Most days it doesn’t matter, except for the ritual greetings to the Shinto gods they perform, but the daycare Genbo and Zoe attend is attached to a major regional shrine, with a history going back to 667 AD to when the area was, briefly, the capital of Japan. The oldest class, however, gets to take part in a yearly ceremony called Miae Matsuri, which is, as close to I can figure, an annual thanksgiving to the gods for the bounty of the harvest, etc. etc.
This festival just happened to fall on the morning of the day we flew back to the States. So, we did the whole ceremony thing, changed really quickly, then hopped on a plane to San Francisco. Which, by the way, is where I’m writing this. So, it doesn’t have the usual custom formatting that I have set up on my home machine.
Genbo was given a place of honor holding a live rooster in a basket, which may or may not have been sacrificed as part of the ceremony we didn’t see. There was one other kid performing the same duty, but he apparently got scared of the thing during practice and had to have someone else take over.
Photo-Op with Mom
Hanging out with friends
Can we go to America now?
Genbo and first friend
The Procession Begins
Up the Stairs
Through the Gate-Portal-Thingy
And Everyone Follows
…To be continued.
OK, there are still a few blossoms on the cherry trees, so this post is not technically late. I returned to the exact place pictured in the first shot of this post with a mission to take some non-boring sakura pics. Since I wanted to use my new neutral density (ND) filters, however, I knew I wanted to do something with running water. These are basically just darkened glass you put in front of the lens to allow you to keep the shutter open for longer, thus capturing motion, without blowing everything out. The trick, as I quickly learned, is to find something moving in close juxtaposition with something not.
After many, many false starts, I finally settled on this one rock in the stream with some blossoms stuck to it. I had to take off my shoes and bring my tripod down into the stream to get the right perspective, but it was worth it. Not only was I able to arouse some levity among the passers-by, but I also got some very nice shots. (At first the water was extremely cold, but I just lost all sensation in my feet after a few minutes, which is good, because the rocks were sharp, too.)
These first two shots are some of my favorite that I’ve ever taken. I love how the ND filters let me keep the shutter open long enough to make the water all silky, while still capturing the rock-stranded blossoms in perfect clarity. The whisps of light you see are reflections on the water’s surface.
This first one, especially, deserves to be clicked on to see at full size.
Here I was fortunate enough to be in a position to capture a bunch of blossoms blown into the stream by a particularly fierce gust of wind.
…Or not. I cannot tell a lie.
8 April 2010 Birds
Not usually a big bird photographer, but I like these from today. (And, my previous bird shot garnered a rare compliment from the wife!)
Crows on the underside of the Sanjo bridge
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The same duck in repose a few minutes earlier. Taken with a neutral density filter allowing long exposure in daylight to get silky water effect. The ducks were completely still, which was sporting of them.
It’s cherry blossom season, so here is the obligatory sakura photo. Actually, I have a lot more coming, but this one, sort of influenced by my friend Stephane, stands on its own.
Well, it’s been another one of those post-less months. Now Christmas is passed, New Year’s is almost upon us, and I still have a bunch of Halloween-related posts I want to make. I’m going to get them all up before New Year’s or it’ll never happen. Here is the first one, a Genbo-centric post, from our Halloween back in the States.
(OK, maybe that’s not why he’s running, but who cares?)
The obligatory pumpkin shot. I love the lighting and background here. 
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Genbo looking outrageously handsome. ‘Course, I’m partial. 
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Haven’t done many of these lately…
I’m just starting to go over all the photos I took back in the States, but these two grabbed my eye immediately. They were taken at the SF zoo. Both are, in their way, examples of fortuitous timing. In the first, I managed to catch the flamingos at just the moment when the center one was catching some great sunlight while all the others, somehow, were not.
And here, just the right angle of setting sun manages to make these few leaves and some stray spider silk into (what I think is) a beautiful image. That, and my trusty Nikon 70-200, a huge hunk of glass that photos like this make me glad I persist in carrying around.
Here are a few pictures from our daycare’s undokai, or field day, described here with video.
Genbo with his classmates (he’s the “mellon” class, with the green hats)
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Zoe gets ready for her task, navigating an obstacle course for 2-year olds.
She required a fair amount of coaxing to get down from there
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Crawling under a net to get to mommy
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Seems like a long time since I just grabbed my camera and went around Kyoto shooting. Did so the other day, and here are some of my favorite shots.
This girl spent about 20 minutes staring at her cell phone on San-jo Bridge while I snapped picture after picture of her from the outside tables at Starbucks. Never could tell if she noticed me.
Taken from the same chair
This guy was obviously not averse to having his picture taken
This woman was praying at a local shrine on Teramachi.
I’ve been noticing all the corrugated tin buildings in Japan lately. This one, in the middle of Kyoto, makes a great pair with the temple behind it. Now only if a white egret or even a tombi (black kite, kind of like a hawk) had graced the temple roof to offset the crow on the tin shed, the picture would have been perfect.
It’s been a very rainy summer here in Japan, but we still manage to go out to the neighborhood pool nearly every weekend. Genbo, especially, loves it. Playing in water in all its forms has to the pinnacle of fun for Genbo, even down to his favorite animals: dolphins and killer whales. When I bought an ocean nature DVD a couple years ago I was scared that perhaps the scene in which an orca kills some seals would traumatize him. Not only did it not phaze him then, but it’s now his favorite scene to watch. That, and the one where they kill a baby grey whale. Not sure what to think about that.
A young boy cavorting in the water for as long as he possibly can…
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Zoe is more ambivalent. Sometimes she’ll play, but more often than not she’s content just to sit and watch. Here is a series of the former.
Last weekend I went on my first model shoot ever. I’ve mentioned here before that I belong to a photographer’s group here in Kyoto. Every odd month they meet to critique each other’s work, and every even month to go shoot something. I usually don’t go on the even months because I don’t like sacrificing Sundays with my family, but I just couldn’t resist this one time because it was an outdoor nude model shoot. They have a few different models who do this sort of thing for the group (and the sensei in particular, who is very well known), and it was the first time I was able to tag along.
The model was both very nice and very skilled. Skilled as in, being able to stand on a rock in a freezing cold river in various stages of undress for long periods of time and not complain nor lose concentration. She didn’t look cold, even though she had to be, especially when the sensei went and doused her with river water.
I have a lot more photos from this day I want to share (even that are suitable for a family blog), but the sensei asked me not to post more than this for now. A few people from the group are going to be using these photos for competitions, and he didn’t want me to “give away” the model and location before that. I was going to stress that this blog isn’t exactly frequented by the Japanese photography elite, but it wasn’t worth belaboring the point.
(Update: Upon looking at this post again, these photos also illustrate what a great firetrucking lens the 70-200 is. Couldn’t have gotten these shots with anything else.)
The other day we went back to our old stomping grounds in Fushimi for a great festival held at Fujinomori Shrine (藤森神社). The shrine is supposedly over 1800 years old, and was probably originally situated where it is because of a spring with delicious water; I used to bring a bunch of big water bottles there to fill up once a week or so. The shrine is, among other things, dedicated to horses as a symbol of victory and success (which is why you see guys making offerings there every Saturday morning on their way to the race track).
This particular festival involves exhibitions of traditional Japanese horsemanship: both tack and tricks that military horsemasters would perform to taunt the opposing army.
Japanese festivals of course always offer lots of stalls with scrumptious squid pancakes, octopus balls, and french fries for the kids. Not to mention lots of games where they can win plastic junk to take home and annoy their parents with.
I love the fact that these guys are so macho, they are not embarrassed or self-conscious about their traditional attire. Well, maybe the guy on the left is.
I truly admire the fact that one could wear that and still appear so totally humorless
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I’ll save the actual trick riding for later, but leave you with a little teaser….
Old guy sketching on the bank of a river while two young guys walk by with cold beer and snacks.
