I happened across this very odd view of London on Google Maps....
Unlike the wonky view of San Francisco that resulted from the pasting together of multiple images, this seems as if it's had some kind of weird “etched in copper” Photoshop filter applied. Zooming up, you can guess some of the real reasons...
The shadows point almost due north, and are long, so it must have been taken in the heart of the winter. The bare trees along the riverbank also attest to that. The lack of trees certainly takes away some color, but I just don't get the overall muddy, copperish cast.
For comparison, here's the same close-up view via Yahoo! Maps....
In this case, Yahoo! Maps seems to look more reasonable.
Generally speaking, Google Maps still has better coverage than Yahoo! Maps, but I'm finding more and more cases where Yahoo! has better maps and/or better satellite coverage. As a case in point, I was looking around the other day at a friend's hometown (Puebla, Mexico), and found that Google Maps doesn't even mark Mexico City, one of the world's largest cities. For satellite coverage, they have some low resolution images where you can start to make out individual city blocks, but for the same area, Yahoo! Maps has fairly high resolution images where you can distinguish individual vehicles.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — 1/3000 sec, f/3.5, ISO 160 — map & image data — nearby photos
Koinobori Floating in the Breeze
The other day I posted about a koinobori bento that Fumie made for Anthony, featuring koinobori (carp streamers) made from wieners.
Today is the Children's Day national holiday in Japan, for which koinobori are flown. We saw many more koinobori flown while driving around Hokkaido than we do in Kyoto. It was nice.
The ones above are in front of what looks like a small hotel in the middle of nowhere, in Biei, an hour's drive north of where we stayed in Furano. (A bit of search after the fact shows that it's indeed a small hotel with the odd name “With You”)
The Biei area is really beautiful, even though the end of April is probably the worst time of year to visit. (See the references to “bland” and “bleak” in my previous post.) In taking the picture above, we'd stopped along the side of the road, as we did numerous times, to enjoy the scenery. Here's a view from the same spot, looking the other way.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 125mm — 1/350 sec, f/7.1, ISO 160 — map & image data — nearby photos
Idle Fields in Biei, Hokkaido
Apparently, these particular fields are planted with potatoes, yielding a beautiful sea of purple flowers as they grow.
For completeness, here's a view of the hotel and its koinobori from the next nearest building, a small restaurant we liked, that I'll write about another day.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 135mm — 1/250 sec, f/10, ISO 160, P.P. boost: +0.50EV — map & image data — nearby photos
“With You” hotel in Biei, Hokkaido
The hill in front of the hotel is planted with lavender, which in early May is gray and dead. I have no doubt that it's excellently pretty in the summer.
Fumie and I are absolutely beat from our trip, having returned late yesterday evening. We've been completely groggy all day, as if from a really bad case of jet lag. Maybe it's “boat lag.” Ugh. I hope we feel better tomorrow.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Snowballs in May
(in the Northern Hemisphere, no less)
We're on vacation in Furano, Hokkaido (northern Japan). It's my first time to Japan's big northern island, and it's turning out to be a really nice trip.
It started with the idea of coming to see one of the things Furano is famous for, its huge fields of lavender and other brightly colored flowers. It's apparently spectacular, but due to an unfortunate image / calendar mismatch in one of Fumie's guidebooks, we're here two months early for that. (The other thing Furano is famous for is that it's the setting for a Japanese soap opera that's been running for the last 25 years.)
It's also too early for cherry blossoms... the buds are not even starting to show. In fact, except for the cheapest hotel rates of the year, this is the absolutely worst time to visit. The trees are totally barren as in winter, but most of the “white fluffy blanket” of winter-wonderland snow is gone, so all that's left is bleak, bland, and dreary. It's like the end of the winter in any place that has a lot of snow, but before the first hint of spring.
The thing is, the countryside around here is so full of beauty that even at its most bleak and bland, it's still capable of stunning beauty. But that's for another post (a small hint of which is here).
There are some mildly high mountains in the area, the tallest being 2km higher than the surrounding countryside, rising about 7,000 feet above the city. Today was cold, overcast, and rainy, so we took a drive that took us a third of the way up. This whole island (which is about the size of Ohio, where I grew up) gets massive amounts of snow, but the area we visited today still had snow 5 feet deep, and that's before the plow piled it deeper.
Consider the picture below, in which Anthony stands on some drifting snow at the edge of an earlier cut of a snow plow. The snow must be 5 or 6 feet deep where the plow cut it. And this is what's remaining today, May 2nd.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 95mm — 1/250 sec, f/11, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Anthony and the Volcano
I didn't notice it at the time, but the part of the mountain in the background (which is several miles away, although it perhaps doesn't look like it in this picture) looks like the remains of a volcano having blown its top. I did notice the steam cloud at the upper right, but I don't recall any of the signs referring to a volcano. I'll have to check more.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — 1/250 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Yes, Snow Can Be Cold
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 82mm — 1/160 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Trying to Slide
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 22mm — 1/320 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Only Sun We Saw Today
Normally, I'd be tempted to say that this was the most snow I'd ever seen — the most in May, certainly — except that yesterday (May 1st) we took a different road into the mountains, and ended up at an altitude over 1,200 meters, with enough snow to make what we saw today look like nothing more than the leftovers from a mildly ambitious snow globe. I saw one building so buried that its door was not visible (and certainly not used in the last six months). More fodder for future posts.
Tomorrow we check out, then kill 13 hours until the 1:30am departure of our ferry back toward central Japan.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 28mm — 1/90 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Kids Love Bubbles
On the same evening we took our family self portrait among the cherry blossoms, Anthony enjoyed his new bubble machine. He hadn't played with it since the day we had a nice hanami drive, and so was really in the mood to bubble.
(In the background, you can see Fumie and the bench on which we took the self portrait)
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 35mm — 1/90 sec, f/5, ISO 400, P.P. boost: +0.65EV — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 35mm — 1/60 sec, f/4, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bubble-Blowin' Daredevil
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 19mm — 1/90 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
A Kyoto Evening Laden with Bubble and Blossom
We're leaving for a trip to Hokkaido this evening. Will bring the bubbler....
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 + 12mm extension tube — 1/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Assassin Bug (Orange) Finishing Lunch (Black)
Walking back from photographing the hyper-fluffy cherry blossoms earlier this week, I noticed a striking red/orange bug on a tree. I hate bugs — they give me the creeps — but I had my extension tubes, so I thought to try some pseudo-macro photography by using one with my Sigma 30mm.
The quality of the shot isn't that great, but it's my best non-blossom macro shot ever (but only on a technicality, because it's my only non-blossom macro shot). A good photographer would be able to make a stunning photograph (see some in this macro shots of the week thread at Digital Photography Review), but I was doing this handheld, bridging one hand between the camera and the tree, inches from a tree full of bugs (the photo below was taken just inches from the one above), all the while hoping that they'd not all jump onto me and bore under my skin in pre-planned human-hating unison.
I did a bit of poking around on the web and it seems that the red insect is some species or other of an assassin bug (with many such species also called “wheel bugs”). They apparently are a gardener's friend because they prey on harmful bugs by sucking out their guts. If you look at the large version of the one above, you can see that the black bug (looks like it might have been a spider) is not much more than what used to be the lower chassis, so to speak.
It also seems that assassin bugs, due to their piercing/sucking mouth parts, can give a human a nasty bite, so it turns out that my gut wrenching white-knuckled fear was not misplaced.
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 + 12mm extension tube — 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bunches of Some Kinda' Bug
Right next to the feasting assassin bug were hordes of black bugs with red markings. After having looked at the many varieties of assassin bugs during my research, I suspect that these are also assassin bugs of some kind or another. Yuck. I don't like bugs.
The other day at a park with Anthony, a big ladybug (the size of a bean, not one the size of a pinhead like I grew up with) landed on my arm. It's a ladybug, but still a bug, so the impulse to crawl at least slightly out of my own skin was pungent. However, the parent in me won, and not wishing to instill into Anthony any such squeamishness, instead of saying “Arrrrrrgh!” I said “Hey, Anthony, look, a cute ladybug. Come and see...”
It can be hard being a parent sometimes.