This is the third (and final) post about the annual lightup event in the bamboo forest of the Aarashiyama area of Kyoto, which I went to on a windy, sleety night a couple of weeks ago. (See earlier part 1 and part 2.)

The photo collected the many flashes of others' cameras during the 30-second exposure. Here's a crop from the center of the shot above...

I tried a quick shot directly of one of the lanterns, which ended up as one might expect, detail in the bright light completely blown out. Still, somehow the result appeals to me...

It's [...]

I got myself a GoPro HERO3 camera, and I've got to say, I'm solidly unimpressed with GoPro (the company, Woodman Labs) so far.

You have to access their web site before you can use the camera, but the web site is mostly down.... server doesn't respond for most requests.

[There's an update below on this...]

The web site, when it loads, is one of those flashy "form over function" sites that looks good (for some definitions of "good"), but difficult to actually use, and the incessant animations are annoying. A search for "manual hero3 black" produced no usable results.

The [...]
View full post »

10-year-old Anthony and I flew from Japan to America yesterday, and now I'm at my folks' house in Ohio where I grew up. It wasn't as eventful a trip as some horror stories you hear about, but it had its own bit of excitement, and some good travel lessons.

I'll recount the long story here. I don't expect anyone to actually read it... it's mostly for my own memory...

My father-in-law drove us to Osaka Itami airport, leaving from Kyoto at 11:30am and arriving at 12:30 in plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely Starbucks lunch before heading to [...]

I'm finally getting around to posting some more shots of the Arashiyama (area of Kyoto) evening bamboo lightup (京都嵐山竹やぶの花灯路) from a week or two ago. (I'd posted one shot that evening.)

It was just above freezing, with blustery wind and occasional rain/sleet. Not really a pleasant environment, but it kept the crowds down during the main event to simply "very crowded".

This lady stood there for the longest time, staring at me with a blank "what is that thing?" look on her face. On the outside I just stood there next to my camera on a tripod... looking like a [...]

I've been doing a lot of portraiture practice lately, so I finally made a portraiture-practice category on my blog. This post is likely the last for a while, a few shots from last week with Paul Barr and Stéphane Barbery.

上は私、カメラと一寸近くすきるし、目は開けすぎ。結果は面白いだと思いますが、一寸気持ち悪いかもしれない。どう思いますか。以下の写真と比べる。

The photos on this post of me, such as the one above, were taken by Paul Barr, and post processed by me (mostly with Paul looking over my shoulder).

I think the one above has some interesting (yet perhaps disconcerting) character, for a couple of reasons. First there's the distortion caused by the close proximity of the lens to [...]