Amami Superman Photography

My brother-in-law owns a clothing store here in Amami called Dugwood Sand. Last year he moved to a bigger location and rented out part of the store to a friend who started a surf shop called NOBOUNDARIES. It happens to be Dugwood Sand's 15th anniversary and NOBOUNDARIES 1st anniversary this month and they decided to hold a big anniversary party together this last Friday.

They asked me to take photos of the event and I was happy to oblige but I was worried how well they would turn out. I didn't have any experience photographing indoor events like this. I ended up taking close to 700 photos. I really wanted to get a feel for taking indoor photos without a flash and I tried to take most of the photos with manual settings. I also had to switch the white balance quite a bit during different stages of the night. I think I understand now just how much practice is needed to know your camera, the different settings needed for different shots and the ability to shoot fluidly without thinking. I suck.

Even after I went through all the photos and selected the best looking ones, I still had well over 200 photos. Obviously I can't post them all so I chose just a few to give you an idea how the night went.

This the poster I designed for them at the beginning of this month. They didn't have any photos or graphics they wanted me to use so I threw a background together with Photoshop and finished it in Illustrator.





The band name for the above photo is called INOO pronounced "EE-NEW". It's kind of a hard name to explain. Inoo is a word in the Amami dialect that means the first two kanji which isn't a real word in Japanese. The first two kanji seperately mean different things. The first is UMI which means ocean or sea, and HATAKE which means field or garden. The word in Amami dialect means the tide pools made by the coral reefs when the tide goes out. The reefs isolate fish inside the pools and just like a field or garden, you harvest the food. Does that make sense?




The night was a bit slow getting started but eventually it became jam packed.




Salmon & Garlic is a comic band. They got their group name from the more famous, Simon and Garfunkel. They have become very well know here in Amami.








The guy on the piano at the left, Shoichi, is really mostly bald. Part of their skit is his hair. He has a shoe taped to his head and he pulls out a long comb and combs it as they would do back in the 50's and 60's. I was having a hard time trying to take photos of this... I was laughing too hard.




From left to right: Morishima-san, Daigo-san, Kazuhito-san. Kazuhito, the guy sporting his gang sign pose, is my brother-in-law. Daigo runs the surf shop. Morishima is the owner of the surf shop. He also owns a surfboard and wetsuit company. AWOL surfboards(Another Way Of Life) and Crank 7 wetsuits.

For the main event of the night, they had a Rock-Paper-Scissors competition. They had loads of prizes to give away, but before they got started, they had a small announcement to make. Some of the local skaters were trying to gather funds to help build an indoor skatepark and they asked the people for their support.





Finally, they got on to the Rock-Paper-Scissors event. It was quite a sight to see all the hands go up.


Not every one participated every time. They had prizes for men and women so they took turns. But for the the very last, the prize was a brand new surfboard.


When Daigo walked out with that surfboard, you could hear a gasp then everyone cheered. This time everyone participated.




It just so happen to be this girl's birthday that day. What a great birthday prize. She was so happy.

The night rolled on with more bands and DJs.



People enjoyed themselves. As it got later and later, people got more and more drunk. I get a kick watching some of them.




It was starting to thin out and I decided to try and take some photos with the flash and try out some of the different settings. I'm going to learn how to use flashes and try it more in the future. Too bright doesn't look that nice but I found the setting dialing down the flash. I didn't know I could do that on my built in flash. More things I need to study up on.






Well, those were some of the photos I took last Friday. I had fun and it was a good experience for me taking photos for an event like this. I can't imagine what a wedding must be like to photograph.