Jinx

Today we headed up to Okutama to explore the many side roads and we ended up on this extremely steep road and followed it for miles until became a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and then we followed that until it was very much in the far end of nowhere. As we were backtracking on the dirt road, I commented on how I preferred off roading in our newer super-compact car as opposed to my wifeys old super-compact car that has been part of many off road adventures in austere parts of Turkey. I would call it a beater, but I don’t want to jinx myself again.

As soon as we hit pavement, we parked the car so I could take the photograph below. Not the most interesting photograph, but it has an interesting story. See, as soon as I went back to the car and tried to start it up, I heard a of-all-the-places-we-could-suddenly-have-mechanical-problems type of sound aka the starter sounded like it was dead and we have an automatic with power brakes. No jump starting or coasting down to the main road, plus we don’t speak Japanese, on top of all that.. the road was so steep in places that a tow truck would probably never attempt going out there.

I decided rolling the car off the hillside wasn’t a good long-term solution and we packed up our camera gear and started the trek to the town of Okutama for some help. Luckily we quickly stumbled on 3 locals foraging for leaves to be used in their favorite tempura recipe and we were able to play charades to see if we could get some help. We went back to the car and when they heard the starter, they immediately knew that only the battery was dead and it could be jumped. They were right and that was the biggest relief I have had in a long time!

Thank you 3 guys foraging for leaves to use for a tasty tempura meal! I dedicate this picture–that would have been a lot better had I tried to piece together a vertorama to capture the beautiful overlook–to you guys!

Prague

I thought I would put up a couple of pictures from our trip to Prague in October 2006. We were living in Turkey at the time and I ended up tagging along with wifey to Germany where she was having PRK eye surgery. She was adamant that we had to go on this trip while her eyes were in the somewhat painful and sensitive days of recovery. She couldn’t see much since her vision was blurry, but we had a great time anyways. Prague has got to be the neatest city I have ever seen. It is painful to know that I was a complete noob to photography and only had my crummy Panasonic point and shoot.

This is a shot of 14th century Karlštejn Castle that is about an hours drive from Prague, easily the coolest, most well-kept castle I have ever seen. Unfortunately we were only allowed in the smallest section of the castle you can see on the far right. It was surprisingly bleak inside the section we did see, I recommend not wasting your time with that part of the tour and just checking out all the vantage points around the castle instead.

This is a shot of a 14th century remodel of Hradcany Castle which is on top of a large hill overlooking the city of Prague. I know it is a little washed out, but you have to understand that the area of my mind that processes photography was not only dormant, but also existing in a ghetto.

As far as cities go, Prague easily tops my list of the most photogenic cities with its’ endless amount of draw dropping architecture that is intricately detailed and immaculately preserved. Luckily, the Czechs have not yet destroyed their beautiful city with modern high rises and massive Wallmart and Ikea stores.

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Here is another one from Showa Park. I am sure the trees in the background are completely full of green leaves now. The day after the cherry blossoms all fell off, the green leaves started appearing on the trees all over the surrounding areas.

This is a blend of a DRI on top of an HDR using 5 exposures for both. I used the +1 exposure underneath it all to paint in the people since the DRI and HDR show lots of ghosts due to the the movements of the people. I topped it all of with a lush icing of LuciArt. That program is far and away my favorite way to add sharpening to images.

Warpzone

Lightroom amazes me the more I play around with it. I had another picture on of the many oddities to be found within Showa Kinen Park, but the neat spiral walkway was surrounded by unsightly, yellowish grass. I played around with the pretty much every option including about 8 gradient filters and ended up with this. The only thing I used Photoshop for was to run an unsharp mask on it since the Lightroom sharpening doesn’t appear to do as good a job at that.

Mo Blossom

You would not believe how quickly the blossoms come and go here in Japan. It only takes about 3-4 days to achieve full bloom and then you only have about 4-5 days before the bottom half of the tree loses its’ blossoms seemingly overnight. Then you have about a day left before the blossoms completely disappear from the rest of tree. This seem to be the natural cycle and a good rainstorm can shorten the time even more!

Ommatidium

I haven’t really shot a nice HDR in a while for some reason. I have been using DRI a bit, but I keep seeing these scenes that I imagine would look great in HDR and end up utterly disappointed with the result after I process it. This scene was another shot that I thought would look really nice when I HDR’d it. I even took 9 shots for this scene, 4 more than I usually shoot for an HDR.

Another disappointment… so I took the middle exposure and tried some de-saturation, orange-ish gradient for the sky, and some vignetting. I wasn’t too sure about this since the smaller size looks too dark, but it has received a decent response on Flickr, so I thought I would throw it up on this blog.

Hanami Part I

Last weekend we went out to Showa Kinen Park located in Tachikawa which is a short train ride from our place. Showa is a massive park surrounded by 14 kilometers of bike trail and full of beautiful flower gardens and blossoming trees. Since Hanami is in full swing in Japan, there was a massive line that had formed prior to the 9:30 opening. When the gates opened it was like the start of a 1,000 meter dash. Most of the locals will bring rolling luggage and carts full of picnic supplies and within hours of opening the massive grass areas are overtaken by blankets, tarps, and card board. The smells of BBQ food and the flower garden are inescapable.

The day we went to the park, I had an adverse reaction to some stupid mediation I had just started that day which hit me when I came home. It made my heart race for about 18 hours and this entire week I feel like I climbed Mt. Fuji just walking across our apartment! Needlessly to say, I have completely ignored my photos until now. So far I am not impressed with my cherry blossom photos. I think I may have to steal some of wifey’s photos and post them up instead. I feel a lot better now, so I will try and get some cherry blossom photos up shortly.

Zombie

Zombie? This picture isn’t a zombie, I am a zombie. I have a bunch of pictures I have been meaning to process from the beginning of the Japanese flower viewing season (hanami), but I have been operating on a temporary graveyard schedule with my wife this week which has proven difficult to get used to. Since my waking hours are spent in a drooling stupor– completely devoid of any and all motivation in life– I will have to post a photo devoid of any cherry blossoms or nature.

This is looking up at the Sanno Park Tower which is the same building I took the photo in “The Process” blog posting from about a week ago. This photo is frustrating because it looks like crap in my Flickr stream when it is a smaller size which seems to be the complete opposite of how most photos look in a smaller size. That and this photo has a bit of a “murky” cast that I was not able to shake.