We Live Where We Are

Hachiman, Little Big Neighborhood

A few days ago I went walking, looking for the highest vantage point from which to photograph Hachiman, our neighborhood. I found a run-down, on-the-verge-of-being-condemned apartment building and scaled its seven story iron fire escape, trying not to imagine how it would pitch and sway during an earthquake like the modestly big one we had last week. At the top I took a few photos and a little school girl, probably seven or eight, came blasting out of her apartment, saw me standing oafishly by the ledge, and came to a dead, silent stop. I turned around to smile and she slunk away toward the elevator. Oh well.

Here are the photos. I've been playing around with making fake tilt-shift images lately, a process that skews perspective in such a way that the resulting photographs look like miniature model train sets. Let me know what you think.




Click on any of the images to go to my flickr site, where you can view full-size versions of the images. Thanks!