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The other day after posting “Daimonji: Kyoto's Least-Photogenic Festival”, Nicolas Joannin alerted me to the photos a friend of his took during last year's festival: Yaron Silberberg's Daimonji Fire Festival gallery
With Yaron's kind permission, I can share just how wrong I was in my first post's title...
Photo by Yaron Silberberg
Three Hours Before
at the top of the “大”
Photo by Yaron Silberberg
Preparation at a Fire Pit
one of about 77
Photo by Yaron Silberberg
Right “Leg” of the “大”
(“right” when viewed from the city)
Photo by Yaron Silberberg
Waiting
Photo by Yaron Silberberg
15 Minutes To Go
Photo by Yaron Silberberg
In the Thick of It
Photo by Yaron's friend?
I'm going to guess that this is
Yaron
looking quite cool, though it must be hellishly hot
Photo by Yaron Silberberg
Sweeping
view of northern Kyoto and some other shaped bonfires going on
These are just a few photos from Yaron's gallery... see the whole set for more. He also has a short video from the start of the burn.
The bonfire areas are open to the public most of the year (my blog photos from that area), but are understandably restricted on the day of the burn. Yaron's photos really make it come alive. If I ever get a chance to photograph the event from the same vantage point, I can only hope to get such great results. Thanks, Yaron!
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I received an email today from someone at stippleit.com, asking whether I might be able to discuss Lightroom-plugin development with them. I get this kind of request fairly often. As is often the case, I had never heard of them, so I checked out their website.
They have a video on the home page claiming that with their service, you can keep track of your photos on the web wherever they go, no matter what anyone does to them. This seems fanciful (impossible) to me, but we all know Author Clark's third law (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”), so maybe I was merely lacking the technical skill to understand?
So, I replied that I'd be happy to discuss their Lightroom needs, but added...
In looking at the video on your home page, I'm having a difficult time imagining that what is being presented is actually possible. It claims to offer the ability to “manage your photos as they travel the web”, and that you keep an author connected to the photos “wherever they go”. “The web” and “wherever” are very big spaces. Did you perhaps intended to convey that they work only where some kind of proprietary viewing method is used?
I ask because the engineer in me tries to imagine how that presentation can be honest, and I can't come up with anything. Hopefully I'll find out that it's my technical skill that's lacking instead of your integrity. In either case, those are points we both want to understand before moving forward with anything.
I received a very short reply thanking me for my response, adding “Doesn't sound like there's a good fit”. Doh!
So, one can surmise that I was correct: their presentation is deceitful, or I'm lacking the technical skill to understand.
I wonder which it is. 😉
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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO 10000 — map & image data — nearby photos
大
it's crowded (and hot) up there
Today was the Daimonji Festival in Kyoto, where big mountainside bonfires are lit in the evening. Normally I'm visiting my folks during the summer, so this was the first time in years for me to see it, and the first time since I became particularly interested in photography.
It's not particularly photogenic, unless, I suppose, you could get up closer to the fires. (For a look at where the fires are lit, see “Daimonji’s Hidoko Fire Pits”)
The snapshot above was done handheld with little forethought; with a bit more effort I'm sure I could have gotten something more worthy, but frankly, if given the chance again I would leave the camera at home and concentrate on what appears to be the more festive aspect of the festival: enjoying a drink and good company under the stars.
Update: it seems I'm wrong about the lack of photogenic possabilities: see the followup at “Daimonji Fire Festival Up Close and Personal: Yaron Silberberg’s Photos from Last Year”.
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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2500 — image data
Sprucing Up my Laptop
adding a 480GB SSD
When I bought my laptop (an Apple MacBook Pro) several years ago, I powered it on for a few seconds to make sure it at least booted, then shut it down and replaced the stock 500GB drive with a 1TB drive of my own, then installed the OS.
It worked great, but after a few years the machine started to feel sluggish, as if I was suddenly using Windows. The disk I'd put in was big, but also slow (5,200RPM), so maybe I'd reclaim some speed by using an SSD (solid-state disk)? When I realized that I could replace the DVD drive with a disk, and found that Other World Computing had 480GB SSDs, I took the jump.
After carefully checking the compatibility charts, I got Other World Computing's DIY Bundle: 480GB 6G Solid State Drive + DVD-drive-space mounting hardware, along with a USB enclosure to put the laptop DVD drive currently sitting where the new disk will go.
The bracket and disk are beautifully machined metal...
The install instructions, on the other hand, were a bit lacking. I kept a set of notes on the problems I came across, but having let two months pass before getting around to writing this post, I can't find them. However, I do recall a representative problem: while the computer was splayed open on the table, with the bottom now the top and the front now the back, the instructions would use directional words (“front”, “behind”, etc.) with respect to the computer as if it were set up for normal use, instead of with respect to the current view of the thing you were instructed to have before you.
These were slight hiccups... installation was mostly simple. It went more smoothly than when I replaced the hard drive on my MacBook six years ago. And unlike once when I tried to fix a hinge-wire problem, I didn't end up with an unexpected pile of parts after I was “done”. 🙂
I wanted to use the new SSD as the root drive, so I needed the just-removed DVD drive to reinstall the OS, so I popped it into the fairly cheap plastic case, and it worked fine, though its build quality is a bit lacking... the disk doesn't slide in and out very smoothly.
The machine is now quite fast in many ways... I can reboot (invoke a shut down, then restart back to the login prompt) in 18 seconds. I run a disk speed test with uncompressable data and see real write speeds of about 235 megabytes/second, with read speeds of 265 megabytes/second. This compares to hard-disk numbers of about 85 for both read and write.
The app that had gotten the most slow, Firefox, is quite a bit better, but still slow. I think their “new major version every month” strategy has certain bloatware drawbacks, but considering what I pay (nothing), I can't complain. (Earlier this spring, I did a test using Google Chrome exclusively for a week, but I just couldn't make it work for my needs, so I returned to Firefox.)
Lightroom is also faster, but the develop module can still be really slow for me, much worse than a year ago. I don't know whether the problem is related to something bad with my system, or with Lr4 being that much slower than Lr3, but I've heard sporadic reports along those lines, so maybe I'm getting bit that way.
Since it no longer has a built-in DVD drive, I need to hook up the external DVD drive (that had been my internal DVD drive) when I want to watch a movie or burn a CD. Two words of warning if you go this route:
OSX'x “DVD Player” app won't work with the now-external formerly-internal DVD drive. I always use VLC anyway, so this is a non-issue for me.
The external DVD housing comes with a funky “Y” USB cable. You can use any old USB cable when watching movies, but you need to plug two ends of the “Y” into the computer to get enough juice to actually burn a disk. I don't do that often, so have to remember to get the special cable each time.
I've been using it all without problem for the last two months, so I thought I'd finally write about it.
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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/1250 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Entrance Gate
Joshoko-ji Temple (常照皇寺)
Northern mountains of Kyoto, Japan
Dipping into the several metric tons of pixels that I want to post but have yet to barely even look at myself, a short trip back to late April, to a visit to the Joshoko-ji Temple (常照皇寺, more properly transliterated in English as “Joushoukou-ji”) with Paul Barr and Nicolas Joannin. It was an amazing place, though the harsh sunlight of the hot spring day made for photographic challenges.
I did post just a few shots the day after the trip, in “Pretty As a Peach Blossom”, and some time later some shots that happened to be from that outing to illustrate “Unconventional Camera Bag: Repurposing a Think Tank Photo Retrospective Lens Changer”.
This is the first proper post from the outing, so I'll start with a few shots from the approach to the temple...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Path to the Entrance Gate
from the public street
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Fluffy Sakura
It's been a while since we had any on the blog
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/2000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D3 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48mm — 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Description Plaque
common at temples and shrines
photo by Paul Barr
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Public Street
near the entrance to the path
Heading up the path to the big entrance gate....
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/640 sec, f/1.4, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Exposed for the Shadows”
where one shadow is Nicolas Joannin
... and then stepping through...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/1250 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Outer Garden
just inside the gate
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/2000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bridge and Steps
leading to the (rarely-used) imperial entrance
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — 1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Waterfall of Moss
rarely-used steps to the imperial entrance
(but they're there should the Emperor of Japan choose to pay a visit)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
VIP Entrance and Blossoms
this small unused gate is at the top of the steps
We were a too late for the blossoms' prime, so you can see green leaves mixing in with the blossoms, but it was still quite pretty.
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Garden Detail
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
A Bit Freaky
not sure what's going on here
(I had apparently played with this in Lightroom after loading the images)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 160mm — 1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Just Because
I think it's interesting
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 170mm — 1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nicolas Among the Blossoms
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — 1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Blossoms
among many others at the temple
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 102mm — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Another Interesting Tree
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 78mm — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wall Roof
we could use this kind of flourish in American garden architecture
At this point we're still outside the temple complex, and after paying the trivial fee to the friendly owner, your first look inside is actually fairly bland...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
First Look Inside
the public entrance to the building complex
But much beauty and interest await.