As promised in an earlier post, here are some of the Ikebana (floral arranging) works I saw at the exhibition that also had the preschooler ikebana I posted about the other day.
If you know the slightest thing about ikebana, you'll probably cringe at the total lack of understanding evident in my comments, so you have my apologies up front.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 28mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Iris, Maple, and Iris
Based on how they were presented, the three works above were clearly by important and/or well-respected people. The middle and right-side nameplates indicate that they were done by the heads of schools (although I'm not sure whether “school” here is in the sense of a place of study, as in “school of thought,” or both).
Nearby was the witch-hazel (mansaku, 万作) work by Marina-chan's Mommy that I mentioned in the earlier post:
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 50mm — 1/90 sec, f/5.6, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Witch Hazel
The photo really does not do it, or any of these, justice. I suppose the same could be said for a photo of a painting or of a statue: such photos convey the intellectual appearance, but fail completely to convey any greater artistic sense. At least, that's the case with my photos. The photo above makes the arrangement look pedestrian, when it was really exceptionally well balanced. To put it another way, it just made you feel nice to look at it, but I can't same the same for the photo.
I don't know much about plants, so had to look up witch hazel. Actually, I had to look up all the plant names I mention here, including this Japanese rowan (nanakamado, 七竈) display that was next to the one above:
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Japanese Rowan
There were hundreds of ikebana arrangements in many styles, sometimes incorporating bamboo, gourds, rocks, and other items from nature. Here's one example from among many.....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Iris and Leopard Plant, in Bamboo
The lower flower is tsuwabuki (石蕗) in Japanese, or Farfugium japonicum, neither of which mean anything to me, but it's pretty, so a rose by any other name blah blah blah....
I like how imperfections in the plants were not necessarily avoided, but at times actually embraced...
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Equal-Opportunity Arrangement
As I said, there must have been hundreds of arrangements on display, in several large rooms. I had only a short time, made shorter by Anthony being a bit fussy (until Arthur looked after him for a few minutes, thanks!), so I really didn't have time even to enjoy them all, much less photograph even a representative sample (and what I did photograph was under conditions that we'll generously call “less than ideal”).
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Heavy Turnout
To head off the inevitable question about the lady left-of-center wearing a face mask, it's common in Japan to wear such a mask when you have a cold so that you avoid passing it along to everyone. It's a basic courtesy that the rest of the world would do well to adopt.
About the crowd, I thought the shirt on the guy in the picture below was a bit, er, avant-garde....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 52mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Interesting Shirt
The arrangements on the table in front of them all seem to use non-traditionally shaped vases, which is perhaps avant-guarde as well?
The ones in the shot below feature bamboo of various shapes...
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ikebana on Display
Another one that I liked, from the same group as the witch hazel and Japanese rowan, is an arrangement of mayumi, 真弓 (Japanese spindle, which yes, I had to look up).
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/350 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Japanese Spindle
It was hard enough to get a picture of the simple tabletop arrangements, but some of the larger installations were all but impossible to capture. There was a large bamboo-and-something-yellow thing on the floor that was quite pretty, but even if all the people were gone (which they weren't) there was no angle that gave any kind of good background....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/90 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Use Your Imagination
As I said in the previous post, Ikebana is an art with over a thousand years of history and refinement that is lost on me. But pretty is pretty, and there was plenty of pretty on display, so I wished I could have stayed longer.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 18mm — 1/125 sec, f/11, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Miyajima Island
from the car ferry crossing from the mainland
More pictures from our short trip to Miyajima Island, Japan two weeks ago.
The view above, taken on the ferry ride over, doesn't show much detail, but does show the relative positions of a few landmarks, including the famous main gate of the Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社、宮島) almost a mile away, the smaller stone gate for the foot path to the shrine, and our hotel. (Mouseover the bold words in this paragraph to see the items highlighted in the photo.)
You can also see Mt. Misen in the center, which I posted about recently.
As you get a bit closer (and zoom up a lot further), the main gate stands out quite well, particularly when the tide is lower as it is in the next shot, at eight tenths of a mile away. The shrine itself is to the left. The smudges in between are people, which are fairly easy to see when you look at the bigger version. (As always, click on an image to see a larger version.).
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 200mm — 1/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Main Gate of the Itsukushima Shrine
Miyajima, Japan
It was a bright, partly-cloudy day, but when I looked back toward the mainland and exposed for the highlights, the result takes on a dark, foreboding look, but I love the rays of sunshine.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 46mm — 1/1250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Exposing for the Highlights
Japanese mainland, toward the South
I took some similar photos in Kyoto after a typhoon had swept through.
Approaching the dock, I was impressed at how nice the area looked, neither industrial nor touristy.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 80mm — 1/250 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Car-Ferry Doc
Miyajima, Japan
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 32mm — 1/640 sec, f/8, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Two Gates at High Tide
The smaller stone gate at the left in the shot above is for the land approach. It doesn't look smaller in the photo because it's half the distance of the other one. The shot was taken from right in front of our hotel (Kinsuikan Inn — 錦水館).
At low tide, you can get way out onto the intertidal zone, although in the shot below, I'm only 30m out because I had sort'a nice shoes on.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 28mm — 1/320 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Two Gates at Low Tide
The path along the water is quite nice. We saw one view in my Miyajima Bench post. Here's a view from the intertidal zone, replete with wild deer grazing on the green seaweed....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 150mm — 1/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Stone Lanterns, Deer, Benches
and lots'a wet slimy (but tasty) seaweed
And a closer view....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/640 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Stone Lanterns and a Wall
(but no deer, benches, or seaweed)
And to augment some of the night shots I posted earlier, here's that path just before we took it to attend the Kousuke Atari concert.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 65mm — 12 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Stone Gate and Path
And from a bit further down, a few hours of rising tide later....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 48mm — 5 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Path and Orange Gate
And finally, a somewhat similar view during a daytime high-ish tide.....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 75mm — 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Finishing up my Kyoto fall-color preview featuring pictures from last year that didn't make the cut a the time, here are four final images to get one into the autumn mood. (Previous installments: Part I, Part II.)
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 38mm — 1/800 sec, f/2.8, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wall roof at the Konpukuji Temple
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bamboo and Momiji at the Enkouji Temple
where many of last year's Kyoto Fall Foliage Desktop Backgrounds were taken.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 44mm — 1/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
From the street outside the Eikando Temple
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 48mm — 1/400 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
From the same area as the Color of Kyoto Desktop Background
and the Vine and Bamboo Desktop Background.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/250 sec, f/2.2, ISO 200 — full exif
Silk Shirt: an old Kimono Reborn
I tried my hand at product photography for the first time today, for a Kyoto charity that takes the wonderful silk fabrics from old kimonos and turns them into stylish garments. Ladies in small, rural villages in various south-east Asian countries (Laos, Cambodia, etc.) who have been trained by the charity actually do the sewing, by hand or on pedal-powered sewing-machines provided by the charity. The whole point is to provide people in these small villages a way to earn a living without having to leave their village/family behind.
The charity's name is “Reborn”, which I'd guess refers both to the kimono fabric, and to the vibrancy of the related small villages.
Anyway, as part of helping them to create a web site via which they can market the resulting products, I thought I'd try photographing some of the items.
I've never done product photography, but I know that it's much more difficult than one might think.
I'm sure that it involves a lot of things that I don't know about, but among the things that I know I should know about that I actually know the least about, I know no limit to how little I know about lighting.
I could have used this as an excuse to buy a lot of equipment that I may or may not ever learn how to use, but I started small and bought only a medium-sized flash umbrella (paying here in Kyoto, I see now, exactly twice what it would have cost me in The States) and an adapter that allows me to connect the umbrella and a flash unit to a stand.
I really don't understand the deal with flash/umbrella stands. I could have paid $60 for a short, cheap stand to hold the flash unit, or $8 for an ultra-cheap tripod that folded smaller, set up larger, and was more stable. In the end, I paid nothing and just used my old cheap tripod to hold the flash and umbrella.
I knew I needed at least an umbrella because I knew I needed to use artificial lighting, and reflecting the flash off of the shiny under-surface of a photography umbrella spreads the light out over a wide area, turning harsh shadows into a pillowy-soft glow.
(For your future reference, “pillowy-soft” is generally considered to be better than “harsh.”)
When photographing static products, I'd guess it's nice to have a clean, uneventful background, so I took a big white cloth that I found being used as a dust cover over some boxes, and threw it over a rolling whiteboard. That became my background.
Here's a shot I took of the setup, after I was all done:
That's the setup I used for photographing some small jewelry pouches, which were placed on the cloth-covered box in the center. For photographing the clothes, the tripod was set up much further back, outside the room in a hallway, so that I could get the maximum distance between the camera and the mannequin, and between the mannequin and the background. The further behind the target the background is placed, the more out-of-focus the background becomes, and hence, more “uneventful.”
The flash umbrella is on the table (along with a bunch of toys — Anthony was with me), and my Nikon SB-800 flash unit was set up inside, facing the umbrella so that the target was bathed in the reflected light. The SB-800 was in slave mode, while my Nikon D200's flash was in commander mode, at 1/128th power. (It was at that low power so that its light didn't contribute to the image.)
I used my Nikon D200 and my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 for all the shots, at 1/60th second at ISO 200. For a while I shot at f/2.2 or f/2.8, using the relatively wide aperture to enhance the out-of-focusness of the background.
After a while, I realized that I was having trouble ensuring everything was in focus, so I switched to f/4.5 to increase the depth of field, at the risk of making the background a more impactful part of the image.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif
Close-up Crop to Show the Fabric
I took shots of about 50 items, and after this little bit of experience, I have a small list of things I'd do differently next time.
The first would be to work on the background, since it's too dark and too busy in many of these shots. One method would be to buy a real studio backdrop cloth and stand, but I'd have no way to transport or store such large items, so the other practical approach would be to place a flash behind the mannequin, facing the backdrop. This would eliminate shadows on the backdrop, and make it brighter so that hopefully it just disappeared as a sheet of pure white.
Another thing I'd do is bring a large-high-contrast focus target to make focusing easier. I had a hard time focusing with many of the fabrics, even with the benefits of the Katz Eye I installed last summer. This is one case where a new D3/D300 would have a big impact, since you can use their new zoomed live-preview move effortlessly achieve absolutely perfect focus.
It was particularly challenging to photograph dark fabrics. I had to boost the exposure compensation on the next one to get reasonable results. Unfortunately, that also increased the harshness of the background shadows.
Some were a challenge to “dress” in a way that showed them well. The light jacket below, shown over a dark shirt, looks in my photo more like something from L.L. Bean or an outdoorman's shop than the high-class, elegant wrap it was.
Long dresses were really difficult because I had to move them further from the camera to get them to fit into the frame, which pushed them right up against the backdrop.
1/60 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — full exif | 
1/60 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — full exif |
All in all it was fun, and the results, while no where near professional, were good enough for now.
Some of Anthony's classmates participated in an Ikebana (the art of flower arrangement) exhibition in Kyoto this past weekend. I normally have little interest in such things, but when I was invited (thanks Arthur!), I felt oddly interested, so Anthony and I headed over for a peek.
The show was in a large hall that was designed for viewing, not photography, and so with the mixed lighting (fluorescent, and various kinds of incandescent) and lack of nice backgrounds, the pictures don't come out well. Still, hopefully, some of the cuteness found in any art by four and five year olds comes through.
Ikebana is an art with over a thousand years of history and refinement, the whole of which is wasted on the likes of me. To me, art is like wine: I either like it or I don't. Art by preschoolers is pretty easy to enjoy because they make it so clearly their own, infused with cuteness.
(In the captions that follow, the “-chan” suffix indicates a girl's name, while “-kun” indicates a boy's name.)
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 32mm — 1/90 sec, f/5.6, ISO 500 — full exif
Four-year-old Ami-chan's
Ballerina motif
It's an inexcusable photographic mistake on my part, but I lopped off much of the tall, white, wispy feathers that extend above the central flowers. You can see them to the left in the shot below. I don't know much about art, but even I can see that they're meant to evoke a sense of a fleetingly floating ballerina, and I totally lopped them off in the photograph. Sorry, Ami-chan!
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 19mm — 1/90 sec, f/5.6, ISO 500 — full exif
(photo by Anthony)
Five-year-old Kouki-kun's
Bug/woodland motif
Anthony exercised some of his own artistic license by taking the picture above at the angle you see it. Just prior, he'd taken a level shot that came out perfectly, then took the angled shot. Clearly, he wanted the angled effect, so I'm honoring that by using that version.
Kouki-kun decorated his with hand-drawn bugs that you can't see well in the shot above, so here's a closer view....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 26mm — 1/100 sec, f/5, ISO 320 — full exif
Four-year-old Hinano-chan's
Jellybeans and fuzzy puffs
Hinano-chan's little sister, two-year-old Marina-chan, also had an arrangement on display, but I can't seem to find a picture of it. (It makes me worry that there are others' whose pictures are missing :-()
Marina-chan was wearing an exquisitely cute kimono — is there really any other kind of kimono for a two year old? — so we'll see a picture of her later in this post.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 31mm — 1/160 sec, f/5, ISO 320 — full exif
Four-year-old Akiko-chan's
Dragonflies
I'd guess that Akiko-chan made the dragonflies herself, since I know that she likes to make things with those beads. (I think you place the beads into position on a special board, then iron them to fuse them together....)
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 26mm — 1/125 sec, f/5, ISO 320 — full exif
Five-year-old Rio-chan's
Princess theme
I think Rio-chan's combination of flowers gives a very nice fairy-tale feel.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 32mm — 1/125 sec, f/5, ISO 320 — full exif
Five-year-old Riko-chan's
I'm not sure what the theme of Riko-chan's arrangement is, but it's probably my favorite of the bunch. With fall approaching, I'm a sucker for the dried leaves. Yet, the colorful flowers evoke a sense of spring. Spring and fall are Kyoto's glorious seasons, so the combination is hard to beat.
(Showing these pictures to Fumie, she tells me that the flowers are autumn flowers, but whatever the season, they're still pretty.)
I tried to take a close-up of the fleetingly fuzzy, super-white cocoon-shaped things (plants?) in Riko-chan's arrangement, but there's just no contrast and it didn't come out well. (The white-cocoon-shaped thing I was aiming for is in the right half of the picture below.)
When we'd arrived, most of the moms and kids were in a downstairs cafe having a treat, so on the way home I stopped by to say hi. Two-year-old Marina was looking cute as a button in her kimono, sitting next to her mommy in hers. It was dark and the lighting was horrid, but I gave it a shot....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 45mm — 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO 800 — full exif
Marina-chan
(Two Years Old)
(That's Monet-chan in the background, who was featured giving her daddy a hard time in the post about camera geeks at the school bazaar the other day.)
I expected to enjoy the kids' flower arrangements because, as I said, it's hard not to enjoy the art of a child. To my great surprise, I very much enjoyed the many arrangements displayed by the serious adults (including the mommoy of Marina-chan and Hinano-chan, who had a very nice autumn-themed arrangement of witch-hazel). I'll post some of those pictures another time. (Update: here.)
(Mini milestone: this is post #600 on my blog)