More pictures from Kevin and Yoko Parrington's wedding.

Kevin is the youngest of 10 kids, and – according to the “life history” that he wrote about himself for the reception guests – the cutest of them all. Not all his family could make it to Japan for the wedding, so I thought I'd publish a few more pics right away, for their benefit...

Their time was divided pretty evenly between posing for photos and other stuff (where “other stuff” encompasses random little things like actually getting married, visiting with guests, cutting the cake, etc.). There was a lot of posing.

I suppose that If I looked that good, I'd spend my time posing as well, but that's left to speculation.

The two photos above were taken 10 minutes apart (from different locations, with different lenses), but they happen to fit together so nicely that I thought I'd place them as I did. I don't know whether it really “works”, but it's worth a try.

After a long photo-op in the lobby, we moved up to the 68th floor for the reception. There were two “welcome” signs that I'm sure where hand painted by the kids, although I got only one good photo...

The venue changed, but not much else...

Well, okay, the lighting changed as well.... dramatically.

(My own boy Anthony has been a ring bearer twice, once for my brother and his fiancee, and another time for a friend of Fumie.)

The event was held on the 68th floor of the Yokohama Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan, in a room with an entire wall of windows, offering an amazing view. Unfortunately, that made it seem to the camera as if the sun was brought down to earth and placed directly behind whatever you were trying to photograph, so it was really challenging to get an exposure appropriate for the dark foreground — people, cakes, etc. — instead of the bright outside. Spot metering is your friend.

The pro photographer used a fill flash, of course, but I didn't have a flash with me (well, except the on-camera flash that I wouldn't want to use in this case). And to be frank, even if I did bring one of my off-camera flashes, I simply don't have the skill to use it with confidence, despite having read Strobist for a long time. I must actually practice, rather than just read.

Sometimes it all came together for a nice shot, like the one above. It looks almost as if Yoko is an angel that the light is reluctant to give up.

I took that photo from my seat at the reception (luckily, there was no one behind me, so I could stand and wield my big lenses freely), but I had to move toward the windows if I wanted to get a shot without the windows blinding from behind. I did that for this shot of Kevin's brother...

I moved over even further toward the windows, to get the next few shots...

After the first cut came the first bites, each spoon fed by their new spouse...

The photo above originally came out very dark, because I goofed up and exposed for the bright windows, but because I shoot in raw, I was able to recover something and ended up with a gritty image that I sort of like.

Mostly, though, you probably don't want “gritty” at a wedding. I seemed to have neglected to get a shot of the entire cake – all three or four tiers – which further shows my wedding-photographer shortcomings. Unlike a true pro, though, I actually got a piece (it was large enough for everyone to have a slice), so I can report that it was delicious.

Also along the “not gritty” lines, Yoko's mother was the epitome of understated class and style...

Kevin's lived in Japan for 20+ years, so it's been a long time since he's celebrated a birthday with his Stateside family. His birthday was two days before the wedding, so with a lot of family in town today, Yoko surprised him with a birthday party during the reception.

This was one of the few cases that I really nailed the difficult exposure, I think.

At the end, they bade farewell in the foyer, basking in the warm glow of both the incandescent lights and the happy day. Nao did a jig.

There was a final photo op in the lobby, with many permutations of friends and family...

The lady in kimono is Yoko's “bridesmade” (in the literal sense, as described on this post).

I attended the wedding of an old friend yesterday; Kevin and Yoko tied the knot on the 68th floor of Yokohama's Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan. They appeared on my Impromptu Portraits in the Park post last year not long after they got engaged, as well as in followups here, here, and here.

Kevin is one of those guys who looks better and better with age, but really, you almost didn't notice him or anything else when Yoko was present. “Spectacular” just doesn't do her or that dress justice.

Kevin's selection for the engagement ring – seen out of focus in the photo above – has a wonderful little story. It's a diamond, flanked on either side by sapphires: to Kevin, the diamond represents Yoko, and the two jewels represent Kana and Nao, Yoko's remarkably photogenic children (seen in the posts linked above). And supporting and protecting them all is the band, which represents Kevin.

I have immense respect for a good wedding photographer, because the photographic challenges of a wedding are usually formidable. Wedding venues seem to always have horrible lighting: way too little light, with what is there usually being of mixed colors (e.g. fluorescent mixed with incandescent, which makes for a color balance nightmare).

This time was no exception, especially the lack of light during the photo op in the lobby. I had the ISO cranked up, and was usually shooting wide open or close. The results were better than the last time I was at a wedding, but I only had a point-n-shoot then. I did do better than the last time I had a real camera at a wedding (my brother Alan's marriage to Natalie two years ago), due to having a little more skill now, and a much faster lens.

Still, even with the faster lenses, many of my shots were blurry. Here's one where I think the blur really helps to capture the moment, as the young relatives gathered for a photo...

One of Yoko's friends did the bouquet, boutonnière, and all the flowers, so I figured that she'd be able to handle my big camera and heavy lens, so I imposed on her to take a shot with me in it. She was hesitant at first, but the weight and the solid sound of a real shutter felt satisfying, so she enjoyed it (and did a great job)...

I met Tim, Kevin, and Mike via a “Life in Japan” mailing list 18 or so years ago (long prior to the world wide web). All three attended my wedding 10 years ago, and now that I think about it, I don't think I'd actually met Tim or Mike since. It was wonderful to catch up.

Two things I must make clear, though, about that picture:

1. No, I'm not really that tall. I had to stand one step higher than the rest, to avoid standing on Yoko's dress.
2. No, I'm not really that fat. Seriously, next to Yoko and that amazing dress, how can anyone else look good?
   (Well, okay, anyone else except for Kevin, Tim, and Mike?)

At least I'm not totally ruining the shot with my horrible “smile for the camera” fake smile. I just can't smile on demand in a way that doesn't look anything but hugely dorky, so this time I was trying to not smile. This was the only shot of the several that Ami-chan took that came out with me not looking sour, so I've still got work to do. (Or better yet, I'll stay on the other side of the camera.)

I've heard that Japanese weddings can be excruciatingly long and drawn out productions, but the one's I've been to have all been really nice. (Counting my own, this was the fourth wedding I've been to in Japan.) Kevin and Yoko had a combined wedding/reception 68 floors up that was just excellent, at least from the perspectives of the couple and guests. The photographer they hired, however, may have a different opinion due to the – you guessed it – challenging lighting, but I'll leave that for another post.

Congratulations Yoko and Kevin!

Continued here...

Continuing from Part 1 and Part 2 about our visit to Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社).....

A short climb from the pretty lake mentioned in Part 1, you come, surprisingly, across a couple of small buildings, one a restaurant, straddling the path:

We stopped for a juice, and to chat with the lady. She was 86, and the fourth generation of her family to own/run the little restaurant. The shrine owns the land, but for whatever reason, the family has these buildings. The building across the path was her house; she had been born there.

I found out later, from another such living-on-the-mountain lady, that there were 18 of these homesteads on shrine property. (The other lady was 72 years old, and also been born in a little house alongside the gate-filled path.)

There were fox idols everywhere, usually decorated with a weather-worn bib of some sort. I think they represent guardians or the like, but there were so many that I sometimes felt worried that Moses would come smite the whole place. These temple/shrine things are cultural to me – not religious – just as they are for most Japanese as well, but I suspect that at this location, there are more than usual for whom it is religious. (Regardless of my own feelings, I always treat these places with respect; I wouldn't want to offend those for whom it does have meaning.)

I mentioned in Part 1 that you sometimes saw sets of orange gates off in the distance; what I failed to mention was the “distance” was sometimes vertical as well as lateral, so sometimes you got views like this:

We were treated to this extra view because we left the beaten path (so to speak) to take a sub-path to the geocache that I mentioned in Part 1. We were looking for The Guardian Fox cache, hidden in 2003 by a couple of guys from Kyoto. We found it easily, just like at least (according to the logs at that link) 60 people before us....

On the way to the shrine, we'd stopped by a store and picked up a couple of Hello Kitty keychain figurines, and a small jar of Ramune candies. We placed these in the cache, and took back with us a few things from among the small collection inside. Anthony picked a small keychain with a picture of a Chinese vase, and a (pre-Euro) coin from what looks to be a European country. I picked a tiny toy carabiner that I now have clipped to my camera case.

We carefully put everything back, and returned to the main path.

Not far from the geocache is a crossroads where several paths cross, and one of the few places we found that offered a nice view of southern Kyoto...

(The elevated expressway you can see in the distance is the No. 2 Kyoto-Osaka Expressway that I wrote about last year.)

There were (like everywhere else) little sub-shrines all around, including at the junction area. I snapped this next picture there, and I'm not sure why because it really has nothing to offer, but for some reason, I really like it...

Having accomplished the goal of finding the geocache “treasure”, and lacking a map or any particular idea on what to do next, I let Anthony pick which path we should take from the crossroads. He picked one that looked somewhat dark and foreboding....

It quickly brightened up, and turned out to be quite nice. I trailed Anthony for a while, snapping pics....

We eventually came upon a really interesting area that I'll have to write about another time, but let's just say that there were a lot of foxes....

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Here are a few more pics from the early part of my visit to Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社) with Anthony yesterday....

I tend to take pictures of them whenever I see them (all the time), so I'm surprised that they've appeared on my blog only three times in the past, in posts about Arashiyama, Giouji Temple, and Konpukuji Temple (update: and Miyajima).

Part of yesterday's Elaborate Sub-Shrine facing the pretty lake....

I really liked the rack of gate offerings, as (I think) they made for some great imagery.

The real gates weren't so bad themselves, of course; with paths leading every which way, a fresh perspective was always presenting itself.

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Wow.

Wow wow wow.

I've lived in this part of the world for the better half of the last 20 years, but today was my first visit to the Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社) in south-east Kyoto, and it was amazing.

I'd heard enough about it to know that it had a path lined with a bunch of torii gates, but I was totally unprepared for the thousands and thousands of gates lining miles of mountain paths.

And frankly, that wasn't even the best part, but it was such a visually-overwhelming experience for someone with an eye toward photography that I don't even know where to begin. So, I'll just start at the start.

I'd found out about a geocache at this shrine, and thought it would be a fun thing to try to find it with Anthony. A geocache is a treasure that someone's planted somewhere such that you're not likely to find it unless you look, and they publish its latitude and longitude to a site like geocaching.com. I knew that it would be a photogenic trip, but I also knew that he wouldn't care about that, so adding a “treasure hunt” aspect made it interesting for him as well.

So, we scootered the three miles south from our place, and arrived to find a shrine complex that was typical in general appearance, but atypical in grandeur – it was huge – and was clearly well funded. It's the head shrine dedicated to industry and worldly success, after all.

There were many buildings, and a few large gates, but not the gate-lined paths I'd seen in pictures, so we headed back behind the main complex, and soon spotted some gates through the trees....

It doesn't come out in the picture very well, but it was almost breathtaking to see them in the distance like that, through the trees. We never did get onto that specific path, but soon came upon the start of the gates on the path we were on...

The gates are generally made of wood, although the occasional stone gate can be spotted from time to time. Each has been donated by a person or a company (at an expense that likely starts in the $10,000 - $20,000 range), and each is unique. There's a wide variety of shapes, colors, sizes, and ages, all mixed together. Many are new or sport a fresh coat of paint, but just as many are rotting and crumbling back to nature.

Each is engraved with “donation/offering” across the top, and the name of the donor on one leg, and often, the date it was erected engraved on the other...

The writing is generally only on one side, which is why you don't see any in the first picture at the top of this post.

This shrine has been around for over 1,000 years, but its collection of gates is constantly changing such that it might almost seem alive. There were plenty of sections of path that had no gates at all, but you could see from the patterns on the ground that the path had been fully packed with gates at some time in the past.

The paths are fairly well covered by the forest canopy, and it was an overcast day to begin with, so both helped keep us from getting too hot while climbing, but at the same time, they conspired to rob me of enough light to make sharp photos.

You can see one stone gate in the picture below, with writing down its leg saying “erected on an auspicious day in July, 1921” (in the 10th year of the reign of the Taisho emperor). In the background, one of the gates is being painted.

We chatted with the painter a bit. He'd been hired by the donor to paint the gate, and I took it from his black-and-orange-speckled attire that gate maintenance was what he did for a living. The gate he was working on was originally placed there seven years ago, but had rotted so much in that time that it had to be replaced, so he was painting the replacement. He said that, generally speaking, they should be repainted every four to five years.

There were plenty of gates that were less than 10 years old but rotting out, and equally plenty that were older than 30 years and still looked just a fresh coat of paint shy of new. It seemed that most, though, were less than 20 years old, and in good condition.

Considering that I first came to Japan 20 years ago, I found it amazing to realize that had I visited here then, most of the gates I would have seen then would now be gone, having been (I presume) abandoned by their donors, and replaced with new donations. There are thousands and thousands of gates, so I imagine that a 20-year timelapse video would look very busy indeed.

Unlike the well-ordered, clean lines of the large shrine complex at the foot of the mountain, these gate-covered paths meandered all over the place, and were dotted by all manner of sub-shrine crammed into nooks and crannies of the mountain.

It is perhaps difficult to see in the small version of the photo above (click on photos for larger versions), but in this picture I took looking out to the side from the main path, you can see layer after layer of sub-shrines receding into the distance.

As best as I understand it, this site is the headquarters of the Inari shrines (those dedicated to industry and wealth), so each Inari-related shrine in Japan has a presence here via a small sub-shrine. I heard that there are over 10,000 such sub-shrines dotting the paths. The one at right in the picture above seems to be one of the larger ones; many are fairly small (say, the size of a dorm fridge).

Due, I'm sure, both to the mountainous nature and long history of the location, everything seems to be laid out quite haphazardly. It's really a visual smorgasbord for anyone pausing to really look, and my mind almost exploded thinking of the photographic possibilities. Although my imagination seemed unlimited, in practice, I was limited by a lack of skill, the aforementioned lack of light, a lack of equipment (I had only two lenses with me), and most limiting, a five year old not interested in dallying for photos.

Small wooden replica gates — from a few inches high up to a couple feet high – were piled and stacked all over the place. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 100,000 of them scattered about. The larger ones cost a donation of $100, and all that I noticed were dated within the past few months, so there must be a small army of people making/painting/selling these things.

The two above are leaning against a stone dated 1905 (year 38 of the reign of the Meiji emperor).

Pretty much every shade of color that could be considered “orange” was to be found. Above, you can see racks of recently-painted bright orange mini-donation gates sandwiched between the faded orange of the real gates, and the almost-plastic brilliant (but different shade) orange of the fence. The difference is likely diminished on common computer monitors (these pictures look anemic on my laptop screen, for example), but on my high-end Eizo monitor the colors jump off the screen to almost sear the retina.

The rack of mini gates isn't all that old.... you can see in the 2nd picture on this post dates from March and April... but weather was already taking its toll....

The path from the base of the mountain to where these last few pictures were taken was fairly gentle, but ended with one long, steep section of stairs up to this picturesque location that overlooks a lake.

The path continues up the mountain, but I got the impression that a lot of people turn around and head back at this spot. That's a shame, because the best was yet to come.

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