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Traveling to Tokyo from California is always great for the first few days because it’s easy to wake up for the sunrise. However, I don’t typically wake up until 10 a.m. since my lifestyle of working as an editor for an ad agency has made me completely nocturnal. So, when you factor in the time difference between California and Tokyo, sleeping in until 5 a.m. is perfect for me.
What’s crazy is I know a lot of people who wake up at that time naturally. Well, crazy to me, at least, but you know what they say: night owls are more intelligent than morning folk. 🙂
What else is cool about traveling to Japan this time of year is that the sun is low all day long. Although the days are shorter, the lighting for street photography is much more interesting throughout the day, and it would be much harder to get shots like this without it.
X-Pro2 | 27mm f2.8 | Tokyo Morning Sun
This photo was taken around 8 a.m. in mid-October, not too early but still early enough to get a really nice low sun. Cigarette smoke was pouring out of the smoking area as if it were a chimney. It was hard to capture, and none of my photos ever did it justice.
It’s kind of crazy if you think about it; smokers are forced to take their habits into a 10×10-foot cube, where they then proceed to hotbox themselves with a blast of nicotine. Imagine how awesome you smell coming out of that! And I know you can only see a few people in these shots, but around the corner, there were honestly about 20 people in there. Maybe more!
Fujifilm X-Pro 2 – 27mm – ISO 400 – f2.8 – 1/1250
These shots were also part of my Fujifilm 27mm f2.8 lens review. It might be my favorite lens for street photography. It comes out to be about 40mm, not too zoomed in, and not too wide either. I always love the 50mm but it’s never wide enough, then I always feel like a proper 35mm is too wide and you have to be a lot more responsible with what’s in the frame. To me, the Fujifilm 27mm has always felt perfect. I also have a similar 40mm f2.8 pancake lens for my full-frame Canon and have always just loved that focal length. I also love the price of the Canon pancake a lot more!
