There are so many layers of post production on these photos I'd barely call them photographs any more. Especially the flares around the lights: no distortion even on the edges, all of them look uniform, even if they come from different light sources...
EDIT
That said, kudos for the patience, it takes a long while to acquire the source material.
EDIT2
As art, it's good work. But this is not what I'd label photography.
EDIT3
img { display: block; max-height: 98vh; max-width: 100%; width:auto; height:auto; margin: 0 auto; } helps a lot to auto-size images for max height of the display.
This happens with some lenses at long exposures. There's not much done to these outside of the odd comp, but mainly a 'HDR' style grading. Good stuff, and relatively simple. Just looks intense!
No, it does not happen like this. Happens with _some_ light source, from _some_ angles. Barely ever on the edge of the lens and never without distortion there.
May I see some of those photos? I'm genuinely curious what lens is capable of night flares on the edge without distortion; the only one I can think of is the Nikkor 50mm 1.2, considering it was designed for this. The Pentax 85mm 1.8, which is my closest to that lens certainly can't do this feat but in the center - it does spectacular nightscapes though.
Uhm... this only verifies what I was saying: they are not uniform. There are deformations, differences among them, as it should be. The opening post had basically the exact same flaring and it was obviously post production.
They're not bad but essentially say little about the city and its inhabitants. Insight has been replaced by stereotype, real figures by mock superheroes, real context by staged drama: we don't even know if the repeat subject is Japanese. That said, there's some cute tricks with light and composition. The sort of thing you'd buy if you're a merchant of attention tangents.
It's called "orange and teal". Search for "orange and teal" to find explanations on why the style is popular and tutorials on how to create the style in image and video editing applications.
As art and photography I find this series of images weak and without direction. Lost me completely when the photographer or his friends (?) started showing up in the pictures ( https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/upload... ). Typical Instagram buildering [1] shots.
Well, "Japan"—it's all Tokyo, from what I can tell; and a fairly typical depiction of it as well. The photographs are nice, and some of the shots are really stunning, but there's so much more magic in the nights of Japan than just in Tokyo.
In cities like Fukuoka, and Sapporo, as the sky darkens, a warmish glow rises from the central and side streets. The polished office towers and department stores that grab your eyes during the day fade alongside the sun, and, soon enough, it's the tiny izakaya and restaurants, nestled in side-streets or sandwiched between larger buildings, that become the centre of attention. All around, people in suits and shirts alike stumble across and through the streets with little order or care. For many of them, it seems as though this is the only time in the day when they're not going somewhere.
In contrast, smaller places like Hakodate, or Fukushima, and even much of Tokyo, lose their bustle entirely. There might be the occasional young man or woman, standing outside a izakaya, trying to entice the last few wandering gaggles of businessmen in, but otherwise, it's as though the entire city has shut down. There are few stray lights in any of the surrounding buildings, and while the periodic street-lamps keep the path ahead visible, they do little to relieve the sleepy calmness that seems to permeate everything. The parks are empty; spots in parking lots are only filled sporadically; and even the bicycles, that are usually littered across Japanese sidewalks, largely disappear.
And there are many, many more varieties still, in different cities and different regions. I find it unfortunate that there are so few photographs of these scenes of Japan—so much focus is put on certain unique things: sakura, Fuji, the Tokyo Metropolis and the like, that the smaller deviations on more familiar things are ignored. If one only looks at these photographs, they may get the sense that Japan is much more different than it may actually be, especially if one's from North America or Europe.
Agree, I was there a month or so back and it made me instantly nostalgic. What these photos don't capture though is the sound - particularly when standing in the crowd in the rain at Shibuya crossing. Every photo makes it seem like the city is eerily silent which is far from the truth.
This perspective of viewing when you know nothing about a subject and having an opinion only based on the work itself, and not instantly comparing it to something similar you saw the other day or claiming it's not even that hard or that pics have been heavily edited ( I believed that they weren't since the title said photography ). Do people lose this perspective of looking at something with fresh eyes when they know a little or too much about it ?
I think they do, but I'd say that's a good thing - a natural development and evolvement of your taste. Slowly and after collecting countless more reference points you learn to view art, work, things in context and comparison to other works.
Of course this also applies to the things that once inspired you at the start of your journey - now you can see if they stand the test of time (and developed taste) and still impress after having dug much deeper into the subject, genre or category. After all Miles Davis' "Kind Of Blue", which was probably a starting point for many listeners trying to get into jazz, certainly still is an alltime classic and favorite of experts and enthusiasts.
I didn't even have to open the link to know this would be another set of Blade Runner-esque shots of city neon. This style is so ubiquitous it's practically a meme at this point.
This artist is just using the subject matter to explore his love of a filtering method that seems to involve reducing the the dynamic range, as well as the color space to blues and oranges.
It seems like photographers nowadays are only capable of portraying eastern Asia in one way: rainy alleyways, streets, and taxies at night, splitoned lazily to complementary colors in Lightroom. It takes maybe five minutes to create these pictures and they're done to death at this point.
EDIT That said, kudos for the patience, it takes a long while to acquire the source material.
EDIT2 As art, it's good work. But this is not what I'd label photography.
EDIT3 img { display: block; max-height: 98vh; max-width: 100%; width:auto; height:auto; margin: 0 auto; } helps a lot to auto-size images for max height of the display.