Tokyo Times

Over the last few months I’ve posted several series documenting old and dilapidated Japanese markets. Once busy locations that are now mostly shuttered — their time as functioning businesses rapidly running out.

This one, however, is very much a going concern, but due to its wonderfully dated signs and appealing colours, I opted to take most of my photographs both after dark and at the end of the working day. A choice that hopefully allows those key aspects to shine through, along with the solitary calm such places possess when most of the people have gone home.

Sometimes, some walks, offer up a pleasing array of scenes that one way or another fit nicely together. Often it’s colours, or certain themes, and every now and again, it’s a lovely combination of the two. A mix I got on this recent meander, when everything somehow sort of just worked out.

Shooting at night, or in the rain, isn’t the kind of photography I do a huge amount of. Manually focusing while holding an umbrella always makes the latter less appealing. The relative lack of the former, on the other hand, is harder to explain, except perhaps that when meandering around after dark, an old and character filled little bar can easily feel like the more enticing option.

This small series of images then was taken recently on one of my Tokyo Photowalk Tours, a walk that provided the perfect reason to be out and about when normally I wouldn’t have been. Designed to cover the quiet and busy, people versus no people, it proved to be a fun and varied combination. The resultant photographs also turned out quite pleasing, which will hopefully give me the requisite push to make similar walks a more regular part of my personal work.