You might remember my post two months ago showing a Nikon D3 shutter release in super-slow motion, using original images ingeniously created by Marianne Oelund. With them, I created an interactive movie where you can scrub the mouse side to side, back and forth, progress the movie in either direction at any speed you like. I also described how she made the frames, along with some stats about the shutter timing and speed.

If you're at all into photography, it's fairly interesting, and it's been by far my most popular post, and two months later, it still gets thousands of pageviews a day.

No thanks, I might add, to the jerks over at Gizmodo.com.

I found out yesterday that Matt Buchanan, one of the editors there, apparently created and posted a non-interactive movie of my interactive application in action. This was a very un-cool thing to do. Yes, it was highly illegal because he had no copyright to do that, but the main problem as far as I'm concerned is that he dumbed down the interesting presentation I worked hard to create. It's interesting to interact with the shutter, er, interactively. It's interesting to see how Marianne made the frames. It's interesting to read some of the stats associated with this.

Matt and Gizmodo took all that away from everyone who saw their post who hadn't already seen mine. It was way uncool, and I didn't appreciate it. A big organization like them (they have fourteen editors!) should know better, if for no other reason that, well, it's illegal, but you'd expect even more clue from people who are supposed to “get” technology. Sigh.

People use/borrow/steal my content all the time and I've never been bothered too much by it, but the dumbing down really angered me, so I sent my first ever takedown request:

I received a reply in short order: “Pulled the post.”

That's it. No greeting, no discussion, no semblance of “sorry” or acknowledgement that what he did was uncool. Three words. Basically, a “fine then, fuck you” attitude.

He did pull the whole post instead of just his lame video, which I guess shouldn't have surprised me. I mean, if he cares so little about the readership of his site that he'd make and present a dumbed down version, I guess he shouldn't mind all the broken links to his site that removing the post has created.

What a jerk.

Hmmm, I wonder how much money Gizmodo made with my stolen content....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Next Saturday is shichi go san – “7 5 3” – a traditional festival celebrating kids aged 7, 5, and 3 years old. (It's taking a will of steel to refrain from the pun of calling this festival “odd”.) Wikipedia has a short little writeup describing it, how often it's the first time for kids to dress up in fancy kimono (girls) or hakama (boys), and such.

Although it's not until next week, this past weekend found the Heian Shrine filled with kids all dressed up and cute as a button. My friend Thomas, in town just for the weekend, called my attention to the concentrated cuteness, and although we didn't have much time before I had to run him to the train station for his trip back to Korea, I stopped by the shrine for a bit and snapped a few pictures.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Heading to the Heian Shrine
Kyoto, Japan
( the out-of-focus guy in the left foreground is a rickshaw driver )

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/5, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Kimono and Purse

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Photo Op
for a family that has not learned to smile in the last three generations

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Most Did Have Smiles

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 135 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Some Were Apprehensive

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 170 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Most Were Not Apprehensive
little boy in a hakama

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/5, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
Everyone Took Pictures
( the little boy is pretending his hands are a telescope )

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Kimono of All Styles and Colors
but the balance was leaning toward the reds and pinks

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 150 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hakama Had Fierce Imagery

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 125 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Overdone

Generally speaking, the kids were cute because they were dressed up in adult styles, not dressed as if they were adults. Their “kidness” was allowed to remain. I've had Anthony dressed up in a suit and I thought it was cute because he was still a kid.

Some of the people we saw at the shrine didn't quite get the distinction, and way overdid it, piling on accessories and makeup in an apparent attempt to obliterate any last remnants of childhood left showing in their child. You could see it in their style choices, in how they interacted with their kid, and in the lack of joy in the kid. Sad.

I tended to not want to photograph such kids, but the shot above is one, dressed to the nines, sans cuteness, with painted face and all...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
Much Nicer
everyone dressed up appropriately; everyone happy

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 116 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Complete With Stuffed Hello Kitty

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 120 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Shoes

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Shoe

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
No Shoes
he's got his tabi socks, but no shoes

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 98 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Complex and Colorful
wonderful mixture of pinks and blues

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Chinese Paparazzi

There was a large group of Chinese tourists who seemed like any tourists you'd see anywhere, except for the odd habit of running up in mobs to someone, taking dozens of pictures over the course of a minute or three, but never making eye contact or acknowledging that the subject they're photographing is a living object. Thomas and I, being pretty much the only white people around, were the subject of this slightly creepy behavior for a while. I tried to engage them with smiles or eye-contact or the one word of Chinese I know (“thank you”), but it's as if we were on the darkened side of a one-way mirror, and they never even knew we were there. Odd.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Take the Damn Picture And Let's Go”
I've got a PlayStation waiting at home

Actually, the little boy was full of smiles posing with his sister, but that one shot caught him with a look that reminded me of how I felt when we were forced to pose for family pictures back in the 70s. The one shot doesn't represent the reality of the scene, so it's totally unfair to pluck this picture out of context like this.... but it's fun. 🙂

(Of course, now as an adult I appreciate that my folks' forced us to pose for Christmas card pictures every year, because now as an adult I can treasure them. But boy, it was painful at the time.)

Back to last Sunday at the Heian Shrine, the cutest of all the kids was this German boy who seemed sort of big for his age...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 155 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Thomas Hertel
Heian Shrine, Kyoto Japan

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
This Evening's Sunset Over Kyoto
boring

Well, today's weather was quite different from yesterday's, so I shouldn't be surprised that today's sunset was nothing compared to yesterday's once-in-a-lifetime sunset. Still, one can hope, so today I made the five-minute drive up to the Shogunzuka overlook and hoped for the best.

I've posted dusk shots from here before, and night shots as well. (See the “nearby photos” link under any picture for other posts with photos taken from here.)

I had a short chat with this couple visiting from Nagoya (about a two-and-a-half hour drive away)...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Enjoying The Sunset
while his wife waited patiently

He was shooting, I think, a Nikon D2x (a pro-level camera) on a tripod. I could tell by how the shutter clicks came in sets of three that he was shooting bracketed sets of shots, likely so that he could use HDR techniques to work around the color-channel clipping issue that I mentioned yesterday.

His wife waited patiently, silently (perhaps, even, enjoying the sunset herself :-)).

He was using a camera accessory I'd never seen, a Velbon Action Level, a small little doohickey that clips into the flash shoe on top of the camera, and shows a green light when the camera is level. For reasons I don't understand, I tend to take shots with the camera tipped a few degrees one way or the other, so I'm forever having to correct this in Lightroom. My D700 has a built in level... I should figure out how to use it, or get one of these doohickeys.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
'Nite-Nite

Wow, my third post of the day. I didn't intend to take any pictures today, but with Anthony's style choices in the morning, and the stunningly orange sunset in the evening, I've had no choice.

On top of that, I went a bit early to pick up Anthony from school, and stopped in to the grounds of the old imperial palace (Kyoto Gosho) to check on the fall foliage there. I think it's safe to say that the opening act is on stage, but the headliners are still in the dressing room.

The “opening act” are some of the trees that turn early. We've seen some already last weekend in the mountains, and this weekend in posts of my friend Thomas' in Kyoto and in Kibune, and here again today as some young kids prepared to play in the park during a school outing...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 116 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
School Outing
on the grounds of the old imperial palace, Kyoto Japan

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pretty Colors
ho hum... yawn...

The headliners are the maple, the momiji, the trees whose colors become so consistently amazing that they have become a synonym in Japanese for “fall colors” in the same way that “Kleenex” means “facial tissue” (but, er, nicer).

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 110 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Still in the Dressing Room

There are plenty of leaves that have turned and fallen, but we still await the main show.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Left The Building
before Elvis has even arrived

Portrait-Mode Vertical Desktop-Background Versions
1050×1680  ·  1200×1920  ·  1600×2560     

Sometimes you do see a touch of color starting to emerge, and it can be nice, but it's just not there yet....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 86 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/3.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Duck Nap
Waiting for a more photogenic time to awake

The tree over the ducks, with a touch of color emerging, will progress through its color and losing its leaves, and will be completely bare before the real fireworks begin (as this picture can attest, taken December 5th last year, you can see this tree as the bare cloud of branches in the far right).

I sorta' like this shot of a huge fallen treestump that kids love to play on. Like this evening's sunset pictures, I had to wrestle with the data in Lightroom to keep the bright colors of the foreground leaves from blowing out to white, but I was mostly successful...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 80 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/5, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos

On the other hand, since I'd been doing so much with the develop settings, I decided to have some fun with this otherwise-throwaway shot....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/11, ISO 4500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Exaggerated

All the colors and the contrast are exaggerated, and the result is far from what was actually visible on this overcast-with-occasional-sun day. The result is sort of similar to this “Funky Joy” shot of Anthony and the Dave Hill look. As I've written before (several times), there are a lot of fun, creative things you can do right in Lightroom.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/3.5, ISO 1400 — full exif
Anthony's Interesting Style Choice

It was pretty chilly this morning, so while Fumie made Anthony's bento, I laid out some warm clothes for him. This included a sort of small shirt and a big fluffy sweater. I'd intended that he wear the big sweater over the small shirt, but he had other ideas.

(I snapped the shot above just after Anthony had brushed his teeth; the “stain” on his shirt is just water.)