The Main Event

If you live in Tokyo, the impending Tokyo Marathon is just around the corner. It’s a great opportunity to get out in the streets and shoot some pictures. The route passes through quite a wide selection of neighbourhoods, though with a little planning, you can usually get to several different spots during the course of the race. What I generally do, is pre-ride the course, in the week leading up to the event. I’m a big fan of cycling in Tokyo, and usually bike between shooting spots on the day.

As far as equipment goes, I like to pack light. One tele lens, one wide lens, 2 bodies, and a flash. And nothing very extreme either, in terms of the telephoto lens. A lot of people I talk to seem to form the impression that sports photography is always about huge telephoto lenses. I shot the image below on a 180mm lens:

I used a teleconverter with this shot, so the 180mm lens with 1.4x converter about equivalent to a 250mm lens. Adding the crop factor of the DX format camera, about a 375mm in fullframe. The disadvantages are, the AF slows down because of the reduced light into the camera, and the image quality is compromised. With top flight AFS prime lenses, the converter isn’t perhaps so much of a problem, however for the older ‘screwdrive’ lenses I really can’t recommend it.

The Tokyo Marathon bears like every other large city marathon, a number of fancy dress runners. Our Lord Jesus, for example:

Then there’s the Salaryman, every Disney, anime, and cosplay character you can think of,  the list is endless. All richly entertaining, given the often inclement weather.

I’ll be shooting from around sunrise till noon, and you’re welcome to join me if you have a bike to get around on; I’ve got a job to shoot in the afternoon, at the Russian Embassy, so I hope not to get too dishevelled in the morning!

Using the light.

Reflected light

 

There’s a hell of a lot of reflected light available here in Tokyo. Plenty of mirror glass walls, squeaky clean windows, impossibly clean train carriages and commercial trucks. On some clear days, the sun acts like a giant spotlight, falling over a small area of the street, as it’s reflected from a surface on a nearby building. You might have half a second to catch a pedestrian on a crossing, as the light pours onto an area between the 4th and 5th white bars painted on the road surface.

In the late afternoon shot above, the sun is over to the right side, but reflected from the windows of the grimy looking building on the left. As usual, went out with a single prime lens on this day. I find this artificial restriction quite stimulating, in terms of having to think about making different types of images. Used my 300mm F4 lens for this picture.

Taxi!

On Route 20 west out of Tokyo, a busy four lane highway, with a further 6 lanes expressway some 30 feet above. Pedestrian bridges are common at large intersections, so it makes sense to use them to get a cleaner image. Keep it simple, stupid. By shooting from overhead we can eliminate the distractions of a typical urban background. I’ve been in the habit for a while now, of going out with just one body and one prime lens. It seems to focus the mind more. This one was shot with my elderly D1x, and the 35mm F1.4 lens, albeit stopped all the way down. You can can really only make this picture at a certain time of day; when taxis starting lighting up, but while there is still ambient light.