2021-11-12

Makoto Ogawa Photobook Library

Latest Works
They are listed in order of newest to newest.


image


Photobook data

  • Travel Photography
  • Monochrome / Color
  • Published December 2021
  • 280 pages (194 photos)

-> Details : Select Language : Buy (click here)


image


Photobook data

  • Life Documentary Photography
  • Monochrome
  • Published November 2021
  • 138 pages (85 photos)

-> Details : Select Language : Buy (click here)


image


Photobook data

  • Documentary Photography
  • Monochrome
  • Published November 2021
  • 317 pages (241 photos)

-> Details : Select Language : Buy (click here)


image


Photobook data

  • Street Photography
  • Monochrome
  • Published July 2021
  • 312 pages (270 photos)

-> Details : Select Language : Buy (click here)


—


From here on out, there are only a large number of tabs.

Keep reading

2022-06-27

Facebook長岡市グループの活用の提案

Facebokには、長岡市グループというメガグループが存在します。約5000人の登録者があり、うち3割くらいがアクティブユーザーです。

計算上、長岡市でFacebookを使っている人は1万人です。IBM出身の方ですからねぇ。ご存じの通り、現在のFacebookの利用者の多くは30代後半以上の生産年齢の方々です。そして、長岡市グループは女性の利用者数が多い傾向にあります。

また、活用している方の多くは個々に発信力のある方が多いのも特徴です。

このグループは今年の春まで私が管理人だったので、データはおおよそ間違っていないと思います。

そして、グループルールにおいては、政治利用もオープンにしていました。上手に活用した方はいらっしゃいませんでしたが、使い方によっては強力なツールになるかもしれません。

ただ、もしも、活用されるなら、現在の管理人に利用確認をしたほうがいいかもしれません。

管理人チームは、DAOに近い形で運営しています、たぶん、レスポンスは良いと思います。

2021-12-23

How did you get started in photography? : The consequences of my egotism. Bloody Street Photography.

image

I was interviewed for an article to be published in a web magazine. This is a reconstructed version of that interview. Continuing from the previous article, I summarize the episodes right after I started my journey as an artist, and the episode where I kept punching the wall of the bathroom until I was covered in blood.

This is the last part about how I got started in photography.

—

Review of last issue.

This was when I was 15 years old. This is how I thought of the process of expressing myself through photography.

The process of customizing the reality through the viewfinder in my brain, and using the camera and techniques to fix it in a photograph.

Photographic expression is the process of customizing the reality seen through the viewfinder in the brain and fixing it into a photograph using the camera and technology.

I was absorbed in this process. But as long as I was immersed in this process, I couldn’t move on to the next step. To know this, I had to overcome the painful days.

The camera would then become a hedonistic accomplice between me and the photograph.

—

I was a pig feeding on a pig farm.

This was when I was 15 years old. My main source of information about photography was photography magazines. I read as many Japanese photography magazines as I could, from light to heavy, including CAPA, Monthly Photographer, Asahi Camera, Nippon Camera, Commercial Photo, and Photo Contest.

This was the time when AF cameras were gradually becoming mainstream. This was the time when the Nikon F4 and EOS1 were released. I was using a MF camera called Olympus OM1N. I had no yearning for an AF camera. The reason why I had no yearning for AF was because many magazines said that MF was the best way to learn photography from scratch. As a high school student, I was seduced by such information and longed for the Nikon F3 and Canon New F-1.

However, it was because I was using MF cameras that I was able to learn the basic techniques while overcoming various mistakes in a short period of time.

Nowadays, the first camera you touch is a digital camera. For people who look at photos, digital or analog is irrelevant. Because both are photography. However, I feel sorry for people who start photography with today’s cameras where AF is the norm and ZOOM lenses are the standard.

Also, we live in an age where a lot of information is available by searching on a smartphone. I am one of those people, but I think it is because we live in an age where anyone can speak freely and easily that it is difficult for information seekers to find the information they really need.

So maybe I was lucky to have only a limited number of photography magazines, albeit with commercial filters. Still, for my 15-year-old wallet, photography magazines were a luxury item. So I remember looking through all the magazines, including the advertisements. Moreover, I was so thorough that when I moved from one room to another, I took all the magazines I had bought with me.


Approval was easy to come by. I struggled like a rabbit caught in a trap.

Every photography magazine had a photo contest that was ranked every month. It was probably the most popular project in the paper. Even though I was frustrated with my school trip photos, I actively entered the world of photography. Making the most of my pocket money, I began to regularly enter photo contests for several magazines.

If I won the contest, there was a high probability that my photo would be published in the magazine.

This was when I was 15 years old, and as a 15 year old, I was just about ecstatic with the results. Gradually, I began to focus only on the photo contest part.


The dilemma of choosing between films.

There are three main categories of film.” Positive film,” “Negative film,” and “Black and white film.” Please do your own search for details. On top of that, there is a lineup for each type of sensitivity. In addition, there are many manufacturers and brands in each of these categories. In other words, even to choose a single black-and-white film, I would have to choose from several different types.

If it were me today, I would have repeatedly tried different types of film for different purposes. But back then, I couldn’t do that. In the end, I would choose a film based on reviews in photography magazines.

In other words, instead of judging with my own eyes and experience, I relied on the evaluations of others. I had no doubts about that at the time. Now, I would never have accepted it.

However, I have felt a strong dilemma about the quality of color negative film prints since that time. Now and then, there are professional film developing stores. However, at that time, I had never used them, even though I knew of their existence through advertisements in photography magazines. Due to economic circumstances, it was common for color negative film to be developed and printed at a nearby cheap lab. In other words, it was a fully automated photo printing process.

Nowadays, we can easily retouch our photos with our smartphones. However, with color negative film back then, it was practically impossible to express the colors as you wanted, except by printing them yourself. This is why I made extensive use of positive film, which does not need to be printed and can reflect the image as it was at the time of shooting. My favorite film was Kodachrome 64.

The fact that the SIGMA camera I use now has a color balance somewhat similar to Kodachrome is also something I have been obsessed with since that time.


I was uncomfortable with the feature pages of photography magazines.

This was around the age of 16. At the time, I didn’t have a good understanding of color temperature, even though I was using only positive film. However, at that time, I was consuming only about five films a month at most. It’s also true that it wasn’t a very important issue, since I was correcting customized images on the fly in my brain.

It was around this time that I realized that I had not been actively looking at the feature photos of photographers that make up the majority of the opening pages of photography magazines.

What I do remember is a commemorative feature photo of a person who had won the Kimura Ihei Award, the most prestigious award in Japan. I can’t remember who it was, but I think it was probably Hana Takeda or Yasuhisa Toyohara. I really wondered why this photo was so highly regarded.

I began to look closely at the featured photos to understand what I could not understand. But then, I always felt it. I couldn’t understand why this artist of photography I was looking at was so highly regarded.

It took me several years and many hard days to find an answer to this uncomfortable feeling.


A wall that I could not overcome.

Last time, I talked a little bit about myself in junior high school. Originally, I was the type of person who wanted to stand out and be noticed like an idol. However, in reality, I’m a reclusive person and I’m good at expressing my opinions to people close to me and in writing, but I’m hopelessly bad at interpersonal communication, including social networking sites. In addition, I am always afraid of jumping into new things and I am not a proactive person. Sometimes, however, I have the ability to take action, driven by some unknown force.

This was around the age of 17. I entered high school after spending a year as a ronin. In other words, my 17 years old was when I was a freshman in high school. I was a student at Niigata Prefectural Nagaoka Commercial High School. I learned after entering the school that the high school I attended had a photography club. From the very beginning of my enrollment, I wanted to join the photography club, but my heart just wouldn’t move forward.

In the end, for three years, I wanted to join the photography club, but I never opened the door. There were two reasons for this.

I entered the school after a year of wandering, and I had a feeling that my classmates looked down on me because they felt I was younger than them. I also felt that I looked down on the school’s photography club as ridiculous because I had taken a few prizes in magazine photo contests.

Thirty years have passed since then, and I don’t know how my choices have affected the rest of my life. However, I do feel that it was one of the turning points that led me to a different path.


Darkroom after all these years?

Around the age of 19, I entered a photography school in Kohoku-ku, Yokohama. In Japan, spring is also the season for higher education.

The school offered a trial enrollment for those who wished to enter the following year. It was only then that I learned that I needed to prepare a MF camera and a set of darkroom equipment before entering the school.

At that time, digital art was the talk of the town. It was a time when photography was also heading towards the digital age. It was my dream to buy a MAC upon entering the school.

I felt uncomfortable with the school’s backward-looking attitude.


A bloody toilet wall where I broke down in tears.

This was around the age of 20, when I moved to the city from living in the countryside, 300 kilometers away from Tokyo. I was anxious and dissatisfied with school, when I had my first outdoor class.

The location was a festival held once a year in downtown Tokyo. The site of the Sanja Festival. We were given two missions.

  • Take at least three pictures of yourself from a distance so that your face fills the screen.
  • Talk to a stranger and take at least three photos of their face and full body.

These are the two. The students were then required to develop the film at home before the next class and bring it as a contact print. The film was limited to black and white film. I skipped this class. I don’t remember the reason. I think I was just scared. Then I skipped the next class day.

In the meantime, I took a lot of pictures on my own, with an unfamiliar black and white film. Then I did some unfamiliar darkroom work in my new room and burned some contact prints. I think I had about 250 prints.

Then came the class. This day’s class was to choose several photos from the outdoor class and print them and bring them to class.

At the beginning of the class, they laid them out on the table one by one. As I looked at the photos, I laughed in my heart. What is the point of such a class? I thought to myself. Then it was my turn. Of course, I confidently lined up all 250 pictures and took a look at them.

When the teacher saw the pictures, he said to me, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to do.

Yes, the next one.

My moment of confidence and the whole world looking rosy suddenly turned into a world of gray. Stunned, I put the photos away and went straight home. I thought about many things. But I don’t know anything.

I shot and printed more photos before the next class the following week, and went back to the class. I think I had more than 500 photos, including the last one. I put them all on the table again. The teacher again said a few words.

He asked me to arrange the photos in what I thought was the same category. When he saw that I was done, he re-categorized the photos himself. He pointed to one category and said.

If you can collect the same categories as this one, go for it. But you are still young. I think you should go back to the country and find a different path.

—

I don’t know what’s going on anymore.

I put the pictures away and ran into the empty bathroom. I was just so frustrated. I couldn’t even cry. I punched the wall of the bathroom until my hands were covered in blood.

—

Four months have passed since that day. I never went to school. I don’t even remember what I was doing.


Determined Street Photography.

The school regularly has a class where each student is asked to look at about 30 photos in front of all the teachers. Of course, other students are welcome to view them as well.

September. We had this class to see the results of our work during the summer. I mustered up the courage to go and watch the class.

It was there that I witnessed the rapid growth of my classmates who had enrolled with me and started learning how to operate the MF camera. Many of the students were continuing the Street Photography they had done in their first field class. And each photo brought its own uniqueness to the table.

My vision was once again filled with gray. It was clear that the work they had been doing had made a difference. And I knew that I had just spent the last few months in vain.

—

From the next day, I went to Shibuya with 10 bottles of Tri-X every day. I made it my rule not to leave until I had finished shooting 10 Tri-Xs.

I made it a rule not to leave until I had taken 10 photos, and I continued at a pace of about 100 photos a week. I continued at a pace of about 100 photos a week, and every week I asked the teacher to check the contact prints of the photos.

This was about two months after I had been working like this.

—

The meaning of the teacher’s words. The meaning of the outdoor class. Why do we need a darkroom? The world as a photographer sees it. What is the meaning of photographic expression?

The answers to all these questions came together in the days when I put everything I had into Street Photography.

This was the starting point for me as a photographer. And everything that led me to this point is the reason why I started photography.


Makoto Ogawa Photo Album Library

Available in 8 major countries and all Amazon stores

Details https://makotoogawa.net/

image
image
image
image

2021-12-20

How did you get started in photography? : The pleasures that I discovered.

image

I was interviewed for an article to be published in a web magazine. This is a reconstructed version of that interview. In this interview, I summarize the episode that started my journey as an apprentice expressionist when I discovered the joy of clicking the shutter.

–

How did you get started in photography?

When I was drowning in the pleasure of clicking the shutter of my camera, that was the moment I became euphoric about the world of photography. At that moment, the camera had become an accomplice to the joy of connecting me with photography.

–

A Polaroid camera I had at home.

It was a time when I was cuddled up to my mother and spoiled. In the toy box, there was a black, square Polaroid camera. I pressed the 1cm-long shutter button until it was in position, and the lens shutter made a small cracking sound. I remember the visual focus of the lens, which was about 5 cm in diameter.

I think I carried the camera around proudly, clicking the shutter without even inserting any film. It was the first camera I used in my life. It was the first camera in my life that taught me the joy of releasing the shutter even before I could remember.

image


First photo shoot.

It was when I was four years old and we were on a family vacation. We were at a drive-in at the top of Mt. Yahiko, a sacred mountain in central Niigata Prefecture. On that day, my father was carrying a small Konica camera around his neck; I think it was a shutter priority one, except for the ISO setting, and it had a dial for eyeballing the focus.

My family of three was taking a break on a bench. I was curious about my father’s camera. Then came the moment of my first photo shoot. My father lent me his camera and I took some pictures with it.

The first photo I remember in my life was of a motorcycle coming up a mountain pass.

In my mind, I was supposed to be able to take a cool picture with the auto bike as the centerpiece. However, the resulting photo was so small that I couldn’t see where the auto bike was, and I remember being disappointed.

image

Suddenly, I became interested in diorama photography.

This was when I was seven years old. It was the dawn of the Gunpla era. It was also around this time that Dragon Quest 1 was released.

I was fascinated by a mook book on diorama photography that I saw in a bookstore. A diorama is a model of a scene. In the book, there were techniques for photographing various dioramas using plastic models of Gundam and other characters to make them look like scenes from anime.

But I was seven years old. There was no way I could make it happen. However, it was at this time that I learned the joy of creating photographs. This led to my yearning for a single-lens reflex camera.


It was at my younger brother’s kindergarten field day that I made my debut as a photographer.

It was when I was eight years old. I was eight years old when my father asked me to be the exclusive photographer for my younger brother’s kindergarten field day. The reward I was expecting was that my father would be overjoyed and praise me.

So I took my little Konica camera and ran out onto the field. A few days later, when my father saw the developed photo prints, he was furious with me.

The picture was not of my brother, but of a child I did not know. I had taken it in desperation, without any regard for the danger. But because of that photo, my father was angry with me. He told me, “I will never let you touch my camera again. I still remember the feeling of despair I felt at that time.

Even now, whenever I am asked to take a picture at a school event, I remember that moment. And I also remember my father’s face turning red with anger. When I think about it calmly, it was a mistake made by an 8-year-old child. Looking back now, I think it was my father’s fault for not explaining it properly.

Why was your father so angry?

In other words, my father just wanted me to take a picture of my brother. But I wanted to take pictures of the field day, so I did. In the end, the reward my father gave me was "a bitter memory that I will never forget.


I failed miserably with my first SLR.

This was when I was ten years old. I built a mighty diorama of about 1.5 square meters in my yard. By combining various plastic models, I tried to recreate the desolate wilderness after the war. However, it is on the embankment of the garden I will be landscaping. I couldn’t leave it there forever.

So I decided to take pictures of the diorama with my SLR camera that I had been saving for a long time. I thought my father would get angry if I talked to him about it, so I took out my SLR without any prior knowledge and set out to take pictures.

That camera was a famous machine from the past. It was the Olympus OM-1New.

image

I managed to get the film in the camera. Then I put on the telephoto zoom and started shooting. I was crazy about taking pictures. I had a perfect picture in my mind when I took the picture. Then I developed the prints.

The resulting print was out of focus, blurry, and super underexposed. Even the person who took the picture had no idea what was in the picture. At the time, I didn’t know how to focus, adjust the exposure, or set the ISO. I didn’t know anything.


My first photography trip.

This is a story about when I was 12 years old. I joined a Hokkaido tour with a friend, which was only open to elementary and junior high school students. This was my first photography trip. I asked my father if I could bring a single-lens reflex camera with me. But of course he refused, so I brought my Konica camera.

We took a boat trip on a large ferry. I remember taking many pictures of the sunset over the Sea of Japan. The image in my brain when I took them was a wonderful photo, capturing the moving scene beautifully.

However, that was with a 28mm compact camera with a single focal length lens. The resulting sunset photo only showed a small circle floating on the ocean.


My second photography trip.

It was when I was 15 years old. Junior high school students in Nagaoka City, Niigata Prefecture, where I live, go on a school trip in the spring of their third year of junior high school. At that time, the standard trip was to Kyoto and Nara for three days and two nights. I was one of them.

At that time, I was a sad junior high school student who wanted to stand out but could not. I thought I could stand out if I brought my SLR camera with me, so I took my father’s camera without permission, ready to get angry. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to operate it. I remember that I was taught how to use it by the photographer who accompanied me during the trip.

During the school trip, we were divided into small groups and had work sessions. I was appointed as the recorder. It was a chance for me, who usually doesn’t stand out, to stand out.

However, the pictures I took at that time were not well received.


The trauma of being eight years old again.

Once again, I repeated the same mistake. At the time, I didn’t know why it was so unpopular. As I got older and looked at more travel photos of other people, I realized the reason.

There are two important elements to a typical travel photo.

  1. The photo must prove that you actually went to the place. It is important that the place and you are in the photo.
  2. It should be a record of a special scene. It should be of a spectacular scenery, a scene, or something that can only be captured by going there.

Many of the photos I took on the school trip were unimportant. In other words, I was not able to fulfill my role as a record keeper. It was just like my brother’s kindergarten field day. There was nothing left but self-satisfaction.

However, those self-satisfied photos opened a new door for me.

–

The path to becoming an apprentice expressionist.

Through the photographs documenting the school trip, I came to understand two things.

  • What I wanted to capture was something unique, not a typical concept.
  • The fun of creating a picture in the viewfinder.


What is the school trip I wanted to photograph?

I misunderstood the school trip as a playground where I could shoot what I wanted to shoot. I thought it was a selfish photography trip using the school trip as an excuse.

It was only natural that it was unpopular.

However, this episode led me to take up photography in earnest. It was the joy of being able to take pictures of what I wanted to take, and the joy of having a weapon to express it.


When I was little, my most favorite plaything was white paper.

I’m not sure when I remember it, but I think I was around 3 or 4 years old. My mother, who was a nurse, used to take me sketching at a nearby riverbed on her occasional days off. My memories of that time are vivid.

At first, I was bored out of my mind. However, I gradually grew to like drawing as well. The reason is simple. It was because I was often praised when I drew pictures. Perhaps, I was drawing pictures because I wanted to be praised. This kind of creative activity gradually led to many other things. I once wrote a novel in my notebook. I also became fond of printmaking and calligraphy.

However, as I grew older, I began to feel uncomfortable with drawing on white paper. Thinking about it now, I feel like I am drowning in the space of painting. I began to feel that the image inside me would not fit on the white canvas.

Gradually, I began to search for a way to express myself in a way that would satisfy my heart.


What I wanted to photograph in Kyoto and Nara.

In the Japanese history that I learned in my compulsory education, Kyoto and Nara were positioned as the centers of ancient history. In visiting these cities, I wanted to capture the time of history.

In the history I have studied, and in the timeline I am living in, Kyoto and Nara are capitals that existed long before I was born. There was an actual flow of time there that I had never imagined before.

I wanted to capture that time.


Create a picture in the viewfinder.

With the advent of digital cameras, photography has taken on a different vector than it did in the heyday of film cameras. As a result, the meaning of the viewfinder has also changed.

In this article, we will talk about the time when film cameras were still used. This is what I learned about the appeal of photography at that time.

It was a process of customizing the reality through the viewfinder in my brain, and using the camera and technology to fix it into a photograph.

I was hooked on this process. But you can’t move on to the next step while you are absorbed in this work. It would be a long time before I learned that fact.

This episode led me to an apprenticeship as a photographic expressionist, when I was 15 years old.

–

However, the photographic expression I envisioned at that time was nothing more than an arbitrary drawing on a white piece of paper. Next, I would like to write about the episode that leads to the next step.

2021-12-10

December 10, 2021 : “Daily Photos Life”

image

Englsih / 日本語

Bring the sunshine to me.

Nagaoka City in Niigata Prefecture, where I live, is known for its low annual hours of sunshine. This means that I live with rainy and cloudy skies every day.

In my case, when such days continue, my mind becomes depressed and I lose my mental balance.

Today, we were blessed with sunny weather from this morning. However, after enjoying the game until early morning, I woke up a little before noon.

Then I rushed outside.

The winter legs were getting stronger this season. The sun’s rays were the best send-off, I thought.

–

From here on out, there are only a large number of tabs.

Keep reading