Today was the Setsubun festival at the Heian Shrine, so I walked over to snap some pictures. I'll post and write more another day, but today just a few photos. (For an introduction to the event, see my “Setsubun and Mamemaki: Driving out the Demons” post from four years ago.)

The picture above is from the bonfire event, described in my “Intense Burn: Shinto Rite at the Heian Shrine” post. A line of priests was chanting as others threw bundles of sticks with wishes written on them (the wishes then going up with the smoke to the heavens, or something like that).

I'm surprised in the photo above how much the background is still out of focus at f/11. The flames were quite angry....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 300mm f/2 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

I processed these photos with Lightroom 4 and its new render engine, and I notice that the flames retain much more of their true orange color. This is wonderful, as it always bothered me how bright, intense colors got washed out toward white, leaving the flames in the intense-burn post more yellow than orange. I'll have to try processing them in Lr3 as well, to confirm the better result is not all due to a different camera or better exposure.

Other aspects of the festival included a bunch of nasty daemons who ended up getting driven out of the place by bean-throwing dignitaries...

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Daemon
representing the ills of the previous year

... and then bringing in good fortune by more bean throwing, but this time as packets one could catch and bring home (as described in my “Setsubun Mamemaki: Throwing of the Beans” post).

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Spreading Good Fortune
one pack of beans at a time

The hyper-made-up world of the geiko (Kyoto's geisha) is not really my thing, but I loved the smile on the one in the photo above.... she looked like she was having a total blast, and that made it all the more fun.

I found myself wanting a pack of beans to bring home for Anthony (and maybe bring home some good fortune for myself), but gave up on the idea because I didn't want to wade too deeply into the crowd with my big lens. But I was surprised not once, but three times as folks going by gave me a pack. How wonderful. We had them this evening after dinner.

To be continued...

I'll start out with the original photo from which the previous post's “Tall Tale” lead photo was derived...

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The Original
( sort of )

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In that “Tall Tale” photo I had fun stitching together two unrelated shots, but in the end, even after all that work, I think I like the original better... the bow somehow seems even larger and more impressive. I did go ahead and remove a rope from the background, though, as I did for the “Tall Tale” the other day.

More images of the ladies...

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#2132
the final archer
( I've got to learn that focusing on something other than the eyes doesn't usually work out well )

As I explained earlier in “Total Discipline: Anatomy of a Japanese Archer’s Shot”, the main event of the day was for ranked archers who had become legal adults (20 years old) in the previous year, and the lady above was the 2,132nd and final among them. This was followed by some archery instructors, then the playoffs for each the men and women.

The photos below are from the women's playoffs.

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Awaiting Their Turn

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In the shot above, we see an appearance of the archer featured earlier in “Badass Japanese Archery: Now It's The Ladies' Turn”, as well as another example of how focusing on the tip of the arrow just doesn't work well.

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Awaiting the Results

As I explained in earlier posts, I had a difficult time following the playoff rounds, but I think the three ladies in the shot above placed second, third, and fourth, with the winner having been decided in the previous round. I'm sure the winner is seen in one of the photos above, but unfortunately, I couldn't guess which she is.

To be continued...

Picking up from my “Badass Japanese Archery: Now It's The Ladies' Turn” post the other day, here are some more of the very colorful young ladies at the shooting platform.

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Dozen at a Time

As described in “Total Discipline: Anatomy of a Japanese Archer's Shot”, each archer goes at her own pace, but each group of a dozen starts at the same time, so they're fairly in sync at the beginning, which can make for some interesting shots.

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Stringing the Arrow

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Second Arrow

You can tell it's the second arrow because she has no spare in her right hand. You can also tell by the fact that the group is much further out of sync, with more than half having already left the platform.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post the crowds were ridiculous, so it was challenging to get a good vantage point, and at that, “good” meant that you could see one or two archers well. With the crowed, hanging branches, ropes, lamp posts, and such, no place offered a good view of everyone, so it was always a compromise.

I figured I'd have less clutter in frame if I could zoom up more, so I switched to the 300mm zoom, and less foreground/background clutter with a thinner depth of field, so I kept it at f/2 most of the time. This would allow me to get more intimate with the archers, such as this boss-looking dude and this tough-looking badass.

The ladies could have the toughness, but their style of dress offered a softer side as well..

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Well Framed

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There were about 90 groups of women, and I got there in time for the last eight or nine, so I had just a bit of time to try to jockey for different vantage points.

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Lined Up

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Anti Zoom
I could get a wider shot when the view to the furthest archer was relatively clear
( also, it helps that I moved slightly further down range )

Another way to get a wider shot is to composite multiple shots together, like the vertical panorama I opened up with, but that's a lot of work.

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( focus here is on the hands, but with her serious look lost to fuzziness, it doesn't work )

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Sporting Some Determination

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So, about the “Tall Tale” caption to the lead photo, as I mentioned, it's a composition made from two separate photos stacked one above the other, but what I failed to mention is that the two photos are of different people, taken five minutes apart.

The top photo provided the bow, the visible body (face and arm), and most of the upper half of the hakama attire. The rest came from the lower photo, kindly provided by a conveniently-similar stance by the lady seen above in “Anti Zoom”.

Interestingly, sleeve of the bow arm from both ladies appears in the composition: they just happened to align such that one appears to be the inside of the other, and doing that area that way allowed other parts to blend more smoothly. Lucky happenstance.

I also removed a big ugly rope that had been cutting through the background, and extended the bow string along its natural path.

I did all this because I really liked how the top shot showed the mammoth size of the bow, but in it the archer was cut off just below the chest, leaving an unbalanced lack of person in the shot. Other shots of the same archer didn't show the bow as well, so I looked for a way to recover balance to the shot I liked, and among the 1,000 photos from the day, exactly one showed a clear view of one archer standing in the same spot, and voila, we have this post's opening image.

One more “tall tale” aspect is that the bow doesn't actually extend below the handle as far as implied by the composition because that particular bow is very uneven, with the portion above the handle much longer than that below. It's still absolutely gigantic, but not quite as much as implied. For reference, see this otherwise-unremarkable shot of the “upper-photo” archer...

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Miss Upper
unretouched

I've got to wonder whether that kind of bow is harder to shoot. I'd think that due to the uneven lengths to the curves, the bow string would not snap back perfectly perpendicular (the lower curve would have less distance, so would snap back quicker, I'd think).

Continued here...

In yesterday's “Colorful Ladies' Wardrobe” post we looked at some of the young ladies preparing for their turn at traditional Japanese archery at the rite-of-passage event described in “Total Discipline: Anatomy of a Japanese Archer's Shot”. Before and after their turn they were as lively as you'd expect a bunch of twenty-year-old girls to be, but on the shooting platform they were all business, every bit worthy to appear along the likes of the guy seen in “More Badass Japanese Archery”.

I'd been disappointed early on when I was driven out by the ridiculous crowds just before the ladies started, but after having left for lunch, I decided to return toward the end, and found it substantially less crowded. (It was still ridiculously crowded, and I spent half the time letting old ladies stand on the chair I'd brought), but overall I could see quite a bit: the last 100 (of more than 1,000) women, then the instructors, then the “playoffs” for the guys, then for the girls. So note to self: next year, drop in at the end.

The earlier “Total Discipline” post may be helpful in following the next sequence...

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Staredown

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(With my lack of skill in wielding the 300mm at f/2, many of these are soft or out of focus, but the lady's presence is so compelling that I've gone and made a couple of these into desktop backgrounds.)

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Setup

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Initial Aim

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Horizontal Adjustment

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Vertical Adjustment
with what little focus the photo has on the tip of the arrow
( an idea that had merit, but didn't work out )

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Release

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Slight Emotion
Look of satisfaction?

These photos were from the playoff round, so out of more than a thousand women who participated, she was one of about a dozen women who had hit the target during the day. (It seemed to me that many more than that hit the target, so maybe one had to get a full-on bull's eye to progress to the playoffs. I don't know.)

She progressed to the next round after this shot, so if any emotion leaks out it should be of satisfaction, but it's hard to tell. The lead photo in this post is from the following round to determine the winner, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, I had a difficult time following the announcements of who won, so I don't know how she did. I do know that I'd certainly love to present her with copies of these photos some day.

Continued here...

My recent coverage of the traditional Japanese Archery event described last week in “Total Discipline: Anatomy of a Japanese Archer’s Shot” has so far covered mostly the guys (such as with the previous post, “More Badass Japanese Archery”), but there were about as many gals as guys.

Most of the time I was at the event was while the guys were shooting, so when I was out and about in the greater temple area, the women were in preparation mode. They were plentiful and very, very colorful.

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The guy's wardrobe was pretty standard across the 1,000 who participated, and was elegant in is simplicity. For me, that matched well with the art/discipline of Japanese archery and Japanese cultural history. The ladies, on the other hand, were decked out in a sometimes over-the-top way that I expect most would not see again in their lifetime, except perhaps on their wedding day.

Unlike what's worn on the coming-of-age holiday, the outfits seen today are not kimono, but instead are a kind of hakama specific to archery. Men's traditional formal wear is usually hakama, and they can sometimes be quite colorful (especially for children, as seen here), but are more often fairly subdued in color but rich in detail. You can see a bit of what goes into it on this post.

The level of gaudiness didn't rise to that seen each year on the Coming-of-Age national holiday (a holiday to celebrate those that have become legal adults — reached 20 years old — in the past year), but at times it was still pretty heavy.

As I wrote in the “total discipline” post, this event was primarily a rite-of-passage occasion for those same young adults who had turned 20 in the previous year, but only if they had earned the right by advancing to a high enough rank in the art/sport/discipline of Japanese archery.

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As I roved around with my lens, it tended to be drawn toward the more reserved (less gaudy) looks among the crowd, but this post is a smattering of all kinds of shots, including some that I just like the vibe of.

I would have missed most of these because after being driven out by the ridiculous crowd at the shooting range, I would have gone home but stuck around because Kyoto friend Nicolas Joannin (he from my “Rained out at the Fushimi Castle” post) had messaged me that he was on his way.

When he arrived, I waited outside the staging area while he checked out the shooting area...

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Staging Area

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Keeping In Touch

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Pensive

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Too Slow
I was too slow to keep up with the lady walking by
but I somehow like the result anyway

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Hamming It Up
for Nicolas, who had by this time returned

Nicolas had retreated from the scrum at the shooting range and joined me in the staging area, and had been taking a photo of the girl practicing her motions when she noticed him and added a big smile. You can see the shot he got here, along with his others from the day. He got some very nice results. (He also got a picture of me.)

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Post-Performance Call

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Helping Hands

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Peace

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I can't say that some of the heavier makeup and accessories were always my cup of tea, especially when so many are gathered at once, but it was certainly photogenic, and I enjoyed the experience.

Next, we'll see these same ladies switch to serious mode, shooting a lethal weapon on the firing range. And when I say “lethal”, I'm not kidding. I saw one of these arrows pierce all the way through 3" of hard bamboo at 60 meters.

Continued here...

During the Japanese-Archery event last week that I've been posting about, after the 2,000+ young adults did their thing, a few dozen instructors also got to shoot. I don't know how they were chosen to participate... perhaps it's only the instructors of the kids who hit the target?

Anyway, as last week's “Total Discipline: Anatomy of a Japanese Archer's Shot” describes, the goal is not simply to hit the target, but in mental and physical perfection with each step, akin to how the whole tea-ceremony thing not really being about having something to drink.

So, while on the shooting platform, some of the archers got into an intense mode, and the guy in today's post was even more intense than the instructor seen earlier in “Traditional Archery Like a Boss”. I noticed his intensity immediately, and tracked him with the camera more than the others.

(I was shooting the 300mm f/2 with a 1.4x TC with a monopod while standing on a chair among a bustling crowd, so these aren't all that sharp, but they're better than I expected.)

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First Look

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Preparing the Second Arrow

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Stance

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More Intensity

Usually you see no reaction whatsoever to their shot, so unless you watch the arrow's flight you have no idea as a spectator whether they hit the target, but I know he did because he came back later for the playoffs to determine the overall winner. (It's not the main point of Japanese archery as a discipline, but there is a “sport” aspect to it, so they do determine and announce winners.)

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Playoff Arrow

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Final Round

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All Done
slipping their arms back into the sleeves of their hakama

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Accepting the Return of His Arrow
to signify his third-place finish

I didn't quite follow how the playoffs went, but I believe the “Final Round” was actually to determine second place — I was never able to figure out who won first place — and the three seen above were the runners up My guy was 3rd, while the like-a-boss guy at right was second.

As I said, I was immediately drawn to the guy's intense presence, and he seemed to be the epitomy of a certain kind of traditional Japanese samurai masculinity. It was very cool to see.

But beyond that, something seemed oddly familiar about him that I couldn't place until I got home and looked at the pictures, and it hit me that he's the Japanese reincarnation of Geoff Ralston, a VP at Yahoo! from back in the day. It's probably been a decade since I talked to Geoff, but this intense archer really reminded me of him. (Geoff could be intense as well, in a good way; I sometimes had friction with Yahoo! management, but I recall Geoff being top notch all around.)

Any other Yahoo! alumni see the resemblance, or is it just me?

Continued here...

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Our Turn

Continuing with the rite-of-passage Japanese-archery event I've been posting about (第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会) , after being driven out by the oppressive crowds at the shooting range, I spent some time with the more-manageable crowds in the greater temple compound.

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Textures
wood and stone

I took the three shots above before having ventured into the scrum at the shooting range, but after coming out I broke out the Nikkor 300mm f/2 lens for some experimentation. (With its all-manual 7kg ultra-thin depth-of-field, any use on my part is “experimentation”.)

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Pose

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Pause
eastern edge of the Sanjusangendo Temple, Kyoto Japan

The entire eastern side of the temple property is a 500-foot-long covered-and-columned walkway in brilliant vermilion, so it offered great photogenic opportunities, though there was some challenge in having to zoom with my feet with the heavy lens and all my stuff.

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Spoiler
lady with fuzzy boots ruins the artsy out-of-focus vibe I was going for

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Mercifully Stationary

Considering the rich depth of the scene (and the thin depth of the lens), these kind of shots were the obvious low-hanging fruit to try, but it's hard enough for me to focus this lens on a stationary subject, so it was all the more demanding when someone walked directly toward the camera.

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Helping me Practice

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I didn't really feel comfortable with the focus (and wondered whether I needed to test the accuracy of my focus screen), so spent some time really concentrating on trying to hit focus without worrying about composition so much....

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Not Too Bad
focusing on the eye

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Missed Call
I was going for the eye of the yellow peep, but got the blue hamburger thing

They were part of a group getting ready to pose for a photo...

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Group Photo at 300mm
maybe a bit wider focal length would have made things easier

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Friends

Somehow they noticed me, and some posed just for me...

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Smile Just For Me

They seemed quite interested in having me take their picture, so the photographer in me wanted to do it right; despite having 20kg worth of gear, I quickly zoomed with my feet (moved) so that I could frame the opportunity just right, concentrating on that which was most important....

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Updated Framing
from my detached, purely aesthetic point of view

Some of the guys, being guys (like this, and this), hammed it up for me...

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The guy in the center is the same as in “Not Too Bad” above.

There were 2,132 twenty-year-olds in their formal archery hakama, along with ample family, friends, and spectators, so there was more than enough to keep me occupied.

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Continued here...

In my post yesterday about Japanese archery, I concentrated on the short moment each of the 2,000+ archers got during Sunday's day-long event (第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会) at the Sanjusangendo Temple. Except in the world of calm and concentration that they brought with them for that moment on the shooting platform, the event was an absolute madhouse, with way too many people packed into way too small an area, funneled through an even thinner bottleneck entrance path connecting the archery area with the main temple grounds.

It was absolutely ridiculous, and at one point early on I felt so bad for friends and family of the archers, who had essentially no chance to see their loved one, that I left so as to ease the crowd by one.

The event was scheduled to start at 9am and run until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, with about 1,100 men (ranked archers who had turned 20 years old during the past year) going first, switching to similarly ranked/aged women somewhere around noon.

I arrived before 10am and wandered around a bit before I found the path to the main-event archery area.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
First View
leading to the shooting and viewing areas

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 190mm — ¹/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Lots'a Bows

Eventually I made my way through the solid mass of humanity to where I could actually catch a glimpse of an archer in action, a glimpse possible only because I'm quite a bit taller than average...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 560 — full exif & map — nearby photos
First View
of an archer in action, possible only because I'm much taller than average

In the naïveté of a first-time attendee, I moved further down range in hopes of finding a thinner crowd, but to no avail...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
From Mid Range
again enjoying the “benefits” of height, slim as they were

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 220 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Targets and Indicators

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Half of a Batch
archers came in waves of 12 men each

When a group of a dozen archers was given the platform, each progressed through his two arrows as I described yesterday, independently (and likely not even aware) of the others, though long and related training left a loosely-shared rhythm to the group.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/320 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos

About a third or so of the guys choose to slip their left arm out of their formal hakama costume for the shoot, though I don't know whether it's for less distraction or simply to look baddass. In any case, it certainly had that latter effect, but sadly it was not a custom shared by the ladies when they followed later in the day.

One of the three archers at the blue position above seems to have scored a full bull's-eye:

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/320 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Someone Hit the Mark

Eventually I gave up trying to find position downrange and headed back toward the exit, but along the way I paused directly adjacent to the shooting platform (where, if you could actually see the archers, you could look down the row of archers for an interesting view. I had incredible luck to happen upon a spot next to a tree just as a couple decided to extract themselves, and combining a raised bump in the tree root, tippy toes, and my height, I could sometimes get a semi-clear shot...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 190mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
In Sync

The tree itself was plastered with “Don't Climb!” signs, which is good because if it weren't I'm sure the crowd would have destroyed it...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/320 sec, f/6.3, ISO 2000 — full exif & map — nearby photos
“Don't Climb the Tree!”

Anyway, with a position that held some promise even though I was fairly far in the back, I started playing with different techniques, since I was almost perfectly in line with them, I had few options beyond the closest archer at the end of the row. Still, I tried various things...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Selective Focus

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 125mm — ¹/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 105mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 105mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

I like that last one, but this experience was wholly unsatisfying as both a photographer and as a spectator, and I was growing fairly disgusted especially when I could hear friends and parents comment to themselves that they couldn't even see whether their loved one was up yet.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 105mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 105mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Staredown

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 220 — full exif & map — nearby photos
View of the Targets

Again a spot opened up slightly and I could get onto the rise of the tree root at the base of the trunk, and with comical stretching I could get tighter shots...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

It was at this point that I got the sequence in yesterday's post.

I wanted to stay until the women started shooting, but by this point I was ready to give up. I had brought my 300mm f/2 and a stool to stand on, with the hope of capturing something unique, but with the crowd there was no way I could bring out a lens that big, and even if I could, I'd feel to selfish doing so.

I stuck around for another wave or two before leaving...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 150mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 190mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 190mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 190mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Disappointed, I left the archery area and made my slow way through the bottleneck toward the relatively open of the wider temple grounds.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Common Sight

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 175mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Ladies Starting to Assemble

It turns out that it gets substantially less crowded later in the day, but I'll leave that for another post.

Continued here...

Round about Lightroom 3.2, Adobe added support for intercepting “lightroom://” URLs, but have not documented it yet, so I'll do so here. It's particularly useful as part of an OAuth-authentication procedure.

What

You can have your plugin automatically respond to certain “lightroom://” URLs if they are formatted correctly, and if you add appropriate support to your plugin.

URL Form

After registering the appropriate handler in you plugin, as described below, the handler will be invoked when your system browser receives a URL of the form:

The “your.plugin.id” is the LrToolkitIdentifier in Info.lua. For example, the id for my Flickr plugin is “info.regex.lightroom.export.flickr2”, so it can be set to handle URLs such as:

etc.

How

Create a .lua file that returns a table along the lines:

return {
   URLHandler = function(url)
       -- The url string sometimes actually have a double quote as
       -- the first and last byte, so strip just in case.
       url = url:gsub('^"(.*)"$', "%1")

       -- Work with url here...

   end
}

Wrapping the function in a one-element table seems like an odd level of indirection, but that's how it works.

You then add a reference to that file in your Info.lua, as “URLHandler”. If the file is named “MyUrlHandler.lua”, for example, the reference in Info.lua would look like:

return {
   LrToolkitIdentifier = "info.regex.lightroom.export.flickr2",
   LrPluginName        = "jf Flickr",
   LrPluginInfoUrl     = "http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/flickr",

   LrSdkVersion        = 3.4,
   LrSdkMinimumVersion = 3.4,

   URLHandler = "MyUrlHandler.lua",
}

Within the URLHandler function, you can access parts of the URL (e.g. in an OAuth situation, the token) and stuff into global variables, and perhaps shut down a dialog that had been open by calling LrDialogs.stopModalWithResult(...).

That last bit seems to be unfortunately necessary... I've found that the handler is not properly invoked in some rare OS/browser combinations, so I feel that to cover all my bases, the plugin must open a dialog to tell the user to paste in their token; if the handler ends up working, the plugin can immediately shut down that dialog so the user is not bothered with it. Usually, that's exactly what happens, and it happens so quickly that the user never even sees the dialog.

I don't think Adobe's plugins do this, so maybe the problem has been on my end, but I thought I'd mention it because this is what my plugins do.

As I mentioned in yesterday's “Traditional Archery Like a Boss” post, I made my first visit to the annual tooshiya archery event (第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会) at the Sanjusangendo Temple in Kyoto, a half-hour walk from my place.

Japanese archery, kyuudou, is a discipline — neither purely sport nor art — comparable in one sense to karate or tea ceremony in that the result is not nearly as important as the perfection in the steps taken toward the result. Yesterday's event was my first introduction to it (the only other archery I've seen in Japan is the yabusame mounted archery event I witnessed a couple of years ago), but it was immediately apparent that the event was a big deal to those who participated.

The age of adulthood in Japan is 20, and last week was the national holiday to celebrate those who became legal adults in the past year (as seen in my “Japan's Coming of Age Day Holiday Spectacle” post a while back). The rites of passage continued yesterday for the small slice of Japan's new adults who have achieved a high-enough rank in the practice of archery to have earned the privilege: they may shoot/perform two arrows outside the west veranda of the Sanjusangendo Temple. It's a very big deal.

Yesterday, about 2,200 new adults from around Japan got the chance.

It was an absolute mad-house of an event, but for the short moment when an archer was on the shooting platform, nothing else existed for them but the bow, arrow, and target. Twelve archers were in position and shooting at any one time, but the shooting platform was absolutely silent except for the twang of the string when an arrow was shot, and the very occasional clatter of a dropped bow.

This next sequence of one young man, in the position on the shooting platform the closest to me and the Tokyo-subway-at-rush-hour crowd, perhaps conveys a bit what this event means to these archery practitioners....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Calmly Set the First Arrow
Slowly and carefully. This takes 15 seconds.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Temporarily Shift Second Arrow
while retreating further into the depths of concentration
(the second arrow will end up held out of the way by the pinkie of the gloved hand)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130mm — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Prepare To Assume Firing Stance

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 86mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Initial Draw
every little motion a study in purpose

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Raise To Final Aim
this position is held at length

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Dispassionate and Motionless
Survey of the Result

There is no movement of the archer when the arrow is released, except for the fingers doing the release and then that hand snapping straight back in recoil, leaving their arms spread wide. Their body, legs, other hand, head, and gaze remain utterly motionless, and there is no sound save the twang of the bow.

The sight of the arrow in flight for 60m toward the 100cm target is breathtaking in a way I would not have imagined, nor can I explain.

It's impossible to discern from his reaction whether he even came close, much less hit the target, because there is no reaction. At all.

A couple of days before the event it was explained to me by the staff at my favorite Japanese restaurant that it's all in the execution and that it's irrelevant whether the target is hit, but that's not entirely accurate: after the 1,110+ men had gone, they announced the few dozen who had hit the target.

However, it's telling that announcement consisted of, for each archer, their shooting number (everyone had a number like in a marathon), their city and school, and the name of their instructor. Notably absent was the name of the archer himself.

Back to our archer, #720....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 135mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Collect Your Thoughts
for the second arrow

It's at this point that he looked straight at me, though it was obvious that he didn't even see me, and I got the shot that opens this post. I was part of a massive dozens-deep scrum of observers, many with step ladders and most all with cameras, but the archer was alone in his own world.

Finally...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Start The Second Arrow

He started the second arrow, but stopped and reset...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Regroup
really pull in the concentration

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Be The Target

He then loaded his second arrow...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Too Late To Turn Back Now

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 135mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
True

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 175mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Final Moment
tension is tighter than in the string of his bow, yet wrapped in calm

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 175mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Away

It's hard to see, but in that last shot a light dust hangs where the arrow brushed against the bow on its way out.

He again holds that pose for a good long while, then very slowly collects himself, bows, and steps back in his return to reality, making way for the next wave of archers.

I have no idea whether he hit with either arrow.

Continued here...