Archive for March, 2007In my previous post, Volleyball Is a Difficult Sport to Photograph, I briefly mentioned a few of the troubles I encountered in trying to photograph a volleyball tournament the other day. I'll expand on that a bit in this post. To the tune of “I Believe I Can Fly”.... Here are a few of the considerations that the photographer must balance.... Stand close or far? When standing courtside, the action moves very dynamically, swinging from the far left to the far right, from very close to very far, making it difficult to follow and focus. Standing far away and using a [...] 
View full post » Anthony takes a preschool “Jumping Gymnastics” class once a week, which is really little more than somewhat structured running around and burning off some energy. The kids have fun, and learn some great lessons (it's good to stretch, good to try your best, good to take turns, etc.). Classes start with a bow and a short discussion as each kid introduces himself and answers the question of the day (such as “what's your favorite food?”), and then some running, stretching, and something special for the day (balance beam, jumprope, etc.). Today's special thing is the Japanese equivalent of the vaulting horse.... Awaiting Their Turn With tongue [...] 
View full post » Both Fumie and Anthony have been down with the flu lately, so not much posting on my part, but seeing today the announcement of Sigma's 200-500mm F2.8 zoom, I had to at least mention it so that everyone would know to add it to your “things to buy for Jeffrey someday” list. 
photo from Digital Photography Review Too bad it doesn't have Optical Image Stabilization. Not having it reduces the lens' appeal for handheld use. (That's a joke — the lens will likely weigh 20 pounds.) The press release doesn't mention a price. My guess is $6,000. UPDATE: six nine months later, the [...] 
View full post » Oh S**t!Stop.... stop, please stop! Hahaha, it's not really such a dire moment in the photo above.... Today is the Kyoto City Half Marathon, which starts and ends near my place, so I walked out to take a look at the start. The picture above shows the front of the pack 30 seconds after the start of the race, passing under the main gate of the Heian Shrine. (The part of the shrine that can be seen in the far background — the roof of the entry building — is very familiar to me, having spent hours looking at it while doing some Photoshop work on a friend's [...] 
View full post » A few minutes after putting up the previous post (Kyoto City Half Marathon) and writing how it was turning out to be a beautiful day, I was surprised to see that it was gloomy outside, with big fluffy hunks of snow drifting down. Kyoto generally doesn't get much snow, despite the most-snow-in-60-years winter last year (which I wrote about a'plenty at the time: one, two, three, four, five). We've had almost no snow this year, except a light dusting while we were away on our New Year's trip, and another later in January. It's been so mild this year that [...] View full post »
Preface
As I discussed in a previous post, Adobe's new photo-workflow application, Lightroom, has the sometimes-unpolished feature set one might expect in a “1.0” product. The main core functionality is great, more than I think one could expect from a “1.0” product, but it lacks a lot of user-customization abilities that you know will be added eventually, once the “to do” list of must-have features gets down to terrestrial levels. Nevertheless, as one might expect from a mature software house like Adobe, they designed Lightroom's internal framework with the future in mind, and as such, it holds hidden configuration hooks and parameters not (yet) refined, and not (yet) exposed [...] 
View full post » The other day I posted a few pics I took at the start of the Kyoto City Half Marathon, but that wasn't my first marathon photo session this month. A week prior, Anthony's preschool had its “Marathon Games” event, where the kids ran around a lot and I took 841 pictures. (No, don't worry, I won't post them all here ) Kids arriving at the riverside park Jogging over to the starting area Waiting patiently (and, surprisingly, quietly) That a group of four-year-olds are sitting quietly is amazing enough, but in Anthony's case, all the more so because he's sitting beside [...] 
View full post » Getting ready for work Making a delivery Looking through some snapshots from last October, I ran across these of Anthony pretending to be a package delivery man. The belt thing is his pretend hand-held computer for swiping barcodes on packages, and his nametag (made by Fumie) has a picture of a truck and “あんと” (anto — his name in Japanese). He does this kind of play a lot, sometimes moving the furniture around in the livingroom to create a delivery truck. 
View full post » Last November, I posted about the then-new 70-200 zoom I'd just received, and about how it had focus problems. I actually got two lenses that day; here are some test shots I took with my at-the-time new Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8, after having headed back to the playground with Anthony. Parking His Ride New Friends It's fun being a kid Hello! Hello! Awww, Cute Kitty.... Skip the cat, check out the ice cream! This lens, officially the 17-55mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor, has by far become my most-used day-to-day lens, while my 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 collects dust. When helping Anthony get dressed in the [...] 
View full post » The other day, we went for an impromptu drive up into the northern mountains, although phrasing it that way perhaps makes it sound sounds like more of an adventure than it is. Kyoto is in a valley surrounded on three sides by mountains. You can be in a populated area of the city that gets virtually no snow for years, but a fifteen-minute drive puts you into what seems to be the middle of nowhere, where snows are measured by the meter. Of course, there's not much snow left anymore, particularly after such a mild winter, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that there [...] 
View full post » The Japan Times (the major English daily in Japan) has an amusing article this week.... The full article at the Japan-Times website goes on to explain in detail. The article is by Alice Gordenker, whose writings I always enjoy, especially her “What the heck is that?” column. She can dive quite deeply into the most obscure little things, and you come away from one of her articles really feeling you have the complete poop on whatever subject is at hand. In this case, she talks about a good luck charm, 金のうんこ, which can be translated in any number of amusing ways, although I'll stick with “golden [...] 
View full post » I just realized that with Vista™, there are now enough major releases of Microsoft® Windows® for the desktop (as opposed to PDAs and servers) to put out a “Top 10” list, so without further ado.... The Top 10 Worst Major Releases of Microsoft® Windows® for the Desktop: 10.Microsoft® Windows® 1.0 10.Microsoft® Windows® 2.0 9.Microsoft® Windows® 3.0 8.Microsoft® Windows NT® 7.Microsoft® Windows® 95 5.Microsoft® Windows® 98 4.Microsoft® Windows® 2000 3.Microsoft® Windows® ME 2.Microsoft® Windows® XP 1.Microsoft® Windows Vista™ As one would expect in a “top worst” list for Windows®, it includes all the major desktop releases. The list is in chronological order, [...] View full post » I mentioned two weeks ago that I'd post some cherry-blossom pictures from last year, as we await this year's season, and so today I begin. To help get me in the mood, I'll start with a picture from my balcony of the trees across the river, and then two from ground level. These were taken on April 7th last year. I'm not very confident of their color balance — they seem to have a redish tint to me — but the sun was heading down, so perhaps it's deserved. Looking Down Looking Across Looking Up I like these because they show the fluffy, cloud-like nature [...] 
View full post » Bridge to Nowhere On the drive into the mountains the other day, we were on a twisty mountain road and came across the surreal sight of a bridge leading directly into the rocky face of a mountain. Yup, absolutely Nowhere Taking this bridge would mean a really short trip. This Would be a Short Trip Of course, it's a work in progress. A tunnel will certainly follow, thereby cutting off a long and dangerous segment of the current road.... View From the Current Road I expected the road to become dangerous, but what followed the Bridge to Nowhere was actually fairly pleasant, and not narrow [...] 
View full post » (IMAGE: Sleepyhead) Going through some old pictures, I came across this one from a year ago January, when Anthony was three years three months old. When he wakes up and first ventures out of his room, he brings the “friends” he slept with. He brings them to the couch in the livingroom, and in this case, I caught him enroute. This time he's got Papa George (in blue striped jammies), Shimajiro (yellow tiger), Stubby (big bear behind Shimajiro), George (sticking out from under Stubby), and his bear-face pillow. There's also likely another George in there somewhere. (Sorry for the low quality of the image; this was [...] 
View full post » Continuing with my cherry-blossom pics from last year, here are more from my trip to Daigo Temple last April. Last year's cherry-blossom season was pretty bad in the sense that the trees didn't all bloom in unison, but each at their own straggly pace. In the picture below, you can see that many of the trees on the right side have yet to bloom. Outside the Daigo Temple The area around Daigo Temple was very crowded, yet oddly nice nevertheless. This is in contrast to the ugliness some areas become during cherry-blossom season (the subject of one of my very first blog posts). At Daigo, the crowds [...] 
View full post » Cleaning up around the house today, I came across the menu for a pizza chain. I thought I'd share some of the entries, which are quite typical of pizza in Japan. (click for a large — 4,224 × 2,900 — version) They have three “series” of pizza: the Italiana Series boasts “cheese stacked to the top of your ears,” the Quarter Series has pizzas with four different combination of toppings (one combo per quarter pizza), and the Long Seller Series are the traditional standbys. In this post, I'll feature one from each series... Quarter Italiana The first pizza in the Italiana Series has four combos like [...] 
View full post » At a small dinner gathering today with some friends from Anthony's preschool, I was shocked to see little May, the younger sister of one of Anthony's classmates, deftly use chopsticks as if she'd been doing so all her life. Two-year-old using chopsticks I was pleased as could be when Anthony could use chopsticks when he was three, but this little girl just turned two earlier this month. She just grabbed her daddy's chopsticks (adult-sized, no less) and went to town on a wiener without the slightest hint of difficulty. I grabbed my camera, asked her to show me, and I got the picture above. The kids [...] 
View full post » The dinner party I went to yesterday was right in the middle of Gion, Kyoto's traditional area for maiko and geisha. We ate at a simple okonomiyaki restaurant on the Shirakawa river (the river that runs next to my place, but a kilometer downstream), just off a street whose name translates, literally, to “Cherry-Blossom-Viewing Lane”. The immediate area has a lot of traditional architecture, cobblestone streets, and the river overhung with cherry trees just starting to blossom, so you can imagine the photographic potential. So can everyone else, which is why I was surprised that it wasn't super crowded. I'm sure that'll change next week as the blossoms [...] 
View full post » The little path by the river next to my place is not heavily traveled, although foot traffic explodes in this whole area during cherry-blossom season, and so these days a fair number of people walk by. In particular, it doesn't hurt that some the cherry trees lining the river are already half in bloom — the ones lining the canal will be much nicer, but they haven't yet come in. (Here's an old photo of the canal lined with cherry trees, where the canal runs in front of our place.) Because I'm always behind the camera, I don't see how silly I look always running around [...] 
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