On the second day of our short trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan, just shy of Taiwan, after our stopover at a lovely scenic lookout for breathtaking views and ice cream, we continued north in search of a beach. It wasn't an arduous search, because it seems that most of island's entire coastline is beach.

We were heading for a specific beach we saw on the map, when – for just a moment during a bend in the road – we caught a glimpse of a gorgeous stretch of beach. It took a bit of searching, [...]

The second day of our trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan was the one I was really looking forward to, because we planned to just drive around and check out the views.

Ishigaki is an oddly-shaped island that's about 21 miles long at its longest diagonal....

And it has generally wide, modern roads, so getting around is quick if you ignore the ridiculous 25mph speed limit. Our hotel was in the south-west, so for today's trip we planned on cutting a diagonal through the main part, then up the panhandle that is sometimes only a few [...]

The whole "plant growing in the middle of nothingness" thing has been well and truly done, including by me, but the picture above, of a plant growing on barren rocks, takes on a bit more drama when you take into account its location...

If the embedded Google Map is working properly, it's showing a location in the ocean a hundred yards from shore.

This was from the second day of our trip to Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan.

The picture above was one of the last I took before my polarization filter inexplicably* fell off my camera [...]

Since getting my Nikon D700 and exploring its low-light abilities (see "Impossible Photography: No Light, No Tripod, No Hope") I've been more and more bold in where I give it a try. I shocked myself with the results during my trip to Okinawa in January (The Atta Terrace Hotel at Night), and I pushed the limits even further during this month's trip to Ishigaki Island.

I took the picture above standing on a pier, with the moon just out of the top of the frame. As I described in yesterday's post, the vignetting comes naturally from using the Sigma 30mm [...]

After the nice sunset of the first evening on our trip to Ishigaki Island in the most southern reaches of Japan, in the East China Sea, we returned to the hotel for dinner, giving the Japanese-style restaurant a try. Ishigaki Island is known for its beef, so we wanted to try that.

The steak was okay, but after the steak we had on our day trip to Awaji Island a month ago, everything else will forever fall short. I wanted to write about it at the time, but what can I say? Words are impossible. In your wildest dreamland fantasies [...]