Simple Beauty in the Japanese Countryside
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Prepared for Spring -- Hieizan Driveway -- Shiga, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/8, ISO 500 — map & image datanearby photos
Prepared for Spring

When I stopped to photograph the large blossoms seen in last month's “Signs of Spring Start to Bud in Kyoto”, on the same outing that yielded “Stark Tree” and “Still a Bit Of Snow In Kyoto”, I also snapped pictures of the fields visible off the side of the road. I think they're pretty and so intended to post them with the other photos from the outing, but realized today that I had prepared them but not posted them, so here they are.

The Japanese landscape can be brutally ugly with utility poles and wires everywhere, but at the same time is full of beauty on both the macro and micro scales.

Hieizan Driveway -- Shiga, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/8, ISO 450 — map & image datanearby photos

Chances are slim that I would have ever visited any of the many towns wiped off the face of the earth by the tsunami the other day, but in looking at these pictures today a thought came to me lamenting that now I'll never have the chance to visit them and photograph their particular beauty, and I felt thoroughly selfish for it.


All 3 comments so far, oldest first...

Beautiful photography. It is sad about Sendai-shi where I spent 2.5 years of my life. It is all gone now. The people I knew are my age and most likely didn’t make it.

Lots of older folks made it though just find, with harrowing tales of escape and survival. They may be slower of body, but perhaps smarter. One guy in his 70s was caught on a cellphone video shimmying up a utility pole to stay just above the water… it must have been an area where the utility poles didn’t get cleared away with everything else, ’cause he was interviewed on the news about his escape. —Jeffrey

— comment by Abraham Lincoln on March 15th, 2011 at 5:03am JST (13 years ago) comment permalink

Dear Jeffrey, I think we are all reeling from this disaster and your thoughts are much appreciated. Not selfish, but honest I think. Annie, London.

— comment by Annie Robinson. London on March 15th, 2011 at 7:08am JST (13 years ago) comment permalink

I think you would like Mario Giacomelli photos, especially that about italian country he takes time ago:
http://www.mariogiacomelli.it/53_paesaggi.html

bst regards,

max

🙂

— comment by max on April 6th, 2011 at 6:19am JST (13 years ago) comment permalink
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