Japanorama: Photography, Photographers, Japan | Thursday night at the izakaya; Asakusabashi, Tokyo

Thursday night at the izakaya; Asakusabashi, Tokyo

First posting after a few days of computer hell, in which I lost 90% of what I shot during August. I am usually very religious with backing-up but this was a brand-new external drive and it lulled me into a false sense of security. One lives and learns.

Anyway, was out with a new student last night, who happens to live in one of my favourite neighbourhoods of town; Asakusabashi. Loads of action down there, some great light and great street-scenes. This one was shot without a tripod, using my bag on the floor as support. 5-shot bracketed HDR, blended in Photomatix 2.5.4 and then tweaked in Photoshop to get rid of the distortion from the the fact that I had to tilt the lens up to get everything in, from my low position.

Nikon D300
Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8

Tags: asakusabashi, tokyo, japan, night, nighttime, lights, people, crowd, bar, customers, izakaya, busy, bustling, street, streets, bridge, wideangle, tokina1116mmf28, hdr, hdrthatdoesntlookovercoooked, ilikehdrbutidontlikeoverdoingit, streetphotographyintokyo, photographylessonsintokyo, student, walk, osanpo, nikon, d300, afterdark, lpbars
Uploaded: August 21, 2009
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46 comments

Steve Kelley wrote...
great shot and wonderful hdr. looks great. sucks about the drive.

Ryan MacLean wrote...
Sucks about that drive Alfie - are you shipping it off for recovery? great shot, I love the different light sources here, and the conglomeration of similar-looking people (black pants, white tops).

esa raditya wrote...
and i was just about to say this look like a HDR :D

rrooyyccee wrote...
wow. love the details.

Eric Flexyourhead wrote...
Amazing work here, Alfie... sorry to hear about the drive! Stories like yours should give me a solid kick in the ass and get on my back-up process again...

Marcus C. Mason wrote...
It reminds me of an izakaya we went to a jump from there in Ningyocho, it has the same scene! Very nice tones to this capture!

Neal wrote...
Just brilliant! What an inspiration.

Anthony Segarra wrote...
The light on this one is unreal...in a good way! It looks like a hollywood movie set or something. Awesome job!

jamesjustin wrote...
I know this bar and took a few shots of it last summer. Didn't rest my camera on anything so they didn't come out very well. I'll have to go back again soon with something to stabilize the camera and see what I can do. Really like how all the salarymen are spilling out onto the street and lighted by the red laterns. Haven't done much HDR at night, so I'll have to try that to. Excellent shot.

indieyuppie wrote...
brilliant as ever alfie.

tomo wrote...
beautiful street shot!! the lights on the wall are pretty amazing.

デーブだ wrote...
I know i sell it to much but the automatic back up on import in lightroom really is a grand feature. cool light on many planes in this

Jimmy wrote...
I´ll start talking with my wife to move over there... Tokyo it´s like a big theme park, full of interesting events to shoot every day. Cheers!

Alfie Goodrich wrote...
"the automatic back up on import in lightroom really is a grand feature." Agreed. But I have heard horror stories about lightroom too... and if the drive has suffered a mechanical failure.....then you are pretty much up shit-creek.

Jason Collin wrote...
I like the low angle. Do you still feel that Photomatix 3 does not produce sharp results? Sorry about the drive. Why are you not using a Drobo? I will be getting one soon and finally I will be able to free up HDD space on my laptop hard drive (I backup to an external and keep everything on my laptop HDD too). Drobo will allow me to keep all photos in one place and only be at risk from natural disaster damage.

Alfie Goodrich wrote...
Drobo: when I have between $599 and $1399 to spare...... and the natural disaster angle is an important one for me. If I get the Drobo, I need to fix two grab handles on the top of it so I can pick it up and run when the big one comes to Tokyo. Ideal scenario for me would be synchronous broadband, that gave me 100mb or more upstream speed and I would upload everything special to two separate locations.

Miguel Angel wrote...
fantastic corner.

.banzai wrote...
So amazing. Colors and light is win! Same thing happened to me with external -___-;

Lloyd kimeldorf wrote...
nice lighting

michael clinton wrote...
Love the feel of this, as previously mentioned looks like a movie set. What about backing up to blue ray discs or is that to time consuming and probably expensive.

デーブだ wrote...
backups have gotta be to another physical disk ..... as for when the big one comes that's what a flickr pro account is for isnt it ;) would really like to hear some of the horror stories you have for lightroom its more than a little worrying as its managing everything for me at the moment.

Scallop Holden wrote...
sorry to hear about your loss. I know the feeling and it is so frustrating

Ken Tsang wrote...
great hdr night shot! love this angle and the vivid colors!

Shin Ishii wrote...
Great photo!

safama wrote...
Nice street shot! Your photos are wonderful!

Romain CHASSAGNE wrote...
I love the texture and the light .

Andy Ellis wrote...
great shot alfie, love the lighting. sorry to hear about your loss of photo's... and thanks for the reminder.

izakayasanpo wrote...
if you like Tokyo' Izakaya, have a look on my website www.izakayasanpo.com

jphanky08 wrote...
Hey Alfie, fantastic shot. Love the low angle and the subtle HDR. It makes the ambient light so nice. I'm guessing this is with your wide angle lens? Great all around.

ganar wrote...
I love the work done to eliminate the perspective, also the lights of different temperature give drama and interest to the different parts of the picture. Have you tried to crop the picture for cinema aspect ratio? 16:9 or even wider? It looks like a shot for a movie