NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130 mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
My View This Morning

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  2560×1600

It's the view on my computer, at least, when I first sat down this morning. When I'm testing Lightroom things, I'm often jumping around randomly in my image archive, and apparently this was the image I happened to end at when I went to bed last night. Concentrating on my work at the time, I didn't think much about it one way or the other, but it was a nice image to wake up to, so I thought I'd share it.

It's from the last day of our short New Year trip to Toyama Prefecture, seen in other recent posts, including this, this, this, and this.

Desktop-backgrounds included as a bonus.

Continued here...

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Some people subscribe to my blog posts (and/or the comments left on posts) by email, which means that my system sends them a message from time to time. This is all done automatically, so I normally never see these messages, but the other day I received a reply to one, from a guy whose name I recognized from the comments he'd left on my blog over time, and from some private email exchanges we'd had about Lightroom.

This particular guy lives in Bangkok, but is British, so I didn't expect the bordering-on-gibberish broken English of the short message in his reply. After looking at it for a few moments, it dawned on me what the writer was trying to say. Translating in full, it said “I'm his wife; sorry to tell you he died.”

I went to his blog, which normally has two or three new posts a day, and found it showing nothing new for the last two weeks. The most recent post (the last post), about some photographic technology, had accumulated a few comments from regular readers along the lines of “dude, where have you been?”

I went to his Flickr site; the last photo was uploaded on the same day as his last post, of a rotary-dial phone, with a “don't see these around much any more” caption.

I didn't know the guy.... I didn't know how old he was, what he looked like, or even that he had a wife, but two things were apparent from the message I'd received: he was dead, and he had a Thai wife whose English was not good. For some reason that latter part had a big impact on me. I could envision a grieving wife trying to come to terms with things, finding his email account and seeing all these long English-language messages from the same address (my blog's automated system, though I'm sure she didn't know what it was), and wanting to at least try to let the sender know that he'd passed. She wanted to get the word out to his friends, but didn't have the linguistic or technical ability to do so.

His blog sitting there in the state he left it seemed somehow wrong, somehow unfitting. If his online friends didn't know of his passing, those in a position to help his wife wouldn't be able to. Like I said, my imagination of the situation had a big impact on me, and I wanted to try to do something.

To try to get the word out, I first added a comment on his last blog post telling what I'd heard from his wife, but it turns out that comments were moderated, so no one would see the comment until he manually approved it, something that seemed unlikely at this point. There were comments asking “where are you?”, so I figure for me to see them they must have been from friends he trusted enough to white-list in his moderation system, so that their messages would bypass the moderation queue and appear immediately. So I followed the link trail, and was eventually able to contact someone who knew him in Bangkok. "He didn't show up for lunch and I was getting worried, but I only have his email, so couldn't call him to ask what was up." Now he knew.

I also was able to contact a blog friend in North America who had also been getting worried. He was able to then follow his own contacts and finally confirmed that indeed the man had died. I have no idea about the circumstances, other than “unexpected”, which one could gather from the full-steam-ahead online presence he had that suddenly, unceremoniously, stopped. I suppose it was a car accident or heart attack, but I don't know.... in any case, the result remains the same.

I'd felt compelled to do something, and however little, I had, which then allowed my thoughts to wander. It's a vastly different world now than for the first umpteen thousand years of human existence, where one's presence can be extended all around the world with unprecedented ease (just start a blog, or upload some photos), garnering a friendship of global proportions, yet, still, have all those links be of the most tenuous, fragile nature that can completely miss an event as significant as death.

I wondered what will happen to his blog, to his online photos? Without help from an English speaker, I suspect his wife won't do anything (but even if she could, what would she want to do?). Will his Flickr site stay there until.... forever? Or will Yahoo eventually decide that since no one has logged in for X years, delete it? Will his blog stay there until a disk wears out, or will someone come in and dismantle it? Will someone put up a post-mortem post telling the world that the author died?

I wondered about all this without much direction, but with a profound sense of sadness related to, I guess, the disconnect between our offline presence (our life) and our online presence, and how when one is turned off at our death, the other is left.... hanging.

I wondered what post will be at the top of my blog when I die. I doubt it'll be something like “Heading across the street to get the mail; hope I don't get hit by a bus!” or “Doctor says prognosis is not good.” Given the demographics of my posts, it'll probably be something mundane and boring, like “Hey Look, a Pretty Flower!”

So when my posting frequency slows due to a slight case of death, how long before people notice? Will they notice? In my case, my wife can speak English very well, and my technologically-unchallenged brother in America could figure out how to put a note on my blog informing of my untimely demise, but what about if Fumie and I died in the same accident... how would word ever even get to my family in America?

I suppose I shouldn't worry about this stuff.... heck, it won't matter to me because I'll be dead.... but thinking about it still makes me a bit melancholy. Of course, I've thought about death plenty before, as anyone does, and the amazing abruptness of “we know neither the time nor the place” remains as impactful as ever, but for some reason this new angle seems to make things a bit different... just a touch more real.

I prayed for him and his wife. It felt a bit odd, since I don't even know who they are, but I trust that God does.

For the record, should I die unexpectedly any time soon, I'd hope my blog could remain available, for Anthony to read when he gets old enough.

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/15 sec, f/22, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Rare Photo of Japanese Abominable Snowman

Having mostly conquered the ability to drive in snow on our recent trip to snowy Toyama Prefecture, four hours' drive north of Kyoto, I thought to see whether I could enhance my ability to take photographs in the snow. At our first big stop in the snow, the historic Gokayama Village, while Anthony played on a slight hill covered with a lot of snow, I tried different shutter speeds so that I could inspect the effect they had in capturing the moving snow.

The results are not too useful in an absolute basis because snow falls at different speeds, ranging from a driving blizzard down to the very slow, silent fall on a calm morning where it seems as if the snow is falling in bullet time. (Memories from when I was a kid, of delivering newspapers at 3am on a dead-still Ohio Sunday morning during this kind of snow are very fond... well, except for the whole “delivering newspapers” and “3am” parts.)

It also depends on the focal length used, and I was not consistent.

Also working against these results is the haphazard way I did them. I thought “hey, maybe I'll try different shutter speeds”, asked Anthony to stand still for a bit, and took some shots. No planning, no tripod, no skill... just blessed ignorance.

Anyway, inspecting how the falling snow looks in each of these shots gives some ideas about what to expect.... something very slow like 1/20th or 1/30th of a second gives a great snowfall effect, at the cost of added worry about camera shake and the movement of other items in the scene....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/13 sec, f/22, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/13 sec
looks like rain

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — ¹/20 sec, f/22, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/20 sec
could be confused for rain (except for the HUGE PILES OF SNOW everywhere 🙂 )

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm — ¹/30 sec, f/16, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/30 sec
gives a nice sense of the heaviness of the snowfall

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 58 mm — ¹/40 sec, f/13, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/40 sec
also nice, one flake near the lens puts a big white blog on Anthony's skipants

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm — ¹/100 sec, f/10, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/100 sec
still offers a sense of movement

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/13, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/160 sec
no movement in the snow, but not crisp either

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/200 sec
no sense of movement in the snow,
but less worry about camera shake and subject blur.
(Anthony is in the air, mid jump, from the top of the mound)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/800 sec
very crisp

This last one is the one seen yesterday as Rosy Cheeks

Here's another pair of a different subject. You can see at the bottom of the thatched roof the multiple layers of different materials, as seen the other day on a different house.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/60 sec

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/250 sec

Finally, yet another pair taken of a grove of trees at a toll gate of a highway later in the day:

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm — ¹/30 sec, f/13, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/30 sec

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
¹/640 sec

Continued here...

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Rosy Cheeks
in snowy Gokayama Village (introduced here), Toyama Prefecture, Japan

Yes, I'm aware it's utterly cliché, but there was almost no other color in the shot to begin with, just his hood, gloves, and some stripes on his jacket.

Continued here...

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

One of the photos I posted in yesterday's introduction to Gokayama Village in Toyama Prefecture, Japan, was this one of Anthony and Fumie walking down one of the streets...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 28 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Street in Gokayama
Revisited

I pointed out the silver boxes on either side of the road and in the background contain powerful water guns, on hand for fire prevention.

It's not possible to overstate how deeply rooted the fear and respect of fire is ingrained into Japanese culture. Especially for the first couple of thousand years of modern Japanese civilization, the safety of one's house and family was directly related to the fire-prevention habits of everyone else nearby, because if one house caught fire, it would spread to all houses in the area. (Until recently... until maybe 30 or 40 years ago... the vast majority of Japanese buildings were made mostly of wood.) If you made a mistake, thousands would pay, and vice-versa. Despite this ingrained caution, mass conflagrations were apparently common, so the fear was well founded.

The direct fear of mass conflagration is much less now, of course, but you can still see the deep-rooted cultural fear/respect in daily life, from 「火の用心」 (hinoyoujin, “be alert/cautious for fire”) printed on signs and the sides of buildings all over, to buckets of water still kept at the ready outside many people's houses. Still today on summer evenings, it's not uncommon to hear the resonate sound of someone hitting two thick wood batons together in cadence with a chanted “火の用心”, as a general reminder (during the evening cooking hour, since until recently cooking was always done over a fire?) to be vigilant against fires.

It can even be seen in the difference between how ambulances and fire engines move in the streets: an ambulance is the most docile vehicle on the road... even when on an emergency run with lights flashing and siren blaring, they never exceed the speed limit. They slow down cautiously when approaching any intersection (even when they have the green light), and generally give the feeling that the driver is a prudent 95-year-old grandma on the way to bingo. Other vehicles often don't open a path for them, and in fact, other vehicles often pass them because they are going so slowly. The overall impression is that the ambulance is not the slightest concern for anyone, except, perhaps, the person riding in the back about ready to die.

One person's impending death is concern for one person, but a fire is a concern for all. I once happened to be on my bicycle traveling by a place that had apparently just caught fire, because as I approached, I was shocked to see a firetruck careen around a far corner so fast that it almost was up on two wheels, fly down the street towards me at positively breakneck speed, zig-zagging around traffic like an NYC bike messenger. In very short order, police cars, more fire engines, and fire-department cars of various ilk descended on the location like flies on... er... with great number and intensity. That's the reaction I would hope for if I ever needed a trip in an ambulance, but the only way I'd get it is to light myself on fire.

Anyway, back to our world-heritage village of Gokayama, where the deep cultural fear of fire was ratcheted up tenfold. There were fire-fighting things everywhere, and probably even more out of sight under the snow. Besides the water guns, the area was littered with underground cisterns (and their above-ground identification signs) and above-ground pools to hold water for fire prevention.

I say they're for fire prevention and not fire fighting because they're not there to fight fires, they're there to prevent fires from spreading.

Most of the village was destroyed in the 1880s when one house caught on fire, and the embers quickly spread the fire to the other houses. Now in case of a fire elsewhere in the village, all the houses can douse their fire-hungry thatched roofs with water, thereby preventing the spread.

The water guns and such can be used to actually fight a fire as well, of course, but their primary mission is fire prevention.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/4, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
L a d d e r

Passing one house that was on a level well below the road, we could look down to see a ladder hung on the side, sagging with age. (It's difficult to see behind the flurry of flakes, but it's there.)

It's almost certainly there for fires. I know that farm houses tend to have ladders on their sides so that they're available for fire fighting, though I'm not entirely sure in what capacity they might serve that purpose, but I guess it's so that one can quickly get up on the roof with a bucket of water if needed.

By the way, attentive readers will note an apparent discrepancy in some of the facts presented here and on the previous post. Here I noted that almost the entire village was destroyed by fire in the 1880s, yet I mention that some of these houses are 300 years old. If they all burnt down 130 years ago, one wonders how they can be 300 years old, and the answer lies in a technicality: they've been at this site for 130 years (since after the fire), but because their construction allows for them to be dismantled, moved, and reassembled, the village was repopulated after the fire with a combination of new construction (now 130 years old) and moved construction.

When I heard this story from the current owner of one of the houses (one built after the fire, so a new one), the first thing that came to mind was “where did they get the houses to bring here?”, but I didn't get a chance to ask. I don't think Home Depot sold pre-fab houses in Japan in the 1880s, so I'm at a loss to explain how one suddenly in need of a house would procure one. If I visit again, I'll have to ask.

Continued here...