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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 5000 — image data
Oddly-Calming Pastel Fall Foliage

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This one is very much a matter of taste, but I came across this rendition of a fall-foliage scene while futzing in Lightroom as I tested my Lightroom plugins. I often need to make an image look completely different than before, so I can tell at a glance when it arrives at an upload destination I'm working on, and in doing this I usually just slam a develop slider one way or the other to its limit. I tend to not pay attention to which slider I grab, or what the result is, but sometimes the result does grab my attention.

This one grabbed my attention because of its soft pastel colors, and how it feels so... indistinct. It's somehow calming.

I don't normally post these ones that grab my attention because they'd get old rather quickly, but I did post one back in 2008, in “Serendipitous Fun with Adobe Lightroom”.

For reference, here's the original.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 5000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Generic Fall Leaves
Eikando Temple, Kyoto Japan (永観堂)

For what it's worth, this photo is from the outing to the Eikando Temple last fall that produced:

• Anthony Shows Some Photographic Brilliance at the Always-Brilliant Eikando Temple
• My Turn: A Few of My Shots From Yesterday’s Trip to the Eikando Temple with Anthony

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lake-Viewing Room
Shoseien Temple (渉成園)
Downtown Kyoto, Japan

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I went with a friend to the Shoseien Temple (渉成園) today, in downtown Kyoto Japan. It's a little osasis on what must have been the outskirt boonies of Kyoto 360 years ago when it was started, but now it's in the middle of the city, a short walk from Kyoto Station.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bridge

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Bridge is Rustic
much like the rest of the place

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ducky
needs no bridge

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It's got quite a different vibe than your average temple; here, they embrace being rustic, but always with class. It's nice.

I haven't really looked at my photos yet, but I'm sure I'll post more once I do.

It must have been painful for the owners during the last 100 or so years as tall buidlings have sprung up all around...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/320 sec, f/9, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wider View
of the lake-viewing room

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
ɹǝʍoʇ oʇoʎʞ

Continued here...

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data
Prucia
Japanese plum wine, from France
( though it seems I've made it look like a perfume advertisement in this shot )

I mentioned the other day in a post about a minor heart episode that a local restaurant, Togiya, serves Prucia, a plum wine (umeshu — 梅酒) from France. I'd never seen a plum wine from outside Japan.

Well, in the store the other day to pick up some of the fiesta-in-a-bottle Sangria Peñasol that I mentioned in last month's “A Bunch Of Blurry Pictures of Folks Pouring Wine”, to my surprise I came across a bottle of Prucia on the shelf. In the name of research and public service, I brought it home with me.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/40 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — image data

I've shown great restraint in letting it sit in the fridge, wanting to photograph the interesting bottle before actually partaking of its quirky liquid goodness. I finally got around to having it sit for a portrait for me, and in doing so had much better luck with the lighting than I did in yesterday's portraiture practice.

Make no mistake, I still have almost no clue what I'm doing, but bottles are a lot easier than people, and when you can immediately check the results on the back of the camera and make adjustments, just a bit of knowledge about light can go a very long way in guiding your experiments.

I read the most-excellent book “Light — Science and Magic” many years ago, and quite a bit has stuck with me. I've got it here on the shelf.. a re-read would certainly be time well spent.

Anyway, here's the setup for the “white” shot above:

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/50 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 — image data

It's really quite simple... three craft-store white foam boards sitting on my kitchen table, and a flash directly off to the side (next to a bottle of a different kind of plum wine that we'll see later in this post).

The on-camera flash is up, but it was acting only as the commander for the on-table flash, and did not add to the photograph's lighting.

From the rear..

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/60 sec, f/3.3, ISO 100 — image data

Each of the two standing foam boards are held by simple little plastic store-display tag holders that I bought almost five years ago, just after the last time I tried any of this stuff. Back then I had these lighting-related articles:

• The Japanese Beer Market
• If It's Not in Frame, It Doesn't Exist
• The Most Difficult Aspect of Photographic Lighting

After all that, I bought a bunch of clamps and stands and stuff, and used them to take up space in my closet for almost five years until I pulled them out today. Still, I was too lazy to use two stands per board, so I grabbed some CDs to keep the background board pressed snugly up against the floor board.

Before doing much with the flash, you want to see how much the ambient light will impact the shot, so here's one without any flash:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/40 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — image data

I futzed around with all kinds of things, including minor adjustments in camera position, flash power, flash location, aperture, etc. Here's one from later, also without flash, from a slightly higher camera position, stopped down to f/4 to increase the depth of field:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/20 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — image data

Each change is subtle, but gives quite a different mood.

Pulling the cold bottle from the fridge resulted in the expected photogenic sheen of sweat, and I tried various things to try to pull out that detail. Here I put the flash directly behind the bottle....

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — image data

That's a bit overpowering, so I moved the flash back a bit, and raised it up a bit as well....

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/50 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 — image data

The result is a bit more balanced...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — image data

With that last one, I groomed the light a bit, so to speak, in Lightroom, to increase the moodiness.

It's at this point I pulled the camera back to take the sort-of-dramatic perfume-advertisement-ish shot that opened this post. I increased the shutter speed and made the aperture smaller, thus killing the ambient light. (That is, making the non-flash light insufficient to register a photo; if I were to have taken a shot without the flash, it would have been black.)

So, I add the flash and set its power so that it gives the effect I wanted.

I tried all kinds of things. I placed the flash almost up against the side of the bottle...

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 102mm — ¹/20 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400 — image data

... to produce...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/80 sec, f/8, ISO 320 — image data

I tried snooting the flash between some tissue boxes, in an effort to highlight the sweat beads from the side...

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/40 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 — image data

... but it just produced this:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/160 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data

I tried shooting from above down into the bottle, and also added some front fill via the on-camera flash

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — ¹/20 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 — image data

... and got this:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/160 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data

Before pulling the Prucia from the fridge, I wanted to practice with a non-cold bottle. Fumie likes the Kumano (熊野) plum wine from 熊平の梅, and having just gotten a bottle, I thought it was the perfect place to start.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — image data
“Kumano Plum Wine”
from Kumahei no Ume

It's a less expressive bottle, but I still futzed around with polarizer filters, flash placement, etc. Here's a slightly more sterile look I stumbled upon:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/40 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data

Many factors go into each shot, including some that are not recorded in the image Exif. The placement of the flash, whether the on-camera was used, the power each flash is fired at, whether a polarizer was used and if so its setting... all of this plays an important part in the final result, but since I was change these all around willy nilly and took no notes, I have only a vague memory of what actually applied to each shot, so it was a learning experience, but not as much of one as it could have been.

I guess I'll just have to do it again.

And finally, from the “only in Japan” files, here's a can of beer I just had to shoot:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — image data
Rolling Hop

In case you can't quite read that at the bottom, yes, it actually says:

“The rolling stones are the greatest rock 'n roll band in the world”

( opinions expressed by the can do not necessarily reflect that of your blog author )

I wonder whether Suntory had to pay the Rolling Stones for the logo, or the Stones had to pay Suntory for the tagline.

I also wonder where this beer was produced. I don't recall it when I toured the local Suntory brewery this spring.

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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/800 sec, f/1.4, ISO 400 — image data
Me
photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

I have some confidence behind the camera, but none in front of it, and that's pretty hypocritical of me if I want others to be comfortable in front of my lens, so I've decided to do something about it.

In particular, the various videos by master headshot photographer Peter Hurley, such as this two-hour seminar (kindly sponsored by B&H Photo) have got me interested in doing more portraiture.

I'm pretty confident shooting things like flowers and mossy temples and pseudo-candid family stuff and the occasional passing planet or kick-ass lady archer, but real formalish portraits are a different, alien world. Sometimes I happen to get lucky (I like this shot of Paul Barr), but having no clue what I'm doing sort of hinders things in general.

So, with one viewing of the Peter Hurley video under my belt, I got together with Stéphane Barbery today to give it a try, with me taking shots of him, and he of me.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/640 sec, f/1.4, ISO 400 — image data
photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

Stéphane has appeared on my blog a number of times, most recently teaching a lesson with humble pie on my disastrous Mt. Hiei hike. His photos appeared on my blog several years ago, in “Delighting in a Chasm Between Artistic Senses” and “Kyoto Jidai Matsuri Photos by Stéphane Barbery”, and now again today with these shots he took of me.

We started with me taking photos of him, so I had to decide the lighting and such. We had Nikon speedlights that we didn't know how to use, reflectors, umbrellas, and a big window feeding gorgeous cloudy-day light. I tried all kinds of combinations and was not happy with anything I saw on the back of the camera, despite my model being quite handsome.

I hadn't expected this much difficulty.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/1000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 400 — image data
photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

The two-hour video I cited above was actually quite depressing for me to watch because it made it clear that technical skill with the camera is not what makes great portraits, but, rather, the human aspect: being able to quickly develop a personal rapport with the subject that allows you to figure out how to make them feel comfortable, and how to draw out from them their best look. This is not good news to a computer-programmer geek who prefers to be separated from the subject by a beefy lens.

So, I expected that part to be difficult, and it was to the point that it became comic relief. But what I didn't expect was how hard the light was to do (though since I'd never really done something like this, I should have expected the difficulty).

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/640 sec, f/1.4, ISO 400 — image data
My Wife Hates This Kind of Shot
and my mom will certainly leave a comment telling me that I need a shave
photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

Anyway, I was shocked when I got home and looked at the photos in Lightroom, the ones that I took of Stéphane. They were amazing. I was very happy with the results.

I'll share some of those when I can, but for this post I'm showing a few that Stéphane took of me in the few minutes that I left for him to shoot. I probably would not pick these shots, nor process them like he did, but that's part of the fun mentioned in the “Delighting in a Chasm Between Artistic Senses” post.

And, of course, if I want others to trust me with photos, I must have experience trusting someone taking/selecting/processing photos of me.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/800 sec, f/1.4, ISO 400 — image data
photo and processing by Stéphane Barbery

I wanted to present his photos and processing exactly as he provided them to me, but I had to make one small change: in one shot I felt that it looked like I had cataracts, so I toned down the brightness on the eyes considerably.

Much practice will be required before I even start to have a clue, both in front of the camera and behind. We may try again tomorrow... we'll see.

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Eizan Ropeway Car
I didn't take this

Earlier this month I told my tale of out-of-shape hiking woe in “Yesterday’s Hike: The Agony Where Bravado Yields, In Spectacular Fashion, To Painful Reality”. The trip up the mountain was, if you'll excuse the pun, an exercise in pain, but the trip down was a breeze, as I availed myself of a cable car that heads straight up/down the mountain.

In the Japanese vernacular, a “cable car” is a train pulled by a cable. From where that ends near the top, a “ropeway” (as seen above) can bring you the rest of the short distance to the top. The American English in me would have called the ropeway a cable car, and the cable car a train, so I had to relearn those words for Japan.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 42mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hazy View of Northern Kyoto
from between Eizan's Ropeway and Cable Car

The view from the area where the cable car ends, even though not the top of the mountain, is impressively high, and I was surprised at the sense of height. It feels much higher than from Daimonji, for example (as seen here, here, and here). I want to go back again on a clear day, with a big lens.

And luckily, even out-of-shape me can do so easily thanks to the cable car (though I'm much less out of shape these days, since the exercise the hike prompted me to start).

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 36mm — ¹/200 sec, f/3.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cable Car Station

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/3.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cable Car #1

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/200 sec, f/3.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Completely Lost
The tracks are going down at a precariously steep angle, but it looks almost flat in the photo

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/200 sec, f/13, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Cable
There apparently used to be two until recently

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/200 sec, f/13, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Where #1 and #2 Pass
The temple in the background gives a sense of the steepness

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48mm — ¹/200 sec, f/5, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
Two Ships Passing in the Night
or something like that

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 35mm — ¹/200 sec, f/5, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bottom Station

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nearby Train Station
to bring me most of the rest of the way home

Continued with next year's hike here...