Jim O’Connell Photographs, The Blog.

LOHAS, or Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, is a movement wherein people take a careful look at how they live and the impact their existence has upon the planet. Here in the urban sprawl of Tokyo, it’s alive and growing, with shops catering to consumers with a heightened sense of responsibility for their actions.

When a possible client for my photography asked for LOHAS-related images, I realized it was one area somewhat under-represented in my portfolio, so I set off today by bicycle, (appropriately enough, I suppose,) to explore Shimokitazawa, a Western suburb of Tokyo, looking for LOHAS.

As the day wound down, I found myself at the Nong-min Café and spoke to its owner, Mr. Waki, who graciously allowed me to take some photos.

In the garden behind the café, there was a small herb garden, just a couple of square meters, that supplies the shop with fresh herbs.

Written on the stick is “Italian Parsely”.

I spoke with Mr. Waki, the proprietor. He told me about the shop’s two rice paddies outside the city and gave me a tour of the shop.

The first floor café is cool and casual.

Inside a cabinet, the glass teapots and handmade bowls await customers’ orders.

An organic cotton t-shirt proclaims “No Chemicals”.

The shop’s brand includes t-shirts, as well as workwear.

The second floor has two café rooms and an adjoining workroom, complete with sewing machine.

A wooden Buddha sits overlooking the tables in a peaceful customer area.

A cotton boll, a reminder of the connection between the goods in the shop and their natural origins.

An un-dyed organic cotton t-shirt on display.

Herbs grow in pots alongside chalkboards announcing the day’s specials.

Veggies.

The delights from these food emporiums aren’t the sort of meals you serve up on a first date, nor are they the sort of places you eat at every day (unless you have a very good cardiologist). They’re guilty pleasures to be savored, food shared amongst trusted friends and select initiates in a ritual of indiscretion and indulgence; saying “let’s go grab a bag of sliders” is much the same as saying “let’s be bad” with a devilish glint in your eye.

Magnesium Photos» Magnesium Photos.

Photographer Brian Peterson of Zokyo fame and I have been working on a new project for the past couple weeks, working for hours a day with an open Skype call going, usually with at least a couple others on the line, discussing every little detail of how to put together our new site, Magnesium.

It’s almost ready to go, but I thought I’d spread around a little link love for the search thingies.

Photos I shot in Kawagoe for the New York Times:
The Tokyo of Yore - The New York Times > Travel > Slide Show > Slide 1 of 12


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Photos I shot in Kawagoe for the New York Times:

Here’s another slideshow of takes and out-takes from my Hokkaido assignment for the NYT:

Another new set of photos today from the piece I did in Hokkaido recently. There’s the article, as well as a slideshow of a dozen photos. Came out pretty nice, I think.

[From In Japan, a House of Steel - NYTimes.com]

Here’s another NYT assignment I did on Toyo Ito, an architect that’s been getting a lot of attention lately:
Inside the Exteriors of the Architect Toyo Ito - NYTimes.com

(Click the photo to open the slideshow, then look for the navigation buttons at the bottom of the slideshow.)

That was a fun shoot. It was the day after I had done the shoot for the Nakagin Capsule Tower and when I got home from that job, I had an email asking me to shoot Mr. Ito at his office in Aoyama.
We talked about the Nakagin Tower a bit and he told me how its architect, Kisho Kurokawa, had been an inspiration and an influence on all young architects of the time.

Mr. Ito was a warm and friendly man, stylish without being fussy and happy to talk about his work.

When I asked him how he came up with the idea for the opera house, he picked up an object that looked like a CD case and pulled the two pieces of plexiglass apart. Sandwiched between the two pieces was a sheet of flexible woven fabric, held to the two sheets with translucent fasteners. As he pulled it, the fabric was stretched into gentle curves, the same as you can see in the building. (Photos of him holding the model start at slide 52 in the presentation.)

To light the shoot, I used a single strobe, with a Gary Fong Lightsphere, a soft plastic attachment that looks a bit like some sort of Tupperware bowl. I always get comments on it and often feel self conscious when carrying it, but it does a fantastic job. I did some of them with a cable, allowing me to shoot with the flash off-camera, but in all honesty, I coule have skipped that and just shot it all on-camera.