Like the crow shot, Tom. I'm a big fan of heavy contrast.

Cheers Luke. The heavy contrast comes from playing around with "Levels" in Photoshop.

Nice shots of Baba, Tom. It's funny how one person perceives things that most likely another may never have seen... including my sudden (and stupid!) realization that you live in the same area that I work! My English school is 1 minute from the west side of the station!

For the crow photo... may I ask if you cropped it and then blew it up from a larger photo? Because the "halo" effect around the image is quite strong, and that suggests that you used a very high pixel radius setting. From what I've been learning about unsharp masking it is important, the first time around, to keep the radius at no higher than 0.3 or 0.4, but bring the sharpening amount up to around 200 to 300 (keeping the threshold at 0). With the second and further sharpening actions you lower the amount to around 50 or 70. Each of these sharpening actions will only slightly increase the definitiion in the picture, but by layering the actions the sharpening should eventually give you a very sharp picture, without the haloing affect.

Unless you WANTED the halo effect, in which case I had better shut up!

I've been teaching myself how to do unsharp masking for more two years. It's a ral art form that I still don't quite have the hang of. You might want to take a look at Fred Miranda's PhotoShop plugin "IntelliSharpen ll" or the software "Focus Magic", which both do so many things that I never even heard of. Makes a big difference.

Anyway, off to work (with my camera in tow)...

Thanks Butuki. I didn't know you worked in Baba.

For the crow picture, I just changed it using Levels. I did notice the halo effect but liked it so I left it.

I'm still a beginner with Photoshop so I don't know so much about Unsharp Mask, but I hope to get some time to sit down and learn about it soon. I'll check out that plugin and the software too when I get the chance. I see your blog is back up. Good to see you back.

I used to hang out in 'baba years ago. One of my friends just moved back there and I went there a few times last week. While you think it looks run, and there are certainly some run down sections, don't forget to look up! The number of new cafes, buildings, and cranes is amazing, considering the area. It's all because of the train line that is going to be extended from Shibuya. 'Baba is just really getting started....

Ando: I have a similar experience with Baba. I used to make the journey there years ago when Footnik was still there. And you're right of course. Baba is going to take off again when the new subway line is done--not that it's ever really died with Waseda Uni and Gakuin so close; more a case of just some buildings getting old and decaying.

That new subway line isn't actually going through Baba, though, as far as I can make out. The closest it gets is Nishi-Waseda (see: http://www.tokyometro.jp/anzen/atarashii/chikatetsukensetu/kakueki_top.html#ikebukuro, but I'm sure that's close enough to revive Baba as a posh-ish residential area too.

I saw the same thing happening around Kagurazaka and the general Okubo Dori area between Iidabashi and Okubo after the Oedo Line went into operation. We'll be mourning these burnt-out, decrepid relics of old inner-Yamanote Tokyo fairly soon.