27 September 2007 Swan (?) of the Day
(Click to enlarge or you are doomed to become a karmastrologer in your next incarnation.)
Archive for September, 2007
26 September 2007 Osaka
Like Chicago, Osaka is a city with a very distinctive style and atmosphere. Very fun to visit, but wouldn’t want to live there.
25 September 2007 Walking Around at Night
It was a nice cool fall night tonight after a hot day, so after the kids fell asleep I grabbed my camera, my best low-light lens (the ZF 100/2 for all you camera geeks in the audience) and went for a walk. Sure, the joggers look at you funny for taking pictures of concrete walls in the dark, but my father always told me one must suffer for greatness. Well, I’m sure someone’s father once said that. I once had a Taiwanese friend whose father told him that if he’d invested all the money he’d spent on 5 dollar hookers in Taiwan real estate instead, they’d be a rich family. I ask you, what kind of a man says that to a son?
…Anyway. Here are a few snaps tonight. Taken by hand, in the dark, without vibration reduction, because tripods are for big wusses. I just like the way that elements that appear so normal during the day can take on a different character under unnatural lighting and silhouetted against the black of night.
The purple tinge to this next one is called chromatic aberration, and is basically unavoidable when using large apertures to capture bright objects. Most people try to avoid it, but I think it usually, when it’s visible enough to notice, looks interesting.
I came across these three skaters, who automatically thought I was cool because I came from California, the land of skating. When I told them I skated in California as a kid, I became doubly cool.
(Click to enlarge to activate your 12 strands of Astral DNA.)
20 September 2007 Sacred and the Profane
A temple roof and an incredibly ugly building. Juxtapositions like this are easy to find in Kyoto, actually.
18 September 2007 Don’t You Need a License to Be This Cute?
Update: When Maki saw this post she called me “oya-baka,” which means “A parent who is turned stupid by his/her children.” I take it as a high compliment.
18 September 2007 Red and Green Leaf
I like how only a narrow swathe of this leaf is in focus. This guy, however, is a master at this.
18 September 2007 Goodbye to the Clouds of Summer
I’ve never really been a summer person. Sure, I liked having summers off when I was a kid, but spring and fall, particularly fall, have always been my seasons. My version of perfect weather is that which calls for a sweater but not a jacket.
Summer does have one thing going for it, however (besides skirts): clouds. The great big cumulus clouds that rear their heads in summer are my favorite, and almost make up for the constant sweating (especially here in Japan, where it is, as Japanese people will tell you after examining their English dictionaries, “sultry.”)
The days here are still hot, but the nights are cool. Fall is coming. So, a few pictures of some of the last summer clouds I’ve taken recently.
Out my front door. The lightning rod belongs to the building next door.
Off my balcony
Not exactly how this cloud actually looked, but Genbo liked this version best.
15 September 2007 Dynamic Range
The concept of dynamic range in photography is an interesting one. First we have to realize that the human eye, the product of millions of years of evolution, is a much better tool than almost any camera at capturing and processing light. I remember when my mom bought my brother and me two small, cheap Kodak cameras: our initial excitement was matched only by the let-down when our first photos came back. The photos looked nothing like what we saw! I remember asking my mom why the pictures didn’t look just like what the world looked like to me every day, and although I don’t remember her answer I certainly know it now: The eye is not a camera, and vice versa.
One of the crucial differences is that a camera can capture much less dynamic range than a human eye can. An eye is capable of discerning detail in both very light and very dark areas at once. A camera, though, has something like half the dynamic range an eye is capable of. It can see either the dark areas or the light areas, but not both simultaneously. This is why photographers have always been forced to expose for the highlights, keeping the detail in the brightest areas of the photo (sunlight glinting on hair or off the water, say), or expose for the shadows, keeping detail in shadows and preventing them from turning into black blobs on the page.
One of the strengths of my camera, the Fuji S5, is that it has better dynamic range than any other camera in its class. To achieve this it sacrifices some resolution, but photography is all about compromise.
This photo I took today in Osaka displays the S5′s fantastic dynamic range. It has lots of really nice detail in the bright white clouds, but keeps the detail in the black monolithic building and shadows underneath it.
Click to embiggen!
14 September 2007 Storyboard
“Can you handle it?”
“I can handle it, mom.”
“This is gonna be cold.”
“Damn, that’s COLD.”
“Ha!”
“That was fun. Can I have some more?”
