Here are some more photos that I took from our trip to Nanzenji with my mom, Maki, Genbo and Zoe. These two are HDR, or high dynamic range, photos. That means I mix three exposures for each image; one taken “dark”, one “normal”, and one “light”. This is useful in scenes that combine very dark parts and lighter parts, because the camera does not have as much range as your eye in finding detail in light and dark at the same time.
Take this shot with the leaves, for instance: the sun was shining directly on the leaves, making them very bright. Meanwhile, the wall and tiles were in shadow. If I had exposed for the very bright leaves, then everything else would have been dark. And, exposing for the tiles on top of the wall would have totally blown out the highlights in the leaves. So, I combined three exposures in Photomatix, which a pretty good result, I think.
Similarly, I love how you can see down into this stump. Your eye can do it, because it benefits from millions of years of evolution, but CCD sensors simply aren’t that good. If I had kept the shutter open long enough to resolve the shadowed area at the very bottom, everything else would have been very overexposed. So, I used three shots. If only we could do this in more areas of life.
So I upgraded to a D7000 yesterday, giving my mom the old trusty D90 in trade. (Thanks mom!)
I want to play with it, but I have been swamped with work. So, today I found a fallen leaf on my way to Starbucks to do some translation, and snapped this photo in between paragraphs. I like the new camera a lot.
Practically half the country of Japan and some good percentage of the rest of the world descends on Kyoto in the spring for cherry blossoms and the fall for the autumn foliage. Today we went to the very famous Nanzenji temple to take in the fall colors. I would normally strenuously avoid such a big tourist spot at the height of the tourist season, but today we have my mom visiting, so I made an exception and decided not to be a grumpy old man.
I love this shot because it illustrates how clueless little kids can be about their surroundings. As long as she has her little styrofoam plane in hand and her brother to play with, context means practically nothing to Zoe.
On the road to the temple…
Genbo is into jumping rope (or dayglo plastic) now, and he’s actually getting pretty good at it. Of course they had to do it here. Zoe first. (And no, given the tourist crowds of the day, they weren’t spoiling any of the temple’s ambiance.)
I’ve been extremely busy these past couple months with a huge job. Finally pulled it off, though, and I’m back to blogging full-throttle. Well, as full-throttle as this blog ever gets, which resembles a rusty 1977 Volkswagen Beetle chugging down the Autobahn of the Internet.
This is a photo from the second time I ever went to Japan, after graduating high school. My friends Brandon (middle), Len (bottom) and I hitch-hiked throughout Japan, spending about half our time (if I recall correctly) in the northern Island in Hokkaido. Here we are holding up a hitch-hiking sign that says “Kashiwazaki (or in that direction)”
Can’t believe my hair was ever that big
Yesterday was the undokai at Genbo and Zoe’s daycare, which is kind of a field-day on steroids that the kids practice a long time for. (Previous posts here and here.)
Genbo is in the oldest class in his daycare, so this year they spent a long time learning the fine art of marching with drums. It truly was pretty impressive. Video of that later, but for now, some photos.
Maki’s parents made a point of coming down for the event, traveling early to get to our house by the early morning. Our friend Ikuko, the daughter of my potter friend Kamada-san, also came the day before and stayed at our house to come watch it.
So the other day Maki took Genbo and Zoe to a party for a co-worker, but I stayed home to work on a huge translation. In other words, I left 10 minutes after they did, camera and tripod in hand, to take some long exposures in the nearby park.
These next two remind me of these, which I like very much.
I have several new toys that are combined in this post. First, a new Voigtlander macro lens that I haven’t had much of a chance to experiment with. Second, a new piece of pottery from my friend Kamada-san (a bread and cheese platter). And, third, a piece of HDR software, Photomatix. It really isn’t suited much to this kind of shot, which doesn’t have such a high dynamic range anyway, but it does create a cool effect, I thought.
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125/2.5,
HDR,
Macro
Yesterday my friend Jeffrey came over with his son Anthony, and we went bowling. I will post some shots of that later on, but first some pictures Jeffrey took of Zoe on my shoulders. I have few enough pictures of me with the kids (always behind the camera) that I treasure the ones I do have.
This first one isn’t the most flattering shot, since we’re both squinting from looking into the sun, but there’s something about it I like a lot.
Zoe loves riding on my shoulders, and since I remember pestering adults to let me ride on theirs all the time, I like to indulge her. OK, to be frank, I like to indulge her anyway. Our favorite part is the dismount:
Well, it’s been an almost entirely post-less summer. First we went to the States, then when we came back I got caught up with…life. Still, I have lots of good stuff to post, this picture first of all.
My extended family on my mom’s side has a family reunion every three years, when more than 100 people going back to my great-great grandfather gather somewhere to eat, drink, play tennis and golf, and see who has died and been born. This past trip to the States was the first time I have been able to attend with my nuclear family, which I was happy about.
This photo shows Norman Gen next to a photo of Norman, my grandfather for whom he is named. I didn’t even notice this when taking the photo, but you can also see Jacob, Norman’s grandfather, posing to the right in a group photo (sitting down). So, here we have generations 1, 3, and 6, all in a row, and maybe I’m pushing things but I think I see a resemblance, at least between 3 and 6.
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17-50 VC,
Family
The last post was extremely Japanese in nature, so this one will provide a good contrast. Tonight for dinner we went down to the Sausalito Yacht Club for dinner. The place sounds decidedly fancier than it is; dinner was a BBQ out on the deck overlooking San Francisco Bay. It was perfect, though, for precisely that reason.
Genbo looking at the ocean
Me hanging dangerously over railing to get shot of Genbo looking at ocean from ocean's perspective
If this is the Yacht Club, are those the yachts?
Wolfing down obligatory hamburgers and hotdogs
Not at all different from the Japan....really
Looking out towards Alcatraz and San Francisco as the ferry comes in
Interesting boat catching nice light
Priceless expression
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.
I am the proud new owner of a Voigtlander 125 2.5 APO-Lanthar, which is kissing-cousins to my old Zeiss 100/2 Planar Makro, except better. Better because it’s 125 mm instead of 100 (more reach), has native 1:1 macro capability, and is apochromatic and therefore corrects for chromatic and spherical aberations. OK, I’ve just lost 99% of my already-meager readership.
Anyway, I’ve been pleasantly busy with work lately, which means I haven’t been posting, but I just wanted to put up some quick shots with the new lens. These were taken over breakfast this morning. Tomorrow we’re headed for the States for three weeks, so I should be posting from there.
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125/2.5,
Family
On our trip to Kobe last Golden Week we went to a little amusement park on top of a mountain, which will be further explored in an upcoming post. Here I just want to share these shots of Genbo because they’re so precious. Because it was Golden Week and the place was packed, there were live shows all day. The two we took in were a clown show and a Shinkenja (Power-Rangers clone) show. These were of course completely boring for me, but I loved watching Genbo’s face go through all sorts of transformations, from gleeful to intent to semi-scared, and then back to gleeful again.
If only Genbo concentrated so hard when I try to explain something important…
full exif & map
Pure, unadultureated joyFunny, he doesn’t look like that when I play shakuhachi
full exif & map
Next came the Shinkenja, which Genbo picked up a thorough knowledge of despite the fact that we never watch these shows at our house. Here they are using the same sword as the one that he received for his fifth birthday, pictured at the end of this post. (Zoe got scared during this show and had to be taken away by mommy, although that didn’t stop her from stating her preference for the pink one.)
Finally, I had to insert one cute shot of Zoe. This one is out in front of the Suma Aquarium.
