Optical Illusion Above Nagoya Station
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desktop background image of a train stopped at Nagoya Station (Nagoya, Japan), viewed from 20+ floors above  --  Bird's-Eye View, Nagoya Station 名古屋駅、二年前  --  Nagoya Station Mariott Hotel  --  Nagoya, Aichi, Japan  --  Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/  --  This photo is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ (non-commercial use is freely allowed if proper attribution is given, including a link back to this page on http://regex.info/ when used online)
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image datanearby photos
Bird's-Eye View, Nagoya Station
名古屋駅、二年前
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As I wait for my laptop to come back from the shop, I realized that this gives me an opportunity to actually revisit the 93,462 photos in the Lightroom catalog on my desktop computer, which I haven't looked at since moving my photo-processing workflow my laptop a year and a half ago.

Then, as now, I was always behind on what I wanted to post, so there must be thousands of things waiting to be shared that will never see the light of day. Lacking the energy for a real search, I decided to go with the first thing that caught my eye as I started to click around, some photos I snapped through the window of our hotel above Nagoya Station while in town for my brother-in-law's wedding two years ago. (Nagoya is 45 minutes east of Kyoto by bullet train.)

Photographically they're nothing special, but I like the patterns in the shot above.

Typical Japanese Urban Expanse  --  Nagoya Station Mariott Hotel  --  Nagoya, Aichi, Japan  --  Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/  --  This photo is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ (non-commercial use is freely allowed if proper attribution is given, including a link back to this page on http://regex.info/ when used online)
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image datanearby photos
Typical Japanese Urban Expanse
Flat So very different from Kyoto (as evidenced recently here , here , and here )  --  Nagoya Station Mariott Hotel  --  Nagoya, Aichi, Japan  --  Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/  --  This photo is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ (non-commercial use is freely allowed if proper attribution is given, including a link back to this page on http://regex.info/ when used online)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/13, ISO 200 — map & image datanearby photos
Flat
So very different from Kyoto (as evidenced recently here, here, and here)
Looking Down  --  Nagoya Station Mariott Hotel  --  Nagoya, Aichi, Japan  --  Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/  --  This photo is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ (non-commercial use is freely allowed if proper attribution is given, including a link back to this page on http://regex.info/ when used online)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/13, ISO 400 — map & image datanearby photos
Looking Down

Sorry about the odd presentation in that last shot... I had to compensate for some pretty drastic tilt.

I include this picture because it shows the wider context for the next shot. In the wide context, you can see the train station from above (as in the first shot) and the expanse of city beyond that, but also at the bottom you can see an orange square.... a little shrine.

Optical Illusion  --  Nagoya Station Mariott Hotel  --  Nagoya, Aichi, Japan  --  Copyright 2010 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/  --  This photo is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ (non-commercial use is freely allowed if proper attribution is given, including a link back to this page on http://regex.info/ when used online)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/13, ISO 500 — map & image datanearby photos
Optical Illusion

At first glance it looks like the little shrine is right next to a set of uncovered railroad tracks, next to a bunch of covered tracks like in the first shot. However, while the covered train tracks are at ground level, the shrine is on the roof over the 18th floor(!). The track next to the shrine is, I'm guessing, for the window-washing crane that services the lower floors.

I'm also guessing that the shrine is a private one for hotel staff or the like... it's in way too ugly a setting to be open to the public, but I'm just guessing.


All 3 comments so far, oldest first...

Commenting from Rockport Tx. 28.047397,-97.035553
I like the 1st shot the best.
I also have a large catalog of images.
The last few weeks have been slow so i have been revisiting my work.
Its split into 3 different categories paid work, personal, and family.
Take 2007 my personal work filled 14 dvds of raw files from a canon 20d.
I have edited that down to 1570 files. I aso have found some hidden gems.
I looked a focus, subject matter and framing.

— comment by Ed Pouso on September 20th, 2012 at 12:19pm JST (11 years, 6 months ago) comment permalink

Interesting views. In the first one I see some sort of cables next to the train. Do you know what these are for? Tom

I do not; I wondered the same thing myself. —Jeffrey

— comment by Tom in SF on September 21st, 2012 at 12:19am JST (11 years, 6 months ago) comment permalink

Burlington, Ontario Canada, 23:20 Eastern North America Daylight Saving time 2012 09 22

Am going to take a guess:

The ends of the cables appear to be set apart equal distances. The railway in question uses electricity to
power the trains using pantographs to collect the current from the over head wire.
However If (and this is supposition on my part) a train was to be stabled/parked on one or both tracks, the pantograph would be lowered. That is, electrical power for the electric traction motors would not be required. However Japan (as has Canada) has warm summer days, and cold nights. If a train is stabled for more than 4-5 hours without either heat or cold (depending upon the climate) when the train is required for service, it is best o have some form of electrical current either cooling or heating the interior of the equipment. Those cables if you notice have been loopped back on themselves. So they are longer in length than they appear. The cables would probably feed a low votage currrent to the equipment (each car perhaps) to either maintain coolness or warmth as the case may be. Just a theory as the transit operator here do the same thing; hook up to an outside source which keep the railway passenger cars either cool in the summer or warm in the winter.

— comment by Bryce Lee on September 23rd, 2012 at 12:28pm JST (11 years, 6 months ago) comment permalink
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