My blog is not a photoblog. Sometimes I post a pretty picture just because it's pretty (such as these), but for the most part pictures appear simply to illustrate whatever event I'm writing about.

On the other hand, the focus of a photoblog is not the person posting the photos, but about the photos themselves, which must stand on their own as being beautiful, interesting, thought provoking, etc.

The best example of a photoblog I've seen is Andrei Zmievski's photoblog Vu (which means “seen” in French). I've known Andrei for years, first from his engineering work with PHP, then when he worked at Yahoo!. Heck, Andrei helped me with the PHP chapter for my book's most recent edition.

I didn't know that Andrei was into photography until he started his photoblog a month ago, and in watching it I've been struck by two things: Andrei is extremely well traveled (his photos are from all over the world), and he's got an excellent eye for composition.

His style is all over the map, figuratively and literally, so it's never boring or predictable. I really like almost every photo he posts, but the true mark of excellence is that I find every photo to be interesting.

It's one of the blogs I read via Bloglines. He updates it with a new photo daily; watch it for a while and you'll be both impressed and entertained.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dressed for the Hot Sun

One finally image from yesterday's rice harvest, this picture of the lady is my favorite of the whole batch.

I was using my new monopod with a Nikon D200 and big Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom in manual-focus mode (which I tend to use and enjoy much more now that I have a Katz Eye focus screen), and I got the focus perfect for a change, with clear details on each thread of the cloth over her face.

Here's a full-resolution crop from the center of the image. Note the detail of each thread....

Fine Detail
( Full-resolution crop )

Add to that the creaminess of the background that the shallow depth of field that an f/2.8 aperture provides, and I think it's photographically wonderful.

I was pixel-peeping (“inspecting closely”) the full-resolution version, somewhat basking in its glory, when I was delighted to notice that she had a stowaway sitting on the back of her hat. I didn't notice him at the time, so he's not in focus, but I thought it was quite cute.

Wide-Eyed Stowaway
( Full-resolution crop )

It turns out that she had at least one or two crickets on her hat in almost every shot, as did the man. For a while I wondered if they were hat decorations, until I looked at enough shots and saw that their number and location changed over time. If you go back to yesterday's post and look at the large versions of each picture with a hat, you'll find a green friend or two.

I went back today to the slope of terraced rice paddies that Nils and I visited last week (where the kids played among the paddies) to see it from some different angles. It's been three months since rice was planted, and now some of the hundreds of fields have been harvested, and a few were in progress while I visited..

The pictures on this post are of one elderly couple working on a field.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
10 Seconds' Rest for One's Weary Bones

Don't let the picture above fool you: these people worked, and worked hard. In the scene below, the man drove the small combine and the lady followed along to harvest by hand any rice that got trampled rather than processed by the machine.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 40mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Every Bit Counts

At some point she gathers the accumulated extra and feeds it into the combine.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 102mm — ¹/320 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bountiful Harvest

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/350 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sickle at the Ready

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/750 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
No Strangers to Hard Work

The man then swung the boom of their Iseki Frontier Bi-ba 351 combine over to their little truck, and unloaded the rice.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 80mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Unloading the Rice
or, “Loading the Rice,” depending on your point of view

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/160 sec, f/11, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Fill'er Up

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Keeping an Eye on Things

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Big Pile of Rice (Still in Husks)

Super Closeup
Small crop from the “Big Pile of Rice” shot above

The truck being full, they headed off, presumably to unload and return to continue their harvest. I asked the lady how many truckfulls they expect to get from the small field, and she guessed about three.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 90mm — ¹/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Off to Market

I suspect they'll return soon because he left his boots...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 80mm — ¹/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ready for the Next Job

Continued here...

I was struck this morning at the interesting, colorful patterns made by the light under the curtains in the living room.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — ¹/180 sec, f/4, ISO 100 — full exif
Colorful Patterns Under the Curtains

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 120mm
2 sec, f/8, ISO 100 — full exif
(photo setup described here)
Japanese Beer du Jour

The Japanese beer market is both interesting and frustrating.

Prior to twenty years ago the few major breweries all produced a few rich beers that were all more or less the same type of beer available since after the war. After WWII the Japanese people suffered greatly, food-wise, so rich lager beer emerged as a way a man could indulge himself, and thus “Japanese Beer” was set in stone for the better part of two generations.

That all changed in 1987 when Asahi Brewery's “Super Dry” was released on the market. If I remember the story I read not long after, a new beer was considered a smashing success if it sold a million cases in its first year. Super Dry sold something like 18 million in its first nine months. It's a clean, crisp, light taste, and appealed very much to the “not your father's beer” flush-with-cash generation of the late-80s bubble economy.

The late 80s and early 90s was an amazing time of awakening in Japan. When I first arrived in 1989 (to work at Omron Tateishi Denki in Nagaokakyou), 39 out of 40 cars in the parking lot were white. By the time I left eight years later, a boom of cultural individualism had resulted in the mix becoming decidedly more colorful, and today, white is not at all a preferred color for cars.

Anyway, the entire beverage market also experienced a cultural awakening, and these days, varieties come and go with the wind (such as this example from the can coffee market that I wrote about last year).

With beer, each brewer has a few “tenant lines,” but 2/3rd of the beer aisle are varieties that come and go in a few months. I think that the churn is mostly due to an attempt to capture the attention of the consumer with “new!” and “improved!” (it may well be that the exact same beer is inside all the differently-labeled cans ), although some of the churn is also of a seasonal nature.

The image at right is from some of my research for this post, Kirin's seasonal Akiaji (“Autumn Taste”) beer. With a can this pretty, the taste must be good.

I just don't get the timing of the marketing, though. According to the beer's blog it'll be on the market through the end of this month^*1, but the fall foliage season won't start in most of Japan for another six weeks after that. (For example, I didn't have any foliage pictures on my blog last year until mid November's Kyoto Autumn Foliage (Sort Of) post.)

And therein lies the frustration in the Japanese beer market. I'm reluctant to try a new beer for fear of liking it, because I know that if I do, it'll be yanked out from under me a few months later.

I'll have to consider this post a work in progress, as I believe there's much more research yet to be done. In fact, I think I'll go open another can of research right now....

^*1 Yes, the specific beer has its own blog. This is Japan, you know.