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47 Autochromes of Japan

47 Autochromes of Japan
May of 2023, myself and a few others made a somewhat rash decision - two of our friends would be in Japan at about the same time next September for work, and roundtrip plane tickets we really cheap!  I've heard from older folk over and over again, to do your traveling while you're young, because it only gets harder as you age.  Well here I am, rapidly aging, with barely any travel to show for it.  

 

I knew I wanted to dedicate a large portion of the trip to taking autochromes.  For the few months leading up to the trip, I obsessed with making plates as well as I could, as I was terrified of taking so many shots, only to find out there was some horrible defect in all of them.  In fact, with only weeks left before the deadline to mail the plates, I had to scrap about 20 screen-plates due to problems with the emulsion kind of... just floating off during development.

 

My goal was to make 36 plates, though I ultimately exceeded that and was able to make 48 total.  Due to time constraints, they were a mix between my older unfiltered "large grained" plates, and my only-very-recently-successful "small grained" plates.  The larger grained plates ended up being slower, about 7 seconds to expose, but created images with a much higher saturation.  The smaller grained plates had the advantage of resolving much finer details, and their exposure only took about 1 second.  I ended up packing the plates and mailing them to the hotel ahead of time, as I was concerned about the newer "CT" airport scanners ruining the plates.  Although requesting security workers to manually inspect film is still a thing in many places, I wasn't confident in my ability to explain what autochromes were to security officers, especially if there was a language barrier involved.  I did have one plate packed in a plate holder in my checked luggage, just to see what would happen. 

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Boxes 1 and 2 - Tokyo
In the 36 hours I spent traveling from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Tokyo, I only managed to catch about 2 hours of sleep.  Despite being somewhat delirious,  we navigated the route from Narita to Shinjuku Station surprisingly easily.  Being from the Midwest US, I'm not exactly used to public transportation at all, but I had done a ton of research prior to our trip, and snagged some "Suica" cards preloaded with money for use on the subways.  I was worried at first about messing something up and causing a scene in such a busy station, but it was surprisingly easy to use, and Google Maps made transferring across different subway lines trivial.  

It was night by the time we moved through bright and colorful Shinjuku, but lacked the energy to gawk to much at everything.  We passed out as soon as we got to our rooms.

This was the view from our hotel.  I just kinda set the camera on the sill to see what happened.  One of the plates was the one I ran through our checked luggage, so I wanted a second plate to compare with, to see if the x-ray scanners fogged it or not.  Not very much color here in these.

Early morning in Shinjuku.  The women of this area are very nice, and kept offering me massages.  So much in fact, I had to keep moving to the main roads so they would stop bothering me.  

A shot over water near Tsukiji fish market.  I love the tones in this one

Dinner in the market was nice.  I had my first Highball!

Some shots later in the evening in Shinjuku.  I hadn't really shot any autochromes at all in anything but sunny lighting conditions before, so I was really happy these turned out.  Typical "sunny" exposure was 1 second at f/5.6.  Night exposures were about 8 minutes or so.

A couple of shots of Akihabara.  I still have the Sofmap Jingle stuck in my head.

An alleyway near Shibuya crossing.  One of my favorite shots from this whole trip.

Boxes 3, 4 and 5 - Kyoto

Our plan next was to take the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Kyoto.  Due to gross incompetence, I had managed to lose my JR Rail Pass, which also meant I had to buy a separate ticket if I still wanted to ride.  Due to more gross incompetence, the second ticket I purchased had a different boarding station than the rest of my group, meaning I had to split off from them for a while and (hopefully) rejoin them on the train.  I had some trouble understanding the computer kiosks in the station that would print out my boarding pass.  I made the train still, but I cut it real close - I remember having to run while lugging my camera equipment and my checked bag.  I ended up pulling something in one of my shoulders while going up stairs, which pained me for the rest of the trip.  

I made it though, and one stop later, everyone else I was traveling with boarded too.  They had their fair share of problems too, and I think we were all pretty relieved to finally relax for a couple hours on our way to Kyoto.  

This was the city I was looking forward to photographing the most, as it was the historical capital of Japan, with tons of really cool architecture.

A couple of shots from our first day in Kyoto.  That first image was a long exposure I made during a lesson on a traditional matcha tea ceremony.  Our instructor (wearing a blue kimono) is on the left of the image, but unfortunately there were leaks in the autochrome during development, causing those red spots.  The same red spots can be seen on the image of the bridge on the right.  

We visited a few shrines at Gion that night.  I had set up my camera to take a picture of this shrine, calculating the exposure to be about 20 minutes or so.  Five minutes into the exposure, I was informed by a security guard that I had to move my camera.  Not wanting to waste the plate, and not really knowing if the plate even received much light (remember at this point I still had no idea if night shots would work at all), I ended up reusing the plate the next day.  It plainly was working, so I ended up with a bit of a double exposure on that plate.

A shot of Nishiki market.  The hall was full of people, but since the light was a bit subdued, they just became a blur during the 30 second exposure.  

Knowing how crowded some of the touristy places in Kyoto get, we got up early and headed towards the Higashiyama District.  Even in the early morning light you can already see lines of people waiting to get their photos taken.

All the plates in this box have these white spots in them.  It's caused by areas in the emulsion that were thinner while coating was still gelling up on the plate.  I'm not sure exactly why this happens, I think there's something funky happening with surface tension.  

After we had seen the area, we wandered up the hill a bit more, not really expecting much.  To our surprise, there was plenty more to see!  Kiyiomizudera.

The sun peeked out just for a second while I was photographing that tower.

We went further into the temples there, though I was asked kindly by some of the monks to not use my camera while I was in there.  They were quite interested in my strange looking camera.

After my morning shooting session, I rushed back to the ryokan we were staying at and swapped out the plates, and loaded my first box of large grained autochromes.

We were killing time waiting on other group members, so I decided to shoot that little table centerpiece since I thought it looked nice.  I calculated 45 minutes to expose, though I had to cut it short when the rest of the group got ready unexpectedly fast.  I tried hitting it with a reducer later to try and lighten it up a bit, but... eh. 

Speaking of reducers, the shot of Amidado came out a bit dark.  After it had already dried, a few weeks later I decided to go back and hit it with a reducer again to lighten it up and hopefully bring out a bit of color.  Well... that caused issues.  I'm guessing the stress of the emulsion contracting and expanding was too much for the "second varnish" layer, and it cracked all over.  The green color is due to water getting into the starch layer and causing dyes to run.   

We took a bus ride over to the Golden Pavillion.  No tripods are allowed anywhere in the park, which was starting to become a running theme for everywhere I wanted to visit. I tried to improvise by wedging the camera between the fence and a tree, working quickly to make the exposure before I was inevitably told "no" by one of the guards.  I tried to be discrete, but to my chagrin a small crowd gathered around while I set up for the 7 second exposure. As you can see, it moved.  But hey, it was definitely worth the try!

As our last day in Kyoto started to draw to a close, our group split up 3 different ways, as we all had things we wanted to see before we left for Nara.  I had visited Fushimi Inari shrine the previous day, but due to poor lighting conditions, I hadn't shot any autochromes there.  But the day was bright and beautiful now, so I rushed on a train south of the city to shoot my last 3 plates.  I'm so happy I did, these are some of my most favorite plates from the whole trip!

Waiting at the station right across from Fushimi Inari, with a bit of sadness, for the train to take me away from Kyoto.  Also trying not to look like a weirdo.

Box 6 - Nara

Nara was a cool little city.  It was a shame I only spent one day there.

Nara is famous for having a large free-roaming deer population in many of its parks.  Due to the somewhat long exposures my autochromes have, I rarely get to photograph animals.

We were very excited to visit the giant Buddha statue that Todaiji is famous for.  When we entered the hall, we were confused... The statue inside certainly wasn't small (maybe about 8 feet tall), but it wasn't exactly giant either.  We later realized that we were visiting the "Golden Hall", and the giant Buddha was in fact in a different building. 

Box 7 - Osaka

A few shots of Osaka Castle.  The cracking in these plates was due to me deciding to intensify (1st image) and reduce (3rd image) a couple weeks after initial processing of the plates.  I hadn't realized the extra stress of the gelatin swelling would cause the second varnish layer to break apart, after which water seeped in and began to make the dyes run.  Now I know.

A turret near the entrance.

Our traveling group near one of the walls.

A couple of shots of Akihabara.  I still have the Sofmap Jingle stuck in my head.

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