The Artful Engineer

This week wraps up my recap from my Tokyo Vertigo tour with Eyexplore. This set of images concentrates more on views out over the city. City skylines usually look pretty at night, especially from a distance. Since most of my vantage points were not particularly high, these images tend to have shorter buildings in the foreground and skyscrapers in the background, as in the image above. The result is a little more gritty feel than, say, a city skyline taken across the water as is typical of places like San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Here, in fact, the foreground buildings almost block out the skyscrapers.

This next image is a less sweeping view. The star of the show in this image is the tall building in the background that picks up a pagoda motif from the curved shape on its roof. The yellow-orange window lights are echoed by others around the frame, which helps tie it all together; I think the brown foreground buildings contribute in this regard, too. The odd thing here is the cold white lights of the fire escape on the right hand side. The white balance is so different and the patterns so strong that it really has to be considered distracting. Maybe I have gotten used to it—or am just willing to acknowledge that its presence was outside of my control—but it doesn’t bother me.

This next image features a strong contrast between the lower half of the image and the top half. The bottom half is sterile (if a sickly green hue can be considered sterile) and lifeless, whereas the distant buildings seem vibrant enough, not to mention what looks to be a busy top-floor restaurant or bar in the upper left.

Here is a tighter view that contrasts the different lighting choices made by tenants of the same office building:

I like this next view of the Shinjuku City skyline as seen from Nakano City. There is still some strong contrasts here between the somewhat rough-around-the-edges foreground structures and the fancy skyscrapers in the background. The blue-topped building is the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building which is graced by two side-by-side towers.

This penultimate image—taken looking down with an ultra-wide angle lens—has the buildings leaning out from the center, which is not the typical perspective. We are more used to seeing street-level views looking up, in which case the buildings converge in the sky, exactly the opposite of what happens here. I only made a few similar images and should have done more.

And, finally, we’ll close with one of the several images I made with my anamorphic lens. I’m still unsure how I feel about this lens on the whole, but this image did get a few tell-tale streaks of light, typical of an anamorphic lens. I haven’t quite figured out what apertures elicit the best response in this regard.

If I did this tour again—which I might—I would probably bring along my 19mm tilt-shift and my fisheye. Both could be a lot of fun.

Thanks to Charles for a great tour! Perhaps we can do another one next time I am in Tokyo.