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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
On The Way To The Shrine
Nagaoka Tenmangu Shrine, Nagaokakyo City, Kyoto Prefecture Japan
京都府長岡京市の長岡天満宮

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The other day while my wife was preparing for her ballet recital, I wandered around the shrine complex across the street from the venue. That's where I snapped the “Cute Little Melodrama in Five Photos” sequence that I posted the other day.

The direct sun made for harsh lighting that I just didn't have the skill to deal with well, so from a technical point of view these photos are crap, all lacking a certain richness. I'll have to head back on a lightly-cloudy day. Still, it's a pretty area, so even crappy photos are not too bad to look at....

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/8, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
View from Across the Lake
difficult to believe we're in the middle of a city

Nagaokakyo (長岡京) has been around for a long time... it served as the capital of Japan for short while, before the imperial court was moved 10km northeast to Kyoto, 1,218 years ago. Not in the year 1218, mind you, but 1,218 years ago, in 794.

Prior to being in Nagaokakyo, the capital had been in Nara for a while, and prior to that had bounced around quite a bit, but it finally stayed put in Kyoto for a good long while, for 1,074 years, before moving to Tokyo in 1868.

I lived and worked in this city in the early 1990s, and walked by this area every day on my commute, but never once stopped in to check it out. I have no idea what I was thinking, but I guess it just shows how much photography has opened my eyes to the beauty and interest of things around me.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Confusing
What in the heck is going on here, beside the little kid feeding fish?

I was half way thinking to make this one of my “What am I?” quizzes because the jumble of curved stone seems so implausible.

There are actually three of those short highly-arched bridges right next to each other on the three immediately-adjacent parallel paths that bifurcate the lake, as can sort of be seen in the lead photo. The middle path is surrounded by hedges and is closed to the public; I suspect it is reserved for the emperor should he visit, which I would suppose might happen a few times each millennium.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/8, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Northern Bridge
the two orange lanterns flank the unused central path

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
On The Southern Path

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Heading Out
photographed across the middle path from the southern path
( Fumie's ballet recital was in the large building in the background )

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 110 — map & image data — nearby photos
Southern Bridge

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 140 — map & image data — nearby photos
Another Angle
with tea houses in the background

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Fail
I really wanted a vertical desktop to work, but the washed out sky just kills it

I'll end with two more views similar to the lead photo, but this next one has focus on the tea houses instead of the bridge, and the one after that has a person, for scale...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tea Houses

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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Parasol

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Luckily, the water is shallow and I am very tall, so I could get shots from this vantage. 😉

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sharp

A year ago I took a nice scooter drive into the mountains of northern Nara Prefecture, a trip that produced the following posts:

• Perfect Flower in the Mountains of Nara
• Highlight of Yesterday’s Mountain Ride: Friendly Farmer Lady
• Stages of the Rice Harvest
• More From the Rice Harvest
• After the Rice Harvest

This post is a collection of random other photos from that trip.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 160mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ready For Hanging

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/5000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hanging

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/7.1, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Rice Paddy
though unused at the moment

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 140mm — ¹/800 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Momentary Respite

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/3200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Roofs

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 120mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sontoku Ninomiya
in front of a school, as described here

Next we have three photos that are as different upon inspection as they appear to be the same at first glance....

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/4000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/5000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/5000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Slightly Forlorn

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hard Core
click through to the large version and look how they're sitting

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Not Quite
as hard core as the previous folks

A different view of a fisherman at this lake also appeared on this post of desktop backgrounds.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/3200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lot of Work
represented here
( I wonder whether the cutting/stacking is somehow automated? )

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Old and Older
the roof is certainly older than the rusty antenna, but in much better shape

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dock
for fishermen on stilts?

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“Jeffrey Lightroomeries - 01”
Photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

My previous post presented 15 different versions of the same portrait photo, concentrating on the technical side of the wide breadth of processing that I could achieve with Lightroom.

Prior to publishing that article, I'd asked my partner-in-portraiture-crime and the photographer of that shot, Stéphane Barbery, to come up with his own interesting versions of the photo. He doesn't care for the photo and so his normal processing on it would simply be to delete it, but explained that I was working on my own many versions and wanted his interpretations for comparison, so he kindly took a shot at it.

Stéphane often has a different artistic sense than I have — if I'm to be honest with myself, mine is fairly superficial — and his processing of some shots of me a few months ago was interesting in how different they were from what I might have done.

Stéphane's eight versions of the photo that appear on this post span less a range than those on my “let's see what Lightroom can do” post, but he uses crop and subtle lighting more artistically (if that can be said about a photo of me). Especially his use of crop is eye opening to me.

I'll mention again that it's unfair to each version that they appear together in a stream of versions that all run into each other. If you can imagine each in isolation, in a context of some appropriate use, then that's a better way to judge the effects he's created, and a better way to take a lesson forward if you see things you want to try with your own processing.

“Jeffrey Lightroomeries - 02”
Photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

“Jeffrey Lightroomeries - 03”
Photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

“Jeffrey Lightroomeries - 04”
Photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

“Jeffrey Lightroomeries - 05”
Photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

“Jeffrey Lightroomeries - 06”
Photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

“Jeffrey Lightroomeries - 07”
Photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

“Jeffrey Lightroomeries - 08”
Photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/200 sec, f/8, ISO 3600 — image data
Stéphane's First Shot of The Day
of me, with a touch of “deer in the headlights”, but usable on something like a driver's license
撮影勉強会の一枚目のスナップ....　ま〜ま〜オK
photo by Stéphane Barbery; minor processing by me

A week ago, I posted about another portraiture practice session with Stéphane Barbery, but then I lost my computer to the repair shop for two days. I've gotten it back, but have yet to look at the photos of me that he took, beyond the first two photos.

I've not looked beyond the first two photos because I've been busy.... such as with the new Lightroom plugin that I released yesterday, and with another portraiture/lighting practice session on Monday with Stéphane... but the main impediment to me looking at the photos has been my Lightroom curiosity with the second shot of the day.

Here's his second shot of the day:

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/200 sec, f/8, ISO 9000 — image data
Second Shot
touched up just a bit in Lightroom
撮影勉強会の二枚目のスナップ. 何となく好き、これ。
photo by Stéphane Barbery; minor processing by me

I'm still not comfortable seeing myself, but this has a certain something that I actually like, so for some reason I started playing with it in Lightroom, and was astounded at the range of looks I could come up with. (It perhaps helped the creative process that I was drinking beer and eating my favorite chicken, at Kyoto's ever-delicious Uroko restaurant, while working on these the day I got my computer back.)

I shouldn't have been surprised, because I've known for a long time that shooting in raw format gives you a lot of latitude during post processing, and even five years ago I was exploring the wild interpretations that Lightroom's controls afford, a learning concept I've repeated numerous times, such as here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here; these links are also listed, along with their post titles, in the “related posts” box at the end of the article.

Perhaps my surprise was merely because this is the first time to try this with a portrait.

Anyway, some of what we'll see below has artistic merit, I think, and some is just silly crazy, but the exploring is fun, so let's take a look at some of what I came up with. All images on the rest of this post are from the same original image as the one above, with the only difference being the treatment in Lightroom's develop module.

下の十四枚の写真は上の「二枚目」と同じ原作ですが、違うのはアドビLightroomでのいろいろの現像の遊び。

Bit Moodier

“Dave Hill” Look

Dave Hill is a photographer/Photoshopper who gained prominence five or six years ago for pioneering (or, at least, popularizing) a highly processed über-edgy high-contrast style. It's cliché now, but still works for some subjects (of which I am apparently not one).

To The Hilt
All exposure sliders (plus clarity and vibrance) slammed to the hilt

Let's take “Moodier” and run that way a bit further...

“Mysterious” (?)

Dark Face

“Mysterious” Flip Side

Bright Face

Now let's try some black & white.

I'm a bit hesitant to try B&W in one sense, because I chose the particular Uniqlo ¥500 T-Shirt I was wearing because I knew I would post some shots, and knew my mom will like the color on me. But, for the sake of science, we'll forge ahead....

Sort of Standard B&W

A Bit More Edgy

Really To The Hilt
Same as “To The Hilt”, but with Saturation slammed to zero as well

Duochrome
getting silly (and not just a little creepy) now
(Anthony said “It's... alien!” and got a bit freaked out)

Having just updated my “Freaky” Lightroom tone-curve presets for the “Razor Wire in Nagoya” post the other day, I was tempted by the challenge to see whether I could, in Lightroom alone, replace the blown-out white background with a dead black one:

Darkfield B&W

And really, once you start down that slippery slope of silliness, why stop there?
(It's a rhetorical question; don't answer.)

Cubic?

It's sort of not fair to show all these versions on the same page, because your perception gets colored by what you've seen before; it would be more telling to look at each in isolation, if that were possible. Anyway, I think it's fun to explore (and at times overstep) the boundaries of what one can do with a portrait, both in artistic concept and in the practical sense of what Lightroom's develop controls allow.

For completeness, here's the original shot with no adjustments in Lightroom except for color balance....

Raw Shot
straight out of camera, except for color balance

Continued here...

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I've just released a new Lightroom Plugin, “Creative Commons”, which allows you to inject license information into exported copies of images that you want to release via a Creative Commons license.

クリエイティブ・コモンズ・ライセンス対応のアドビLightroomのプラグインを開発しました。

The plugin is avaialble here:      Jeffrey’s “Creative Commons” Lightroom Plugin

That adds to the thirty-something other plugins available on my Lightroom Goodies page.