Here are a few more pics from the shrine I mentioned in yesterday’s post. As you can see, it was a place of pristine natural beauty.
As photographers in Japan soon learn, judicious cropping goes a long way.
And, of course, some leaves:
A few days ago Jeffrey and I went to go photograph Himukai shrine (日向神社) before the autumn leaves all fell. It was a small, unobtrusive and unpretentious shrine tucked into the foothils surrounding Kyoto, and I liked it a lot. Here are just a few pictures from the trip.
(Again I find that no matter how many lenses I take anywhere, the photos I end up using are invariably the ones taken with the Zeiss 100.)
There was a little sub-shrine off to the side with a wonderfully rotting torii, or gate marking off the sacred area. I think we spent more time photographing this than everything else.
These last two photos are meant to be facing each other in a diptych. I arranged them that way in the hopes of bringing them to my photography group, which met today, but Genbo with the flu and some pesky patients at the hospital conspired to prevent that. Guess I’ll have to try again in two months.
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.
…is the name of one of my favorite books of poetry, by Raymond Carver, who is usually remembered for his short stories instead.
Took a walk through the park near my house today with camera in hand. Noticed lots of instances like this one of signs of spring coexisting closely with detritus of winter still hanging around.
I love how the ultra-thin depth of field created by aperture of f2 at very close distances results in ghost-like apparitions.
Maintaining our all vegetable matter, all the time theme here at Zach awry in Japan. Taken at the same time as the previous two videos.
If you don’t click to expand, then why bother coming here? Why bother with anything?
Many thanks to Jeffrey for loaning me his extremely nice tripod and for fixing my blog (again), after the whole thing mysteriously disappeared today. (Note to self: Back up, schmuck.)
Took this near daycare, in the midst of a light drizzle of snow. Had a lot of fun experimenting with the very thin DOF on my ZF 100/2 while taking the video. Having the tripod sure does allow for more creative possibilities, both in terms of video and stills.
Just seeing the level at which this equipment performs (irrespective of the skill of the operator) is enough to send shivers up my camera-geek spine, kind of like how listening to the revving motor of a ‘53 MG would for a different demographic.
We have been blessed by truly beautiful fall weather here in Minneapolis. Today Genbo and I were wearing short-sleeved shirts for a while.
Fall has always been my favorite season; well, ever since I went back east to school when I was 14. It’s not necessarily the colors of the leaves, although as you will see below I love those too. No, it’s a clarity to the sky, which is a paler blue, the light, which is crisper, and the air, which is cooler. Or maybe it’s the light that is cooler and the air that is crisper.
All photos taken with my favorite lens, the Zeiss 100/2. It works fine with my new camera, the D90, except for the fact that it isn’t chipped, so I can’t use the camera’s light meter. That’s not too hard to work around, but it also means that no EXIF information is recorded into the files, so I have no idea what aperture any of these were shot at. This is kind of a photographic bummer, but not such a big deal since I am philosophically opposed to opening up the thing wider than f/4 anyway.
(Click to enlarge at least two or Sarah Palin will become….No, never mind, I cannot even write it in jest.)
(Click to enlarge or hooligans will TP your house on Halloween.)
Really the only thing I like about summer more than any other season is the clouds. Summer brings magnificent clouds just about anywhere. Since I was already taking photos from my balcony for the previous post, I had my camera handy to take these at sunset today.
Taken at the same time this shot. Each one a testament to the awesomeness of an f2 macro lens, for the thin depth of field and delicious bokeh.
