I posted the other day a nice picture of the sun streaming down to light a bridge that I took during our New-Year's trip to Okinawa, and on that post I lamented about the general unexciting flatness of the pictures from that day.

Still, the visit to the small island was a fun excursion, so dull photo or not, here they come...

Kouri Island is a small, generally circular island about a mile and a quarter across, less than a mile offshore from the Okinawa mainland. It's connected by a big bridge, but not directly: you have to cross three [...]

Going over some pictures from our recent trip to Okinawa, I was disappointed with those from our visit to Kouri Island, a small island a bit more than a mile in circumference off the northwestern coast of Okinawa. It's an island that has, more or less, nothing for tourists except the bridge leading to it, which is pretty.

I hadn't even looked at the pictures until today, and when I did, I was depressed by a lot of flat boringness that didn't really reflect the dynamic nature of the weather and the interesting landscape.

Until I came across this one.

After getting my Nikon D700 and putting its low-light capabilities to the test (see: "Impossible Photography: No Light, No Tripod, No Hope. D700 and a 50mm f/1.2" and "A Few More D700 f/1.2 Night Shots") I quickly expanded my understanding of the lighting conditions in which I could do handheld photography. In exploring this new territory, I often pushed too far and ended up with poor results, but surprisingly often I got results that would have been considered impossible just a couple of years ago, such as Anthony blowing out birthday candles, or riding his bike at dusk, or doing [...]

The other day I posted a tree/island silhouette that I took on our recent jaunt to Okinawa. The shot was taken in the rain under a gloomy overcast, near dusk. Because I was exposing for the silhouette, I could get by with a relatively undemanding exposure that I could have achieved even with my old D200...

I took the shot from a beach near the road, and while returning to the parking lot in the increasing rain, I noticed an Okinawan grave tucked away deep in a clump of trees, nestled in the darkness at the side of a hill....

An important component of Japanese culture is "presentation", but it can quickly takes a backseat when inconvenient, such as how much of Japan's natural beauty has been disfigured by utility poles, wires, and street signs. (Examples on my blog over the years include: this - this - this - this - this - this.)

So, it's especially nice when presentation is not only remembered, but really done well. The shot above was the after-meal coffee and cake that came with the $10 lunch we had at an out-of-the-way cafe during our trip to Okinawa last weekend.

For $10, we got [...]