Amami Superman Photography

My 24" Intel Core Duo iMac's hard disk died on me the Friday before last. Luckily it is still under warranty so I was able to send it in the following Monday for repairs and it was back to me in no time. They even upped my disk capacity from 250GB to 320GB... BONUS! I've been up to my ears with preparations for our Halloween parade this Saturday so I haven't had that much time to reinstall all my applications. I installed and updated Adobe CS3 yesterday and finally got Lightroom 2 installed and updated today.

Last week on Wednesday I went for a drive with my wife and we decided to go check out a new wind turbine they're building here in Amami.

Just a small post for today. My computer went hay-wire last week and I had to send it in yesterday for repairs. I'm on an older computer at the moment writing this. I didn't have Lightroom or any other photo editing program installed on this computer so it took me a bit to get it in order to be able to use.

Yesterday was a spur-of-the-moment type deal. I was just finishing with work and it was a pretty nice day so I hopped in the car and drove to a nearby spot you could overlook the city. I got plenty of nice shots of the actual sun just as it was going down over the mountains but I liked this one the best.

After the sun went down and I started to take shots with longer shutters speeds of a few seconds, 2 older gentlemen with DSLR's and compact digital cameras drove up in a rental car and came up to right were I was shooting and starting taking photos. At first I thought they were photography enthusiasts like me but I soon realized they were just some tourists with nice cameras. Not saying photography enthusiasts can't be tourists or vice versa, but these guys were just plain rude with their photography.

I was taking photos with shutter speeds over 10 seconds when one of them came up and started to check out my camera while I was still mid shot. I explained to him I was in the middle of a shot and he apologized. After a few more shots, they started to take their own photos. It started to get really annoying when they started to use their flashes and moving in front of my camera to get their shots.

I'm not the most patient guy, but I bit my lip until they left. As soon as they drove off and I was sure they couldn't hear me, I said a few words that I wouldn't want my daughter to hear me say about them.

In the end, I got some shots that I like so it really wasn't that bad. I think I'll try to go take some sunrise photos sometime soon now the sun comes up later in the morning.

Last week on Sunday was Jade's field day. I made a previous post called 120% of some 4th grade boys running their race. Today I thought I would post Jade's.

Being a typical father, I tend to really get enthusiastic about things like this. After getting home and looking over the shots I took, I noticed that the ones of Jade weren't really that good. A lot of the shots were out of focus or the framing was terrible. The only thing I can think of for why I wasn't focused enough was I probably was cheering too hard to do any better.

Jade, my daughter, is the girl smiling big in the center of the above photo.

The weather reports the previous day called for a 60% chance of rain. In the morning it wasn't raining but it was very overcast. With the weather threatening to rain, I was afraid I would get caught out in it with my camera. It's difficult to hold an umbrella while taking photos and having people crowd you as you do. Everyone wants the best spot to take photos and they'll push and shove to get it. Sometimes finding a spot is difficult without being rude.



The above photo was taken from the second floor near Jade's classroom. I was surprised to see that hardly anyone had shown up yet. Usually it's packed by this time with people trying to find a good spot to set up video cameras and whatnot.

Last year Jade took 2nd place in an 800 meter race for the 1st grade girls. She took 1st place in all her field day races last year, but this year was a different story.

During these races they divide the children up into groups separating them from slowest to fastest to give a fair chance to everyone. Since Jade is one of the fastest girls in the 2nd grade, she had to run the very last heat with the other fastest girls.













She ran a good race and took 3rd. Although she didn't take 1st place, I was still very proud of her. She also ran anchor position for the class relay and destroyed the other classes taking 1st place for her team. I'm sorry to say that after these shots it started to rain so I put my camera away for the most part. I wasn't able to take any photos of her relay race. I did take some photos after this but they're pretty random and I'll post them in a different post.

I mentioned in a previous post about finding some waterfalls that were a bit hard to get to. Yesterday I went to one of those waterfalls and tried to take some photos. On the way to the waterfalls, we drove by a stand of ceder trees. I thought it would be a cool spot to take some shots so I stopped.

So as I was walking around looking up and taking photos, I almost walked right into this 8 legged monster. I'm not sure what they call these spiders here in Amami. They can grow to be very large. I've seen them with leg spans bigger than my open palm hand.




So after dodging spiderwebs and whatnot, I made it back to the car and we continued down the road. My wife doesn't usually come with me when I go out to take nature shots. I knew the spot I was going to was bit dangerous and I could fall and injure myself so I asked her to come along just in case.

Below is a shot from the road. I don't know how well you can tell how steep it is but let me reassure you, it was steep. There was no way I was going to get down there and back up without a good climbing rope. Fortunately, I came prepared with everything I needed. After securely tying the rope to a tree and securing my camera bag and tripod to my body, I inched my way down the mountain side. I have to admit, it was a bit of work getting down there. I was afraid I might have a harder time getting back up. Newspaper headlines flashed through my mind, "Japan Coast Guard Helicopter Called in to Save Fat Man on Cliff" Wonderful! When I got down as far as I could go, I found that the view wasn't that great and there wasn't much of a spot to set up my tripod properly. I was still a good 5 or 6 meters from the bottom but it was nearly impossible for me to get any further and still make it back up.




I did my best to get set up and do to a lot of wind, this was the best shot I got.




It was much to windy to get a shot off without getting any motion blur in the trees and bushes. When I finished and got all my stuff together for the climb up, I sat there and looked up to where my wife was standing and I was thinking, "She's going to have to go for help." To my complete and utter surprise, the climb up was no where near as difficult as the climb down. I think I did it in half the time.

On the way home I thought I would try some thing I've never done before. Take a photo from a moving car. I set the shutter speed to 1/20 sec and stuck my camera out the window and started to shoot on the straightaways.




The above photo is cropped a bit. I thought it was kind of nice. It was something I've never tried before and it turned out better than I thought it would.

So those were some of the photos I took yesterday. Now I'm going to go stretch out my sore muscles.

Last week while my wife's younger brother was visiting, we went out to a friend's skateboarding bowl. I used to fool around skateboarding many years ago but since then I haven't even touched a board. They had a small half-pipe in the back that I thought I would try my luck on. I've put on quite the weight over the years so I really didn't know how much trouble I was going to get myself into. It took a few drop-ins and wipes to finally get a kind of rhythm back. After messing around on that for a bit I thought I would try my luck on the much larger bowl they had. Needless to say, it only took one drop in and one wipe to call it a night. So then I got my camera out and started to take some photos of everyone else.

At first I tried to use my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens but it didn't have a wide enough angle. I switched to my Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 for the wider angle but it wasn't fast enough so I decided to use my built in flash. I've only used my built in flash a hand full of times and only a few shots when I did. This was the first time I used my flash to take around 100 shots.

So yesterday was my daughter's field day. In Japanese they call it "undoukai". It's a pretty big event all the way up through high school. All the families of the children come out to watch and eat lunch with everyone. I want to get better at taking action shots so I pretty much photographed everybody during the race portions of the field day.

Today's post is of some 4th graders running the 100 meters (about 100m I think). The reason for posting these shots is the kid on the far left of the photo; he really looks like he's giving it his all. Sort of like a young Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid. The facial expressions are priceless.

Congratulations Mr. Kubo for a well ran race! "久保" or "Kubo" is his family name and is written on his gym uniform.

So that's one of a few posts of my daughter's field day. I was having trouble with my camera. I wanted to set it to Aperture Priority for f/4.0 at 55mm and have the camera Auto Expose for the ISO and shutter speed, but for some reason, it kept the shutter speed very slow and a lot of the photos were blown out. I ended up putting it on manual and shooting. It's most likely operator error so I'll need to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Some of the photos are a bit out of focus. I had my camera set to Auto Focus Continuous so this maybe just a bit of motion blur. I think a shutter speed of 1/200 sec would have been a better choice.

Do you hold on to your kids' old clothes for sentimental purposes? My wife is that way. She has most of our daughter's old shoes from when she was a baby. I suppose, in a way, I would find it hard to throw out something like that, but that's my feminine side talking. It's a pretty small side... The male side of me is pretty overwhelming and if something is only good for taking up space...

THROW IT OUT!

So my wife has this big bag of old dirty shoes sitting up in our bedroom, taking up space. I thought it would be a good idea to maybe take a few photos of some of these shoes so maybe she would be more inclined to throw them out. She thought the photo idea was good, but we'll see if she actually throws them out.

I remember when I was a kid growing up, I'd go through shoes so fast they'd get mad at me for tearing them up so fast. If I tried to take care of them, I would outgrow them just as quickly and they were still buying me new shoes. I never really worried about that with my daughter. If her shoes looked like they were getting too small, we'd get her new ones. She never really tore any of them up so bad that they were unwearable. I remember using duct tape on my shoes because the souls got holes or tore away from the sides. That kind of sounds like a country song...

So those are a few of the shots I took of some of my daughter's shoes. A short walk down memory lane. Now lets go see if we can hide some of these shoes in the garbage without my wife finding out!

Last Sunday we took a canoe tour of the mangrove forest they have here in Amami. I've taken a few other mangrove tours here but I will be honest, they completely sucked and I couldn't believe I spent money on them. But! I have a friend who promised me that they had a certain tour here that would do me right. He was right; this tour blew the the others right out of the water.

Hikari started out paddling the canoe but she couldn't make it go straight for the life of her. The zigzagging across the river even tired Jade out and soon Jade took the paddle from Hikari and starting paddling. I have to admit, Jade kind of did a better job at paddling.





I straggled back a bit to be able to take some photos without the group obstructing my shots. I took a lot of shots and before I knew it, I was very much alone. But it was all fun. I suppose I get a kick out of that sort of scary sensation, just before panic sets in. If you've ever seen the 1981 movie Southern Comfort and you were alone in an area like this, I think you would understand the feeling I had. I suppose I make it sound scarier than it really was, but it was scary enough to make my heart beat a few beats faster.



This fishing boat was washed in during a typhoon years before. You can see on the hull of the boat how high the water gets sometimes.







We had an excellent tour guide who explained a bunch about the mangrove and knew the area very well. He took us into the thick of it and it was fun. At the very end, he said we were free to do what we want. !?! We can go off and see whatever we wanted?! So I asked him where a few of the nice places to take photos were and off I went.





The further I went in, the narrower it got. At one point I was afraid I wouldn't be able to turn my canoe around so I turned it around and started to head back.



On the way back I came across a couple that was in our group. It seems they followed me in but turned back a before I did. They were taking their time and I didn't want to bother them so I waited back a bit to give them some privacy. When we were near the entrance to this area, I passed them and found Hikari and Jade had already headed back to place where we got in. I didn't want to make them wait anymore so I hightailed it back and left the couple to themselves again.

I am definitely going to come back here sometime soon and try to take some different types of photos and what not. I didn't know what to expect this time around. Next time I'll have an idea of what kinds of shots I want to take. I had fun.