28 March 2010 On our way to the park
Today was bright if a little chilly, so we went to the nearby park for a little play.
Archive for March, 2010
22 March 2010 Pottery Non-Macros
I’ve blogged often about my friend Kamada Koji (鎌田幸二), who has been kind enough to devote decades of his life to becoming a master potter in the Tenmoku (天目) style just so that I could take macros of his stuff. Last week he held a yearly show at Takashimaya, one of the fancier Japanese department stores. I would have loved to bring my tripod, kick everybody out, and adjust the light to my specifications, but any picture-taking at all is ordinarily forbidden. I had his special permission, but still felt it was a good idea to be as discreet and fast as possible.
It’s exceedingly difficult to capture the nuances of nearly all his glazes, but this particular one most of all, because in real life the colors are not only extremely subtle, but they shift mercurially (almost literally because they are metallic crystals) with small changes in light.
17 March 2010 Assorted Cell Photos
There have been some cell phone photos I’ve been wanting to share, but I’m slightly hesitant to put measly cell photos up here. But, I now have a critical mass, so here goes.
My grocery store believes in really fresh fish (or at least the illusion thereof, since I’m sure this sucker was frozen, too)
full exif & map
full exif & map
Japanese mothers are rightly famous for their ornate bento, or lunch boxes, and I quail at the thought of competing on a daily basis. Genbo and Zoe only have bento once a month, though, so on those days I’m willing to pull out all the stops. Here is one from last week:
That’s a bed of rice covered by scrambled eggs (with milk, cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla extract, since we had extra French Toast batter left over from breakfast), mackerel (chopped and simmered for about an hour in soy sauce, fish/seaweed stock, mirin, sugar, sake, more sugar, and some more soy sauce), and spinach (flavored with soy sauce and mirin), all topped with chikuwa (compressed fish product) branded with Anpanman characters. Phew.
Finally, this is a shot I took last night after a long day of work (hey, it happens sometimes). The location is my local watering hole, 母の一味 (”Tastes Like Mom’s”). This is the owner of the establishment, whom everybody calls, surprisingly enough, “Mom” (perfectly natural in a Japanese context). I was testing out my new Griffin Clarifi, an iPhone case with a built-in close-up lens. Works pretty good (also used for the bento picture above).
5 March 2010 Kyoto Alleyway
This alleyway leading to a fine Kyoto dining establishment is quintessentially Kyoto. Or, rather, is the image the Kyoto often seeks to brand itself with, even though alleyways like this are actually fairly rare. Either way, it’s nice.
They were doing some construction on the bark-covered walls as I went to the camera store, and by the time I passed by on the way back with my new lens they were done.
I like the wood used on this post, although I have no idea how they got it to look that way.
4 March 2010 New Lens!
Today I took in my venerable Nikon 16-85 3.5-5.6 VR and traded it in (I repeat, Maki: TRADE-IN) for a Tamron 17-50 2.8 VC. In other words, I lost the “Nikon” label and some reach on the telephoto end for the ability to take better photos in poor light and create nice bokeh. A good trade-off, in my opinion. Here I’m taking advantage of the 2.8 aperture to create some nice bokeh I never could have with the Nikon. At 50 mm the Nikon was an unbearably slow f5, so all that stuff behind the statue, such as the tree and the woman with the red umbrella (had to wait while for a colorful umbrella to pass) would have been boringly in focus.
