Japan Photographer
It looks like I've been outted (here,here, here, and here), so I guess there's not use trying to keep the secret.
Japanphotographer is a site I've been working on that is showcasing the photography of members of the great Japan Photography Mailing List set up by Lil and Juergen a few months ago. It's one of the first mailing list I ever belonged to and actively participated in, and have since learned tons about photography and cameras.
I hope the site can be a place where members of the list can showcase their work via various projects. So far, it's where we are putting the photos that come out of our monthly field trips (two times now). around the Tokyo area, where members get together for a couple hours of wandering and shooting, then drinks and camera talk afterword.
There is also a burgeoning photo-contest (though there is no real winner or looser) starting up there. It hasn't been integrated with the design yet, but Contest #1 had a theme of "Doors in Japan", and drew a wide range of four entries. There is a second contest in the works with a theme of "Fall Colors in Japan". If you live here, or have photos laying around from when you were here, and you would like to participate, join the list to find out more details.
I have a bad habit of starting something, and never going public with it because I never feel it's ready. Until I am forced to by a deadline, or somebody linking to me, a project will usually just rot and fester in some unadvertised directory. So if you haven't received a Christmas card form me for a while, it's probably sitting here in the re-write pile. Same goes for email.
Of course, once I do make a site live, I soon forget about all the bugs and mispleings that I fully intended to "take care of over the weekend". As you look at the site, you may see why I resisted the urge to make it public... there are probably some little mistakes, and I'm still waiting on contributions from everyone else who was at last month's outing. But since some others already made it open for me...
Comments
It seems the company I am hosting the new site at sucks. It would figure that as soon as I post the link to the site it is suddenly unreachable. If you can't see it, please check back later.
Posted by: kevin | October 9, 2003 01:39 AM
I was just thinking about your photographs yesterday...
As I checked back into your site, after quite a while, I was drawn back in by the quality of the photographs. They are wonderfully done, and it has me thinking about dusting my cameras off and starting on some "assignments".
I look forward to more beautiful pictures from you and the others at Japanphotographer.
Posted by: Steve | October 9, 2003 06:39 AM
It's too bad Panasonic isn't making one of those Leica Lumix beauties with a 5 or 6 megapixel CCD, I'm ready to buy my next digicam. I was planning to buy the new Fuji Finepix S7000 6/12MP, full manual control SLR-like camera coming out this month, but it seems to have been delayed until the end of the year. Now I'm considering the new Canon 300D full SLR. Maybe I'll start the Kyoto chapter of JapanPhotographer.
Posted by: nils | October 10, 2003 12:24 AM
Are you in the mailing list?
Somone from Osaka just mentioned about going on a similar field trip in Kansai. If someone does, your welcome to put the photos on Japanphotographer.com. As for the list,. there are members from all over the world, so it is definatly not a Tokyo only list.
Also, I have heard people mentioning a new Panasonic/leica camera coming out soon. Don't know the specifics, but I would think it has more than 2 megapixels.
A couple weeks ago I was thinking about upgrading to a camera that has manual controls, and I played with the Fine-pix in the store, but didn't really like the way it felt. Maybe I'm just too used to mine. One thing that annoyed me was when I move the camera, the viewfinder took much longer to catch up. But the fact that it is manual is a big plus I would say.
Posted by: kevin | October 10, 2003 12:53 AM