20 April 2010 And he only needed a little prodding from dad
Zoe bites off a little more than she can chew; requires help from big bro to make it down the hill
full exif & map
full exif & map
Archive for the ‘iPhone camera’ Category
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).
18 November 2009 Home at Last!
It’s very good to be back home. We were away for three weeks, the last two of which was just the kids and me, so a large part of being glad at being home is relief that I am no longer solely responsible for their care, feeding, and entertainment. Even the flight home, which was 11 hours from San Francisco to Narita, a 3 hour layover, then another hour to Osaka, was not nearly as bad as it could have been. They behaved pretty well. Not all of it was the sweetness and light you see here, but it was still fine.
I didn’t get much of a chance to blog, but I do have a bunch of great photos that I will be putting up from now on.
3 October 2009 Two Shots from Today
Here are two shots representing today. I spent it, like I do all Saturdays, with Genbo and Zoe (since Maki works on Saturday, her days off being Wednesday and Sunday). This is just a shot of them at the front of the train. I love Genbo’s protective arm around his sister.
Here is my new macro setup. You can see the ultra-sophisticated use of the sandbag instead of the tripod. Yes, this is primarily because I don’t have a real tripod, but also because in this case a sandbag really is the best way to go. I have two extension rings and a teleconverter attached to my lens, which means one long piece of equipment including four joints. This means that it should be supported all along its length to prevent sagging, and the best way to do that is a sandbag.
I was shooting some abstract macros of my friend Kamada-san’s work. Tomorrow the guy who leads my photo group and I will work on them, deciding what to print for a group show. I’m pretty happy with what I got, and I’ll post what we decide on later. (Here are the shots I am going to bring tomorrow. Somehow we’ll figure out how to arrange them into a triptych. I was thinking about portraying them as a mountain with clouds, but they also look a lot like a breaking wave to me as well. There’s also a cool shot in that gallery that shows me holding the shard, so you get an idea of scale.)
28 September 2009 Futzing with Photos
Two days ago I met with my photographers group, which is planning for a group exhibition in a couple weeks. I brought a few candidate photos, and the leader of the group selected a macro of my friend Kamada-san’s pottery for me to present. Only, he told me to make it into a tryptic, or three-part piece. So, I’m going to reshoot it in the next few days and see what I can come up with. But doing a coherent three part piece of an abstract macro is hard. Should be interesting, though.
Here are some people arranging some pieces of another tryptic, this time of Kabuki actors. They are using a projector to show the computer screen on the wall so everyone can participate. The guy who took these photos brought in about 50 different shots to select among, and they selected a combination that I suggested, which was significantly ego-stroking to leave me smiling for a few minutes. Only, I suggested it with the two outer faces looking inward, whereas the sensei (the back of whose head is front and center here) immediately recognized that it would be better with them facing outward. And, of course he was right. His own contribution to the exhibit was tailored, I think, to be good but subdued enough not to take all the attention from everybody else’s work.
11 August 2009 Flinging Rocks
One of Genbo’s most loved activities is throwing rocks into bodies of water. I don’t know if all children love this as much as he does, but ever since he could throw this has been a favorite.
This is the canal that goes from lake Biwa from where we are all the way down (I think) to Osaka Bay. Here we are near our old house in Fushimi, Kyoto, when we went down there to see our friends the Kamadas.
11 August 2009 Here’s something you don’t see everyday:
(I only wish you could read the title in the photo, although it’s in Japanese, so (most of) you would have had to take my word for it anyway.)
26 May 2009 Encounter at the Train Station
I haven’t blogged recently because Genbo and Zoe have had an unexpected week-long vacation from daycare thanks to the un-kosher flu and concomitant predictable Japanese over-response. It’s actually been a lot easier looking after both of them for a week than I expected, which probably says a lot more about their (relatively) increasing growth and maturity than mine own.
Today Zoe and I ended up waiting for a train together, since Genbo was off with his mom (who had the day off from work). I sat down on one end of a three-seat bench at the station, and she, to demonstrate her growing independence as a newly-minted two-year old, sat down at the opposite end. She got a little bit more than she bargained for, however, because this old guy with a great, weathered face sat down between us. She was a trooper, though, and despite obvious misgiving held her ground against the intruder.
He was actually an interesting guy, though. Started up a conversation with me in a casual, friendly way that I didn’t expect from someone of his generation. It turned out he has traveled extensively in Peru and other parts of South America, which explained it.
“Daddy seems to think he’s OK, but I better keep my finger in my mouth just in case.” 
full exif & map
full exif & map
28 November 2008 The Four of Us
There’s a lot of stuff I want to post, but Tamaki has been beset by a stomach bug (the upside to which is that Genbo is now bilingually fluent on the subject of multiple forms of peristalsis) followed by an ear infection.
So, the best I have to offer right now is this shot of Genbo and me in the elevator. It represents the multiplicity of self and the fungibility of socially construed identity. Either that, or just one silly father and son.
Elevator’s gettin’ crowded
16 August 2008 “Happy O-Bon!”
We’re up at Maki’s parents’ house in the country for o-bon, which is almost the Japanese equivalent of Thanksgiving. People make a point of going back to the ancestral seat to spend time with family, only for o-bon it’s because that’s when the dead relatives come back to visit too, and you gotta be there to say ‘hi’ or else when you’re dead no one’s gonna bother to wash your grave and light the incense every year, and guess how sorry you’ll be then.
Other than that, it’s exactly like Thanksgiving.
I made a point of packing my camera bag chock full of a bunch of stuff I wanted to use, but of course forgot to actually bring it to the car. Hence I’m stuck with my iPhone. (I used the word “cell phone” in a conversation with Genbo the other day, and he wanted me to explain what that was. When I got done, he said, “You mean iiiiii-Phone?”
The neighborhood priest comes to say a few prayers for various and sundry dead family members. Zoe isn’t quite so impressed with the gravity of the occasion, but no one seems to think she’s disturbing things.
17 July 2008 Don’t run for your train, or else
I’ve been loving my new iPhone so much that I find myself finding excuses to pick it up and stroke its sleek black loveliness, only to look up hours later and wonder where the time went. These photos are from its camera. And, as much as I love my little iPhone, my Fuji S5 and arsenal of lenses are certainly in no danger.
Genbo has a shinkansen (bullet train) ruler, on the back of which it says “Please don’t run for the train” in Japanese and English, because Japan is the most annoyling patronizing country in the history of the world, as if the hapless Japanese people need to be reminded constantly of every safety precaution imaginable lest they kill themselves accidentally (they’re already quite proficient at doing so on purpose).
In this case what they mean is, don’t run onto the train and thereby get caught in the doors. I explained what this meant to Genbo when he asked. It’s always hard to tell whether or not he understands my explanations. He often asks me to repeat myself many times, at the end of which he usually gets a blank look and says something like “Can I have some crackers now?”
Anyway, my iPhone camera came in really handy this time, when, an hour or so later, Genbo rolled this graphic depiction of what could happen to you over to me and said, “This is what happens when you run for the train, right?”
So, I’m now hopeful that at least notall of my painstaking explanations are for naught.
Genbo has clearly graped the dangers explained to him 
(In a hilarious display of unintended irony, Genbo looked at the new Green Eggs and Ham book I bought him yesterday and, without cracking the cover, said “I don’t like this book.”)