Renaissance Man

If this doesn’t make women want to do James, nothing will.

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.

“Try Limca!”

This was all his idea — all I received was a waved invitation to shoot.

Cool Hand

I guess it’s possible I didn’t take this picture. Sometimes, I pass my camera around, and my girlfriend or other people snap a few shots. I think this particular night (also the Yakuza fight night) was one of those where my girlfriend was shooting a lot. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the photo, and check out her blog, Kurumi Photo.

Spirituality for Sale

Ever since my father taught me the meaning of the words, I’ve always loved the juxtaposition of the incongruous. This fulfills that need on so many levels.

Painter

This is a painter in the botanical garden in Kyoto. When I asked if I could take his picture, he responded only with a curt nod. I especially like the quality of the bokeh behind him, though.

Luke and Hiroko

This was another portrait I took (the day after Abandon) of Luke and Hiroko, as we walked to Himeiji Castle from the station. I might not even have been looking through the viewfinder — sometimes I just like to shoot from the hip.

Abandon

I know as a photographer I must be able to take photographs of whatever or whoever I think is interesting (and there are some good pictures from a couple of weekends ago of painters in the Botanical Garden that I haven’t posted yet) but it’s still ridiculously easy to take pictures of friends, and therefore much easier to get an actual good one. So here is my friend Luke and his girlfriend Hiroko. Please enjoy.

Lensbaby Freakout

Wrapping up my unofficial “lensbaby week” (of course there will be lots of Lensbaby shots in the future — don’t fret) is this bizarre shot. Needless to say, a normal camera perspective was NOT used to capture this. That’s one of the main reasons I like it.

Lensbaby Portrait

or Deciding on a Parfait

So, I bought a lensbaby. The composer, to be specific. For those not in the know, it’s a “selective focus” SLR lens, that uses a tilting element to move an area of perfect focus (they call it the “sweet spot”) around in a frame. This is a little different from bokeh, where things in different distances from the camera get blurry and out of focus; no, everything outside the sweet spot is blurred and even distorted. It’s a really interesting (and difficult) lens to use, but I present to you one of my early efforts to get something cool out of it. I’ll post a few more this week to give you more of an idea. It’s really fun, but it’s easy to miss the area you want in focus. Of course, I think I just need to practice a little more.

A little more info on the photo — this is still shot with my lovely Canon Kiss X3, just with the mildly goofy looking lensbaby Composer lens on it. We’re in Karafuneya cafe, looking over the ridiculous parfait menu (a list with almost 200 choices), a process that often takes Sakiko a considerable amount of time. Hence, I started playing with my new toy.