become old, and I’ve really looked through these pictures a fair bit now. Which is why I decided to post up some black and whites. I decided, in rather cliched fashion, to call this series ‘tokyomonotone’, only because, well, ‘Tokyo B&W’ perhaps wouldn’t have looked so snazzy. And hey, branding something is always nice. I guess it could pass off as some fashion boutique selling… black and white clothes. Or maybe a design company that specialised in black and white design, and trust me, there’s a lot of outlets out there for monotone design, so if anything, monotone is not to be underrated.

The funny thing about monotone photography is that actually, I think it’s harder than colour photography. Moreso because of the importance of contrast, as opposed to colour. I suppose it’s rather similar to the difference between landscape and portrait photography. Personally, I find landscape photography relatively easier than portrait, only because when it comes to landscape photography, God does all the work - you just make sure you’re there, whereas for portraits, you really have to use your own skill and sense of angle to capture what is aesthetically pleasing. Similarly, with colour photography, colours are there, they just are. But monotone photography requires much more attention to light, or its lack thereof. The one thing monotone photography does do well is make blur shots look rather nice. It brings out the contrast, which is why you’ll find that most of my monotone shots are ones that were more or less ‘accidental’. Working on it!

Crossing the great Shinjuku crossing

I suppose the ironic thing about making Tokyo city shots monotone is that Tokyo is anything but a black and white city. Everything is a colour, exciting, glowing, neon. And if it’s not glaring at you, it’s subtly lighted, the small bar or the exquisite sushi bar, with their warm glowing colours.

I have no idea what you’d be ‘playing’ with

Regardless. I suppose after all this silly rambling about monotone photography, it’s really a ruse at wishing I was one of those suave individuals with an old leica film camera, with some black and white film in it. It does evoke those rather 70s images, does it not.

Tokyo Timetable