Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 460mm — 1/200 sec, f/6.3, ISO 10000 — image data
This Was The Question
何これ？
I seem to have neglected to post the answer to the “Curved-Wire “What am I?” Quiz”, a photo similar to the one above, so here it is.
Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 240mm — 1/125 sec, f/6.3, ISO 10000 — image data
Shoe Rack
小学の靴箱です
It's an empty shoe rack at Anthony's elementary school. There are two sets... one for the street shoes left at the entrance...
Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 380mm — 1/200 sec, f/6.3, ISO 10000 — image data
Street Shoes
下履用
... and one for the shoes worn inside the school...
Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210mm — 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 10000 — image data
Inside Shoes
上靴用
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bottom Quarter
of a massive 300-year-old support column at the Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan
東大寺の柱（下の４分の一)、奈良
I made a trip to the Todaiji Temple (東大寺) in Nara last month. Nara was the capital of Japan 1,300 years ago.
The main temple building is a massive wooden structure built toward the end of the 1600s (though much smaller and less ambitious than the original building long destroyed by fire). Until recently, it was the largest wooden structure in the world.
Interesting to me was that the main columns were not individual tree trunks, but somehow crafted from component parts. The wooden boards comprising the exterior of each column can be seen in the photo above, but I have no idea what's inside... I'd love to know the full construction technique designed back then (1688) that gives the ~20m (65 foot) tall columns their rigidity. The building has survived (presumably many) strong earthquakes.
(On a tangential note, the technology these days for earthquake protection is amazing... check out this house ground isolation system.)
I don't recall how many of these massive columns the building has (there must be dozens; you can see five of them in the background of the photo above), but this one particular column is special in a funny way. That's the subject of a separate post, here.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2000 — image data
Tasty and Refreshing
Läkerol candies
スウェーデンの甘草
Last autumn when Damien Douxchamps visited Kyoto and introduced me to some new (for me) temples, he also introduced me to the delightful licorice candies from Swedish company Läkerol.
So delightful were they that, upon not finding them for sale in Japan, I enlisted the help of a friend in Germany, and came home from my New Year's trip to find a box brimming with an assortment of 11 different flavors...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/200 sec, f/1.4, ISO 320 — image data
Variety
it's the spice of life
I haven't tried most of them yet, but the cactus flavor (I never knew cacti had flavor, much less tasty flavor) is the one I most liked among the various flavors Damien had with him.
My jetlag is still being unfun, so I didn't spend much time on these quick snapshots, but I got lucky in the first shot by having grabbed a dry-erase whiteboard (also pressed into make-shift photographic service in yesterday's post about Japanese candles) as the backdrop... I hadn't even thought about the nice box reflections until I happened to notice them after setup.
Sometimes luck is more important than skill. 🙂
I've long enjoyed the “So, What the Heck is That?” column each month in The Japan Times (Japan's main English-language daily), written by Alice Gordenker. As the titles of my blog posts that reference her articles indicate, the subject can become quite wacky:
“Snugglies for Trees, and More”
“The Wonder of Japan’s Open-Air Urinals”
“Kyoto’s Slightly Odd Tanukitanisan Fudouin Temple”
Somewhere over the years we became acquainted by email, and somehow last month I ended up doing the photography for her next column, on the decidedly non-wacky (but unexpectedly interesting) subject of Japanese candles, scheduled to appear in the paper and online next week (Update: here it is). I've been wanting to write this up this since before my new-year trip, but I'm perpetually behind.
Same Shot in B&W
paying attention to B&W because that's what the print version will use
I'll leave the many interesting details to Alice's article, but in short, the interesting points of these candles are the shape and construction method, the wick, and the material: they're not made of bee's wax. Prior to her explanation, I hadn't even known that there was any other kind of wax, and now I know that there are many, including from nuts(!)
Update: Alice now has on her blog more details about the wax and how it's made, and ends with a video showing the intensively-manual way the candles are produced. Also see this video of someone with 50 years of experience making candles, and I've posted a short followup with a few more pictures.
Interesting Wick
(crop from the photo above)
I have some small and insufficient experience with the “product shot” type of photograph (most recently in “Prucia Plum Wine from France” and “Failing a New Portraiture Challenge: Reflective Pottery”) so I was excited to give these candles a try. Alice had interviewed a candle maker here in Kyoto, so she arranged for me to pick up some candles from him to photograph.
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/20 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600 — image data
Due Diligence
with a color chart
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 — image data
Unruly
these candle's flames are bright, and at times can be a bit energetic
The shots above are from my initial tests with the first candle (I was given a pair). To get the shape-enhancing highlights on the sides of the candle, I'd flanked it in solid white, via a dry-erase board and a large kitchen cutting board propped up by a plant pot:
After hearing back from Alice and her editor on the first set of shots, I gave it another try with the other candle. This time, rather than a dark background, I tried some very nice golden cloth-like Japanese rice paper that Stéphane Barbery had shown me while doing some portraiture practice at his house (here's one of the shots he took/processed of me).
I first set up some lighting tests with a western candle...
Then I brought in the half-used first candle for a closer-to-reality second test...
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/13 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 — image data
Quick Test #2
with the half-used first candle
Then finally I lit the fresh candle...
Alice needed detail more than a full-body shot, but I took a few anyway for this post. I extinguished the flame and recomposed some shots in the normal room lighting:
close crop of the prior shot
Then back to the candle-light shot of the candle...
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/4 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 — image data
Just About the Limit
before the wax spills over the edge
B&W version of the prior shot
Except where noted, the illumination was all candle light, but in order to get even illumination, I used more than one candle. Here's the setup this time:
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 29mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1100 — image data
Setup For the Second Candle
I used white foam-core boards on both sides and above (far enough above to be safe!) to keep as much light as possible and to provide neutral reflections. And having learned a painful lesson in reflections in the prior month's “Failing a New Portraiture Challenge: Reflective Pottery”, I made sure to have a white board clipped to the tripod, just under the camera, to avoid unsightly reflections on the front of the candle. (A black board would have been better from the shape-enhancing point of view, but I didn't have one.)
I included two western candles with relatively small flames to add additional light where the main candle's light wouldn't suffice. I had to have them very close to make them bright enough, but far enough to the side to avoid casting shadows of the candle onto the gold background.
All in all it was a fun project, and I hope the future lets me team up with Alice again.
So we're back in Kyoto after two wonderful weeks visiting my folks in snowy Ohio. The return flight thankfully omitted the drama of my trip there and of my wife's. Airline-induced drama aside, both trips were more comfortable than the normal transpacific trip for me.
Owing to a lot of business trips in the 90s, I've made the transpacific crossing about 150 times (back then mostly in business class, but at the prices today there's no way I'd spend my own money on that for myself). This time two things helped to really make the trip better:
I sprung the extra $130/seat for United's “Economy Plus” seating, which offers 3" (7.5cm) of extra leg room (seats at a 34" pitch instead of 31"), a huge extra margin for my 6'4" height.
And for the first time, I took the sleep-aid Ambien in the middle of the 11-hour (going) and 13-hour (returning) flights, blessing myself with a rare five or six hours of sleep on each flight. (FWIW, I took the Japanese version, マイスリー, which more or less transliterates to something that brings the English words “my sleep” to mind.)
I combined this with my general practice to avoid all alcohol before, during, and after the flight (it might make the flight feel nicer, but I think it makes jetlag worse).
All-in-all everything seemed to conspire for greatness this time, as I arrived at home in Kyoto at about 9pm last night feeling so great that I got much of my unpacking done right away, and went to bed ready for sleep at 1am.
Unsurprising to someone used to jet lag, I awoke at 3am. I had a half pill of Ambien ready and took it, and soon drifted back to sleep expecting to get up wide eyed and ready to go by 8am or 9am.
A groggy me awoke at 2pm.
I was deeply groggy all day, and went to bed at midnight, taking a full Ambien just to be sure, but I was suddenly well awake. After an hour of lying in bed trying to still my mind and body, I took another half pill, and remained quite definitely awake. Eventually I thought to try one of those “relaxing ambient sounds” iPhone apps, which gave me something to listen to, but apparently didn't help me fall asleep because here I am now at 3am writing this post.
I have to be up at 6:30.
I usually have pretty bad trouble with jetlag, though less after the return trip to Japan, but I really thought I had it beat this time. I guess I'll be a zombie all day tomorrow (well, “today”, I guess) and try to get to sleep at an early but not-unreasonable time.
I was hoping to get cracking on one of the many potential blog posts I've been wanting to write, as well as on the hundreds of messages accumulated in my mailbox and blog comment queue, but all that will have to wait for a more lucid Jeffery, should one ever appear.