The thing that really does brighten up our grey workplace, in the toxic waste part of town, is Kubota-san's fantastic Ikebana art.
[taken with Sony TX5 using flash and "hdr" mode - this camera improves its tiny sensor by being capable of 10fps and having several modes that combine exposures in various ways.)
Number 4in the series "the toxic waste part of town where we work".
Numbers 1,2 and 3, here, here and here.
Thinking I'd been making rubbish pictures for long enough, and that my reader might takeaway all my cool toys if I didn't improve, when recently some blog posts about composition appeared I paid attention. This is the toxic result.
As a friend for yesterday's photo, here's our other OKish night-time shot. Taken by James, with his Panasonic LX3 on his mini-tripod in early May.
Panasonic prefer to make the night sky fantastic purple, while Nikon (yesterday's photo) head towards an unfortunately more realistic neon effect.
Last Friday we went to see fireflies (hotaru, 螢) at Sankeien garden. They were really good, but don't photograph well, so here is a picture of the irises and pagoda and stuff instead.
The garden feels rather Victorian (opened in 1906), and was built by a guy who got rich in the silk trade, and transported buildings from various places in Japan...including some tea houses, some buildings taken from Kyoto temples, and even a
Another photo from the huge Daiyuzan temple.
James asked why I didn't blog a picktur yesterday. WIRES are to blame. They sent the proofs for the brilliant paper I wrote, all messed up into a dumb-ass American accent, so I had to go through every word to put the meaning back into my sentences. So a job that should have taken an hour at most took the best part of the day. It was really annoying. I thought we'd evolved beyond such rubbish. Another vote therefore for the EGU journals (like
Ommmmm....
It was only after I got a print made of this photo and stuck it to the side of my cubicle that I realised how much I like it. It seems that some pictures are better viewed from a distance, framed by wall. I wonder how long we will have to wait for electronic picture viewers that are about the same thickness as a photographic print.
The photo, taken on a walk with Helen the sister in law in April, is of an upper part of Daiyuzan temple, previously visited last May (see picture here).
Since yesterday's post was so popular... OK I lie - but I liked it. Here's another set - mostly same times and places, but looking the other way.
Two weeks ago, we said to ourselves that if rainy season hadn't arrived, we'd go and climb the ginormous and snowy Kita Hotakadake (I'd just read Tsubakuro's blog on the subject). The weather called our bluff to such an extent that, amazingly, we couldn't think of a single reason to be lazy, and James is now a pretty patchwork of red and white, due to slapdash application of the factor 40.
Read more...Another snap from the PAYG camera. It is funny that while James is clearly taller than Fuji-san here he appears dwarfed by some not very big rocks. It must be some sort of optical illusion.
[One again, an amazing mind-reading exposure from the N80s.]
Having been quite upset that the scans from the first 3 films were cropped compared to the transparencies, chopping off things that I considered important details in my pictures, for the 4th film from my new PAYG camera I took the bold move of opting for the pricier scanning company: 2100¥ to develop and scan one 36 slide roll. Result: No crops! Yay! Furthermore, the scans completely trounce both our Nikon D40 and Panasonic LX3 digicams in terms of both colour depth and resolution. The exposure of the N80s is also amazing. I really didn't expect this shot to come out, with the dark shadows and James' legs being harshly lit by the sunshine.
Such things may not be so important for most photography, but it really seems to make a difference in the mountains and I now have some inkling of why people make the effort to heft those medium/large format cameras and tripods all the way up the mountains.
Of course, I am no where near skillful enough to photograph insects or birds or candid shots of people, or even close-ups of flowers with a film camera, so I still need my digi training wheels. Additionally, the 1-2 week delay of film processing doesn't exactly fit in with the daily blog concept too well! Nevertheless, even with the more expensive scan it is an awful lot cheaper and, importantly for mountains, lighter, than a D700 (221,000¥, 1kg!) which I guess may be closer to it (or better?) in terms of image quality.
[Taken on our last mountain trip to Yatsugatake with N80s]
While I am sure I haven't yet achieved my aim of my photos being worth 1000 words, this one is, I hope, worth at least a few dozen.
According to Wikipedia: Cosplay (コスプレ), short for "costume play", is type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea.
[photo taken at Hachimangu, Kamakura.]
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