As is necessary after a big photography adventure is the need to download, backup, sort and start to explore the collections of images you have captured. This has to happen at some point in time but for me the sooner the better. Especially the download and backup part. My greatest fear would be to return from a photography trip – especially a place that is not that easy to return to – and accidentally wipe a memory card before I had copied the files. So my workflow will involve making a copy of the actual RAW image files and saving these to an external hard drive.  Followed by the usual import process in Lightroom where the files are also safely stored on a second external hard drive. This has been my process certainly for all of my Japan trips.

Then there is the actual process of going through images. Both to recall the moments and experiences I had whilst away and to start to make some sort of rough plan on what you will do with ALL of these images. This can be a very lengthy process especially when you have taken thousands of images. On my 2017 trip to Tokyo I shot over 6,000 images. Granted some can be immediately discounted due to being blurry, out of focus or just plain crap. For me it can take a couple of passes through the image catalogue to sort and rank my images. I use the Attribute features in Lightroom and will first colour code the images that I like and wish to do something with.  I could also break the catalogue into separate days by sorting the images by date to deal with smaller chunks.  And so begins the editing process. Long story short, with that many images, it can take weeks to whittle your catalogue down to the best of your images.

With my first two trips to Japan I pretty much followed the above process. This was followed by those images being used in blogs here on my site, galleries also located on this site, posts to social media and of course for the purpose of designing and printing a photo book. But when dealing with such large volumes of images it is only natural that you will pass an image that at the first or second review, you felt it was not worth the edit or the time.  Only months and months later, after a casual and less purposeful scroll through the catalogue have I come across an image that I previously thought was not worthy but turns out to be a hidden opportunity. I call these the B-Sides.

My last trip to Japan was in August of 2017 and whilst I have looked over these images several times in the months since then, I have only just decided to look a little deeper and a little longer at those missed opportunities. Here in this blog I have chosen a handful of images that I felt had some renewed life. A story. Or perhaps I just like the way it looked once I played with exposure and contrast in Lightroom. I am not saying that these are now the best of the best from that total catalogue. But, I like them.  And of course they take me back to my time in Tokyo and especially Shinjuku with its colour and energy. They make me smile and whilst I may not be able to make it back to Japan in 2018, I am happier knowing that it will happen some day. Sooner rather than later of course. All of the images in this collection were shot with my Fujifilm X-T2 and the XF23mmF2. Fast and weather resistant. Notice all the umbrellas. Happy shooting.