Morning Tokyo Street Photography with the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN ART
I wanted to visit Tokyo when I started street photography because of the high-rise buildings and beautiful vibrant night lights in the city.
However, I wanted to make the most out of my Tokyo trip and practice street photography for as long as I was able to. I woke up each morning to take photos of the sunrise around Japan and continued exploring different streets and alleyways - photographing whatever caught my eye.
In this blog post, I wanted to share some images I took in the morning during one of my days in Tokyo, Japan in the spring.
All of these photos were taken with the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN ART and edited in Adobe Lightroom Classic.
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE MORNING
In general, mornings are a much quieter time to capture golden hour photos compared to sunset. There are less people exploring the city and it gives you an opportunity to capture cityscapes without too much distraction, or find a single subject.
Although I tend to gravitate towards a busy metropolitan vibe in my street photography, it’s always nice to experiment with street photography at different times of the day.
TEXTURES IN STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
One of the things I really like about photographing alleyways is the variety of wall textures adjacent to each other. In the photo above, there is a mix of brick, wood, concrete, and metal textures all within a certain location. I also like the morning light illuminating half of the street. For this photo, there are a lot of warmer colors in the image, but I thought that the light was a bit too harsh, so I lowered the temperature in Lightroom to make the tones a bit more even.
The slight rust on the brick walls and on the metal ramp leading up to the cracked white door also adds a lot of character to the photo.
If you feel stuck when you’re out doing street photography, or if you feel like there isn’t as much action in your city to capture interesting shots, a good place to start is to look at the different textures of the building around your neighborhood.
FOCAL LENGTHS IN STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
The photo above was one of my favorite photos I took in Tokyo. I like how the light illuminates only part of the brick building. I think it creates a really nice soft contrast in the image. If I had a wider focal length like the 35mm, I think the photo would have looked too distracting. I wanted the focus to be on the light, rather than the different textures and signs in the alleyway.
I think one of the more challenging aspects of using an 85mm for street photography is that you might feel like there’s less to capture in places with more narrow alleyways or smaller streets. I think in this scenario, I think it’s beneficial to try and narrow in your focus to a specific part of the alleyway you find is interesting (it could be a door frame, a shop sign, a vehicle, or even someone walking into a perfect frame) and capture that detail. You can see some examples below.
TOKYO VENDING MACHINE
I stumbled upon one of the many vending machines you’ll find in Tokyo. I like the contrast between the vibrant colors of the vending machine and the businessperson’s black suit. I didn’t want to do much editing on this photo since I think the original colors fit the image pretty well.
As I mentioned before, I really like the different colors and textures on the buildings in these alleyways. The rust from the pole of the 2.25m sign is a huge contrast to the fairly pristine vending machine.
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY WITH HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS
One thing that I love about street photography in a city with high-rise buildings is that even in the afternoon, you’ll find pockets of light around the city. This was near the end of the morning and going into the afternoon, but I just wanted to capture this shot because I liked the bits of light peeking through the store fronts and the different colors and textured buildings on the sidewalk.
Looking back, I wish I would have waited for someone to walk into frame in front of the wooden doorway. But I’m still happy with the image as it is.
Final Words
Looking through the gallery of raw photos I took in Tokyo last year, I realized how many photos I haven’t edited. I have been occupied with recent photoshoots here in Los Angeles, but I also only wanted to edit photos that I immediately liked after the shoot.
It was also on this trip to Japan that I realized how much I loved using the Sigma 85mm lens for street photography.
It’s important to save raw photos because you can go back and realize that certain photos might be more worth editing than you previously thought.
I have a lot more images from my Tokyo trip to share, so I hope you’ll look forward to those, as well.
