Solid Steel “What am I?” Quiz
NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.
What am I? -- Zak's Place -- Otsu, Shiga, Japan -- Copyright 2009 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 340 mm — 1/500 sec, f/8, ISO 320 — map & image datanearby photos
What am I?

Well, this is perhaps a pretty lame “What am I?” quiz, but I'll offer the hint (or stumbling block, as the case may be) that I tilted the camera while taking this shot. (For what it's worth, I also artificially enhanced the blue background in Lightroom, to match the strength of the foreground colors.)

Owing to this being so lame a quiz, I'll post the answer in just half a day...


All 11 comments so far, oldest first...

It looks like one of those jungle-gym “dome” things that look sort of like geodesic domes.

— comment by Derek on March 23rd, 2009 at 12:10am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

Playground equipment at a park.

— comment by Sean Phillips on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:24am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

Is it the very, or near, the top of that rope-climbing tower?

— comment by Grandma Friedl on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:13am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

Since you’re in Japan, the white and orange colors remind me of all of their antenna towers like the Tokyo Tower. I’ll go with an antenna mast.

— comment by Mike Chien on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:43am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

I’m with Derek. I’d say some kind of playground equipment and definitely looks either like a geodesic dome or maybe some kind of tricked out Nihon no swing set.

Also, its refreshing to see the honesty (about the Photoshop touch up) . I’m not sure if you’ve ever done a post about your thoughts on embellishment or post-production (save for the HDR posts) but it would interesting to hear your thoughts on when/when not to enhance.

You find yourself not really noticing the ‘bolt on’ blue because it actually does balance out the red and white.

In my situation on my personal blog, unless I represent something as “out of camera”, I have no qualms about post processing. Almost every shot I take has to be rotated by half a degree in post, for example, because no matter how hard I try I just can not seem to hold the camera level. I also leave the camera white balance at “automatic” and deal with that in post. The next most-common thing I do is probably a slight bumping up of the black-level to enhance the contrast, but some shots receive a lot of post-processing TLC. In any case, generally, my goal is that you don’t notice whatever I do, so that the focus remains on the content and not on the processing. That’s not the case with some kinds of “artistic” post-processing (e.g. the funky joy post, also seen in various levels of subtlety in my recent cherry-blossom preview), but otherwise, I hope that my post-processing is not noticed. —Jeffrey

— comment by Ron Evans on March 23rd, 2009 at 4:28am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

It is a tower, probally a transmssion tower for radio, communications, etc

— comment by T.J. Powell on March 23rd, 2009 at 5:12am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

Looks like a small, playground, merry go round, the center thing. (from NC USA)

— comment by Kevin Purcell on March 23rd, 2009 at 6:21am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

Radio antenna/tower?

— comment by JasonP on March 23rd, 2009 at 6:26am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

Tokyo Tower!

— comment by Brian on March 23rd, 2009 at 8:34am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

The answer is revealed on this post. I’m surprised that no one got this one… perhaps my somewhat disingenuous “hint” was as confusing as I intended 🙂

— comment by Jeffrey Friedl on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:25am JST (15 years ago) comment permalink

You say you cannot hold the camera level? Isn’t there some tiny level you could get (Like the little tie-clip or cufflink novelty type) or would it also have to be visible from within the viewfinder? It doesn’t seem to be that difficult an idea to implement, since I believe surveyors have one within their viewing scopes, don’t they? You can’t possibly be the only one trying to keep your handheld camera level.

There’s one built in. I’m just that lopsided. —Jeffy

— comment by Grandma Friedl on March 23rd, 2009 at 9:40pm JST (15 years ago) comment permalink
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