Celestial Comma

When we hiked up to Jakhoo, the temple to Hanuman way up the hill in Shimla, we participated in the puja, which is a hindu prayer ceremony. James’ tika came out beautifully comma shaped, and I snapped this on the way down.

Blue Hour

I’m nothing if not excited by rich colors, and of course the blue hour (not even a full hour, really) just after sunset delivers. This church is just atop the hill in Shimla, which seems out of place until you realize that Shimla is a British hill station in the Himalayas, and was the British summer capital of India. Who wants to stay in Delhi May through September?

Sunset Over the Himalayas

While we were in Shimla, and James was falling for beautiful Himalayan princesses, I was busy losing my senses over the spectacular colors of the sunset. I’d like to share a few of these with you — 3 to be exact. I took so many pictures I couldn’t pick one that really outshone the others. So let me know which one you like.

Shimonoseki

This is one of my best night shots from the Kyushu trip a month ago. The Shimonoseki bridge connects the main island of Japan to the southern island of Kyushu. For cars at least — I think the train we were on went through a tunnel.

This shot, however, demonstrates again one of my favorite ghetto night-shooting techniques — balance the camera on something flat, crank the shutter speed up, set a timer, gingerly push the shutter button and back off. It turned out rather well except for some chromatic aberration I had to fix. The lens wasn’t even wide open…

More Hanabi

This is another photo from the same night of partying and fireworks. However, it differs in one key aspect — I handheld this one. Luckily, the light of the sparkler was enough to freeze the sparks in mid air (and I had the aperture open wide enough to make a nice bokeh’d mess of Sakiko’s sparkler in the background). 

The Joys of Long Exposure Photography

As cheap as the trick is, I love the effect that comes from long exposures. Especially when you’re photographing something as dynamic as fireworks. This is just a simple 15 second exposure of my girlfriend (again sorry — I might actually post some pictures of other people at some point or another) playing with a sparkler. I really like it though.

Ukai

Ukai fishing is one of those things that makes Japan so special and unique, and it’s also one of those things that is incredibly frustrating to photograph well. The fishermen aboard the little craft are using fire and drumbeats to attract sweetfish to the side of the boat, where a small flock of cormorants on leashes wait to gobble them up (partially) and spit them back out on board. Obviously, the fire only works well at night; the little boat is zooming up and down the river, and, birds being birds, the cormorants don’t exactly sit still. Somehow though, I managed to capture this relatively decent shot. I don’t even think I was using my tripod. Anyway, watching Ukai pretty much wrapped up our day in Eigamura (which I might post some photos of) and Arashiyama last weekend.

Megane-bashi

This photo of the famous “Spectacles bridge” (that’s what megane-bashi means) in Nagasaki represents everything I’m trying to “do” with my photography — that is, capture decent night scenes where the light is rich and colorful. I lack a decent tripod and a cable release, but I try to make do.

Midnight Ikebana

 

Two girls shooting illuminated flower sculptures at a lantern festival in Kyoto.

This picture comes from another era — the Pre-Canon era. That just means it was shot with my little TZ5 using my favorite night shooting technique: balancing it on something, setting the timer, and praying. This was taking during “hanatouro”, a festival that’s so insignificant in the grander scheme of Kyoto festivals it was difficult for me to find it on an event calendar to check it’s spelling. It was quite a treat though — a bunch of lanterns were set out on the streets of Kyoto’s charming old neighborhoods for people to enjoy strolling around at night.

These kinds of festivals are actually quite common in Japan. Just last Sunday, I went to Kyoto again to see the Daimonji, where they set a bunch of bonfires in the shape of the chinese character for “big” alight on one of the mountains surrounding Kyoto. Just like any Japanese event, there were thousands of people in attendance (and sadly, as I DIDN’T bring my little TZ5, I wasn’t able to take a decent picture for lack of zoom).