Curiouser and curiouser

Looks like he caught me!

Trains coming... but which way is it coming?

There she goes!

Pit of despair?

Follow the yellow line

Either looking for food or a place to poop

'Tis some kind of secret code

I think there must be a glitch in the matrix

Yeah, definitely a glitch in the matrix

The great thing about smartphone photography is we can take them anywhere, even to non-photography jobs. I was headed off to a translation project with a car company here. I can't take a camera with me there. Car companies in this country are super-private and they would completely freak out if I tried to bring a camera inside. As it is, I have to turn my smartphone in at the security office before entering. But at least I can safely bring it and trust the security office isn't going to damage it.

So anyway, it's nice to have a smartphone that can let me take photos of my trip. I opted for Hipstamatic for this trip. Long time followers will know I adore Hipstamatic for the toy camera analog images it gives. It reminds me of my Holga back in my film days. One of these days I'll get my Holga out of storage in my parent's house and start using it again. Until then, this is a pretty good substitute.

I let Hipstamatic pick a random filters combination for me on this trip. It used Salvador 84 lens and Blanko Noir film. If you don't know, in Hipstamatic you combine a "lens" and a "film". They are really just two different filters, but the "film" filter usually has some scratches or grain or light noise—things you'd have to deal with on real analog film—and the "lens" usually adjusts sharpness, often opting for that softer film look or even going for the plastic lens toy camera look. The analog camera metaphor is kind of silly, but it works for me.

Anyway, this isn't my favorite combination. I don't really like the colors. When I do use the Salvador 84 lens, I usually opt for a monochrome film to get rid of the ugly colors it gives. That said, I like to sometimes use something different so I went with it this time when the random engine gave it to me.

The colors the Salvador lens gives I don't like, but the mirror effect I do, that is it mirrors the image up and down or left and right randomly or sometimes in a random pattern. This can create some cool effects. I also used the double exposure function of Hipstamatic sometimes. This is where you take one photo and then take another "on top of" the previous exposure. I could never get any good double-exposures in my film days, but Hipstamatic has given me some nice ones.

You can probably follow along most of those photos, so not much comment is needed, but I will give a few brief thoughts.

• I like the mirror effect I got when I was following after the woman. The diagonal mirror effect given when I was following the man who looked behind at me was also cool, though not as neat as the other.

• That yellow line also came in an interesting way. That bumpy strip is used for blind people to follow along.

• One of the photos of the street I added a tilt-shift effect just for fun. I might have gone too far with the saturation because the background kind of overwhelms the cars, but I think it still looks ok. I don't own a tilt-shift lens for my dSLR but I have used one before. They are fun, but not fun enough for me to buy one, especially when you can get something close in software. That track down the middle of the street is the tram. That tram is really nice and always makes me wish more cities would use them instead of sending us down in a subway.

• There are hundreds of pigeons at this station. For some reason the station doesn't try to stop people from feeding them, so they just keep coming back looking for more handouts. Amusing at times, annoying at other times. But they do make good subjects for photography.

• I included two shots with different filters, that bit of graffiti and the mysterious hole. It's actually a disposal for pet bottles, though lots of people cheat and throw regular trash down there too.

Anyway, that's all. Hope you enjoyed this train station photowalk.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

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