About Me
- Amami Superman
- I live on a small island in southern Japan called Amami Oshima. I have many interests and hobbies. I made this blog to share with my family and friends.
翻訳
I had the opportunity to attend an open house for my daughter last January. Some of the pictures the students had made were displayed on the walls of the classroom and I got a kick out of Jade's. When I asked what kind of machine it was, she told me it was a machine that magically zaps the food together. As you can see, she was probably hungry for something along the lines of a happy meal when she was making the picture. Although we don't have a McDonalds here in Amami, we do frequent the MOS Burger here. MOS Burger is a known gourmet fast food chain establishment throughout Japan. MOS stands for Mountain, Ocean and Sun.
When you first try any of MOS Burger's burgers, you think they taste pretty good. But after a while you get used to the taste and then it's not so tasty. I prefer my own barbecued hamburgers with pickles, lettuce, tomato, onions, smothered with American style barbecue sauce. Dang, I'm getting hungry!
I like to play online computer games, plain and simple. But, I don't get to play as much as I like. One of the games I like to play is World of Warcraft. WoW (World of Warcraft), takes a bit of time and effort to play (well at least it does for me), s0 I don't play it like I would like to. So I play games that I can just hop in and play and then leave when I need to. One of those games is Counter Strike Source. It's a FPS game (first person shooter), and it's pretty straight forward, kill the other team. I've only started to play it recently and playing on Japanese servers, most people have a "spray" they can use in-game. This is the spray I made to use when I'm playing.
"Mr. B" is my gaming handle in Counter Strike. I've gotten quite a few laughs at this spray. Most people use Japanese anime characters like Pikachu or whatever (I don't follow Japanese anime so I don't know), but they get a laugh at the "and died" part because I completely suck at the game. Even though I completely suck at the game Although I play on Japanese servers for Counter Strike, a lot of foreigners play this game that understand English. It's pretty fun.
I know this doesn't have anything to do with photography. I've been busy with work and family so I haven't had the time to go through the photos I've been taking. Now you might be thinking, "Instead of playing online games, you should focus on your photos." Well, in all honesty, it doesn't take a lot of thought to play FPS games, and that's what appeals to me. While writing up a blog post, I have to think about what I'm writing and make sure spelling and grammar are correct which I completely fail at if you haven't realized already. But instead of playing games tonight, I decided to take the time and go through my photos I've been taking over the past couple of months. I have so many of them that it's going to take some time and I thought it would be good to post something that wouldn't take so much time to post. But it's taking more time than I thought it would.
Anyway! I've been busy with work this past month or so. In Japan they have school events called undokai which, pretty much is track and field day. I have loads of photos that I've taken from the different schools that I teach English at of their undokai. I've been going through them today picking out the photos I like and preparing them for posting. The photos are not that great, but they'll give you sense of what track and field day is like here in Japan.
Today was my daughter's undokai so I'm going to do my best to get the different photos I've taken posted up on my blog. There's just so many that I have to go through that I need to make a schedule for posting. I have way to many to go through, but I'll do my best. Hopefully some turned out nice.
I was cruising the interwebz tonight and I came across a neat site that titlshifts your normal photos for you called TiltShift Maker. I've been interested in tiltshift lenses but always thought they were for the professionals and people who had money to spend on those kinds of expensive lenses. I would like to have a tiltshift lens, but I'm poor and a tiltshift lens is not on the top of my wish list. So with that, I thought I would try it out.
Now when I first came across this site, I was apprehensive. So I took a look at the flickr group they had and took a look at some of the photos people produced with this site. After going through quite a few photos, I became aware that photos taken from above looked better than the photos taken at ground view, or level, photos. With that in mind, I thought of some photos that I took from an upper perspective and came up with these two. I hope you like them.
This photo is from my post of the 2009 Hachigatsu Odori post. The original photo I posted is here.
This is a photo I posted earlier this month of the Amami Matsuri 2010. The original photo I posted is here.
I know this isn't a real part of photography, but when we mess up photos in whatever application we use, how is this much different? I thought it was a pretty cool site and I thought I would try it out. With that said, I think these photos turned out a bit artistically different that what I originally produced and I'm happy with that.
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, 1/200 sec, f/3.5, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Yesterday was the start of obon here in Amami. The official holiday was from August 13th to the 15th, but most southern islands like Amami go off the traditional lunar calendar and started on the 22nd until the 24th.
I planned on taking some photos of obon this year and I got my camera gear out to clean yesterday. It being summer time and me being quite a sweaty person, my camera and gear gets kind of grimey at times. I try to keep my gear as clean as possible, but sometimes I just don't get the time after using it to clean it. So I took some time to clean my camera and lenses before I went out to take some photos.
After cleaning my gear, my daughter had some coloring pencils out and decided to line them up and take a shot to mess around with in Lightroom 3. I recently upgraded to Lightroom 3 and I haven't really had the chance to mess around with some of the new features it has. I didn't plan on posting this photo, but as I was messing around with it, my wife came up and took a look at what I was working on and thought it looked nice so I thought I would share it.
I did a bit of everything to this photo. I upped the Recovery to 100, upped the Fill Light along with Blacks a bit. I also upped Brightness and Contrast just a little, put the Clarity and Vibrance to 100 and upped the Saturation just a bit. I did a bit of Sharpening and Noise Reduction and gave it a Vignette. Obviously this photo is also cropped a bunch. Here is the original photo to show you how much I did to it. Not that much, but completely different.
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 52mm, 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Do you look at clouds and find they look like different things? I used to do that when I was a kid. While we were at the beach last Monday, Jade pointed and said, "It looks like a turkey." I told her it looked more like a pigeon in flight. What I really thought it looked like was a Kentucky Fried Chicken drumstick and breast piece...
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/2 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
These photos were taken the same night as my previous post. I slowed the shutter to 1/2 sec and just stuck the camera out the window of the car as I was driving. The first photo has been flipped upside down and cropped just a bit. The second photo was also cropped just a bit. I thought they were kind of funky looking so I thought I would share them with you. What I found kind of weird about the second photo is the crosswalk stripes. There was only two sets but in the photo with the first set coming in intervals of three. I would have expected them to be just a blur. Maybe there was some type of strobe effect nearby that lit them up this way.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/40 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1600 -- EXIF
Nice and Golden
I've had quite a few barbecues this year. My wife sells bags of big marshmallows in her shop and we usually roast some at the end of our barbecues over the dying coals. Most Japanese don't have a clue about roasting marshmallows let alone ever eating a smore. So whenever we have friends over for a barbecue, we bust out the marshmallows and teach the art of roasting.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/40 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1600 -- EXIF
Hot Marshmallow
I thought this photo of Jade looked nice black and white. In color, the highlights were blown out and just didn't look good at all.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/30 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 -- EXIF
Most of my friends know me for a few things; cars, bikes and my barbecues (and hopefully my photography). I'm the kind of person that will decided to have a barbecue at the drop of a hat. I imagine they have propane gas grills in Japan, but I've never seen one. We barbecue over real charcoal wood, not the briquettes you buy in the supermarkets in America. There's not much difference except they're a pain to get lit. Once lit, they'll burn for hours.
When my wife and I were out shopping, we couldn't decided what we wanted to make for dinner. Chicken was on sale so I bought a few backs of that with some vegetables and decided to make kebabs.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/25 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 -- EXIF
Grilled To Perfection
I Made Too Many
We spent about 2,000 yen on ingredients and made way too many for our small family to eat. My wife's brother-in-law came over with 2 of his friends and we still had too many. I called over 2 more friends and even after they had their fill, we still had some left. I then called one more friend I play basketball with.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1/4, 1/50 sec, f/1.4, ISO 800 -- EXIF
The Cavalry
Kenshin Sameshima
Kenshin was just finishing up with work when I called him and he was delighted to come over and have some barbecue. I've known Kenshin now for over 10 years. He's a good friend.
Well, that was my first barbecue of the year and I imagine it's not going to be the last. Next time, I'm thinking of buying real 100% lean ground beef and barbecuing up some hamburgers with American barbecue sauce. I think my friends and family would like that.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/60 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
New Meaning to the Term
"Exotic Import"
If you've ever been to Thailand or its neighboring countries, chances are you've ridden in a tuk tuk (auto rickshaw). My friend, Inai san, recently bought one for his own private use. Here are some of the photos I took of it.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/50 sec, f/100 -- EXIF
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/125 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/200 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/60 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/40 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/80 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/250 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/100 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
I have never seen a tuk tuk in Japan so they are very rare here I think. I remember seeing something similar in the Japanese animation Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), so I thought I would look up to see if Japan used to use these in recent history. I found out that rickshaws (not auto rickshaws), were first seen in Japan. It seems the inventor of the rickshaw is uncertain, but they do originate from Japan. I wasn't able to find any information on tuk tuk's in Japan, but I did find other information on 3 wheeled automobiles that look similar to tuk tuk's that were produced here in Japan like the Daihatsu Bee, Mazda T2000 and the Mazda K360. I imagine that there are plenty of other types of 3 wheel automobiles that were produced in Japan, but I didn't look that hard.
OK, who is his brother and what do you think he does to make money online?(Is that the younger brother or the guy in the banner add?) I come across stupid web banner adds all the time, but this one really takes the cake. Mind you that the "Learn How" button at the bottom isn't really a button at all, but the whole image is a button. So they had to have made this image with the words and background image together before making a web banner add out of it. I got a big fat EL OH EL from that. The funny thing is, I've seen this add a few times, but I've never really paid any attention to it until now. I know this has nothing to do with photography or Amami, but I had to make fun of it.
**EDIT**
I had uploaded the image as a TIFF and I didn't realize it. Sorry if you couldn't see it.
When I'm out taking photos, I usually tell the people I'm taking photos of I'm going to put their photo on my blog. Their usual response is, "What's your blog's address?" I've gotten tired of trying to write down my blog address so many times that I decided to make a business card with the address of my blog and my contact information. I went with this a double sided layout and this is what I designed for the front. I know, it's kind of geeky, but hey, I like it.
Do you ever want to take things apart to know how they work? I'm that sort of a person. I've mostly been interested in cars and bikes and it's always been cars and bikes that I take apart to get a better understanding of.
Until I started this blog, I never blogged before. When I started to get into photography, I noticed that a lot of people posted their photos in blogs of some sort to share their photos. I decided to try it out. I learned about free templates that you could use to give your blog more style. The whole cutting and pasting a template into your blog was easy enough. But one look at the html, css and widgets used made me think that's a lot to learn about if I wanted to make my own template.
It all started out a few days ago when I got fed up with Photobucket. I wanted my photos to look nicer so I started a trial account on Zenfolio to upload my photos to. I thought, "Now my photos will look a little nicer." Well, it didn't stop there. As I looked through my photos, I didn't like how my categories sort of got out of control. I decided to go through my posts and take all the labels from my posts out and try to think up a better list to use. As you can see, I don't have a category list at the moment.
It's always been in the back of my mind that the template I used wasn't that good for showing off photos. A lot of browns seemed to take away from the warmer colors in my photos. As I was going through my posts, I started to get an itch for changing the template. I got into web design a few years back and I've done a bit of studying on html and css and I used what I know to widen areas of my blog and change some colors to what it is now. I decided to jump in and see what I could learn about the codes used to make this template.
I copied my current blog's html and pasted it into a new blog. After that I took a look at all the different graphics used and the code used to build my current template. Next thing I knew, I was in Illustrator and Photoshop making up my own web graphics to see if I could rebuild my blog into something I like that I made.
This is what I made.
My New Blog Design
I'm still doing some fine tuning tweaks but I was interested to know what others thought before I made the actual change.
This is a test post to view the differences between Photobucket and Zenfolio. Both images are the same image uploaded from my computer to Photobucket and Zenfolio.
Photobucket Image
Zenfolio Image
I've had it with Photobucket. They've changed the menus around which I find to be more difficult to use and the photo quality isn't that great after uploading. Both of these images should look the same but they don't because Photobucket optimized the image for the web (or something).
I've started a trial account with Zenfolio for uploading my images and it just seems to be better all around for me. So I'll try to figure out a new workflow for posting new images here and we'll see how it goes. If I do plan on subscribing to Zenfolio, I don't know what will happen to my images already saved on Photobucket. If I stop paying my subscription to them, I may have too many images for the free account. I suppose I could just go back and make new ones from the originals to upload to Zenfolio and then re-edit the links to the photos in all my posts (almost 100 posts now). I don't know. We'll see. I'm just getting fed up with Photobucket.
I made a comment on my friend Jeffrey Friedl's blog post of his son Anthony's art project. I was impressed by his son's work and I wanted to share a picture my daughter Jade drew and colored for school so I threw in a quick link for it into the comment. I was surprised to find that a few others made comments in his blog post about the picture I shared. They said they would like to see other things my daughter has made so I decided to take some photos of drawings we have pinned up on the wall near my desk.
Here is a scan of the picture that I put a link to on Jeffrey's blog post.
"One Big Family"
By Jade Barr (age 7)
Our daughter Jade made this picture for an art project when she first started 1st grade (7 years old). She spent days drawing it first and then spent even longer coloring it. I asked my wife how long it took Jade to make, she said Jade spent around 5-10 minutes a day for well over a week. The picture was entered into a contest held by the Kagoshima Prefecture. It ended up being selected to be put on display somewhere in Kagoshima and she received an award. Almost a year later, we still hadn't gotten the picture back and we had to make a few phone calls to figure out where it was. It turned out it was still on display. When we finally got it back, we put it in a frame and now it hangs in my wife's shop. The actual size of the picture is a little bigger than an A3 size paper. I had to scan it a few times with my A4 scanner to get it all and I put it together in Photoshop. I also had to trim a bit off the edges so some of the picture is cut off.
Here are some of the pictures I have pinned up on the wall near my desk made by our daughter Jade.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/40 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Pig
By Jade Barr (age 5)
Neither my wife nor I could remember why the pig was crying so I asked Jade today why and she said, "It's not crying, it's sweating because it's running." Oh, and if I told Jade I was posting her pictures on my blog, she would probably kill me. She gets embarrassed about the weirdest things...
This pig picture reminded me of a personality test I took in high school called, "The Pig Personality Test". I'll post a link to a website that has the details of the test. If you have never taken the test yet, I suggest you try it. It's kind of fun. You'll find the website with the test HERE.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/30 sec, f/2.8, ISO 280 -- EXIF
Missy
By Jade Barr (age 6)
My wife and I got a kick out of this picture of our dog Missy. As you can see, Missy is wearing a dress and high heels. The whole picture sort of had a goth feeling to it and what really got me was Missy is wearing a necklace and has some boobies. Where'd that come from? I also like the pink background. It almost looks like Missy is walking down the catwalk... you think?
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/40 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 -- EXIF
64
By Jade Barr (age 6)
We have satelite TV (SkyPerfect), and we usually only let Jade watch cartoons that are in English. One of the cartoons she used to watch was called "64". It's about a little girl but I don't know much more than that. I just remember Jade used to sing the opening theme to it, ♫"Sixty four, sixty four, sixty four..."
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/40 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Roller Bladers
By Jade Barr (age 6)
Not sure where Jade got the idea for this, but my wife liked it and pinned it up.
We used to buy Jade notebooks and drawing pads, but they never lasted any longer than an hour or so until every page was filled with something, front and back. We started saving printouts, old fliers for our business, any piece of scrap paper that Jade could draw on so we didn't have to buy her notebooks all the time. It's not so bad now that she's in school and has to do homework every night, but she still does a fair bit of drawing. So a lot of these older pictures were drawn on the back of some scrap paper.
So those were a few of the pictures Jade has made in the past. We have loads of pictures like these at home stuffed away in a box somewhere. Next time my wife gets them out to look at, I'll try to take some photos of a few of them to show. I'll also post some of the pictures Jade will draw in the future.
There's a little PC repair shop near my house that has a pretty interesting wall. I was walking by with my camera one day and decided to snap a shot.
The wall is covered in thick vines almost like shrubs. They trimmed the vines and made this interesting picture on the wall. The far left vines are a hand pointing to "パソコン" (pasokon).
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/800 sec, f/4.0, ISO 800 -- EXIF
"Computers will definitely break."
Japanese call any desktop computer a "pasokon", which is short for "personal computer", even if it's a Mac. In English, PC is short for "personal computer", and we all know that PC's and Macs are NOT the same thing. I'm a loyal Mac user and I'm continually reminded by my friends ,who use PC's, how much Macs suck butt. I guess I'll never learn... ANYWAY, the caption on the wall uses the word "必ず" (kanarazu), and there are a few ways to say this word in English like, "surely" or "certainly". The word "故障する" (koshou suru), I thought, means "to break (down)". I was curious to know what Google Translate would come up with.
I got a laugh at that. I don't think I could "Contribute a better translation", than that...
My wife runs a small import shop here in Amami called IMPORTANT. She enjoys doing it but it's more a hobby than a business. She buys imported goods from distributors here in Japan as well as importing directly from America.
Today one of my wife's friends came in and told us about the company he works for here in Amami. They make several different products from materials produced here in Amami. Today he wanted to show us some of the fruit sauces his company makes. When he brought out the samples to show us, I thought I would take a few shots of them since I had my camera right next to me. Although his website is in Japanese, I thought I would link it.
Nikon D60, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, 1/1000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Guava, Plum and Passion Fruits
I took this photo right next to the cash register facing the door of my wife's store. It was a beautiful sunny day today and the background was pretty bright but I wanted the light to shine through the items to show the texture of the liquids inside. I did a bit of post editing in Lightroom 2 upping the Recovery, Fill Light and a few other of the settings. Despite the bright background, I felt this photo turned out quite well after a bit of editing.
I have yet to try these products but they do look delicious. I think they would go well on some shaved ice.
As I said, it was very nice weather today and I was antsy to go out and take some photos of something. I was thinking of going to take more sunset photos, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky and I find that a cloudless sky doesn't make much for a sunset photo, so I passed. I did, however, go out and take some other photos that I'll share with you later.
Oh, and TODAY is my actual blog anniversary. Yay for 1 year! Thanks for reading.
It's Amami Superman Photography's 1st anniversary!
And what a year it's been.
Our daughter Jade had some homework to do over winter break. One of the things they wanted the children to do was make a kite with their parents. I'm always up for an arts-and-crafts challenge so we went out yesterday and bought some supplies.
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 36mm, 1/40 sec, f/5.3, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Kite Making Supplies
I looked up on the interwebs for some patterns for making kites. When I was a kid, I remember how my grandfather used to make kites for me out of black trash bags and some sticks we would cut from brush. I wanted to do something a little bit more pleasing to the eye than using trash bags. The pattern I found is for a Japanese 6 sided kite. The pattern called for some special kind of paper, but I decided to go with something a little more robust and used a tablecloth we bought at the 100 yen shop. You can find the pattern and directions we used here (although, it's all in Japanese, sorry).
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 32mm, 1/40 sec, f/5.0, ISO 400 -- EXIF
The Definition of Kite Making
We used thinly cut bamboo for the spine and spars. The bamboo was a bit curved so I used the nearest thing I had to hold it down while the glue dried, my Japanese dictionary.
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/40 sec, f/5.0, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Spine and Spars Glued
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/40 sec, f/5.0, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Almost finished
I know this photo is at a goofy angle, but I wanted to also show the string I used to put tention on the spars to make it bow. We also cut some ribbon up to tie to the end of the botton spars to give it some style. I think it looked pretty nice. Now all we had to do was let it dry overnight and then tie on the string.
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 32mm, 1/30 sec, f/5.0, ISO 900 -- EXIF
Ready to Fly
The next day we tied the string on and we were all set to go fly a kite. We were pretty excited to see whether or not it would fly. Was it going to fly? Was it going to fly?! The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind... (sorry, I couldn't resist)
It was very overcast today and it's been raining quite a bit over the last couple of days. I was afraid the nearby park's field would be muddy so we headed to the port to do our test flight.
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 26mm, 1/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Ready for Release
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/100 sec, f/5.0, ISO 200 -- EXIF
We Have Lift Off!
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 -- EXIF
SUCCESS!
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 28mm, 1/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 160 -- EXIF
Flying High
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 20mm, 1/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 160 -- EXIF
Soaring
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 160 -- EXIF
Flying Kites Is Fun
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/60 sec, f/4.0, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Winding It Up
I wonder if Benjamin Franklin felt this way when he made his first kite?
It was a great way to end winter vacation and I thought this would make a good post for my blog anniversary.
I bought my camera a little over a year ago and when I first bought it, I was excited, but I didn't know how long I would stick with taking photos. The more I took, the more I got into it. At first I had some luck and got some pretty nice photos. I really didn't have that much knowledge about photography but I spent a lot of time on the interwebs looking up whatever I could about the kinds of photos I wanted to take. I started to take my camera with me wherever I went and shot pretty much anything and everything. The more I posted on this blog, the more friends I made around the world. I've gotten plenty of emails from several people and through their advice and encouragements, I'm still with it and having more fun than ever.
I started out with a double lens kit that had a Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens and a Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 lens. They are pretty standard but I really didn't know how to use them to their full advantage. One thing that I found I couldn't do was take low lighting photos indoors. I needed a brighter lens so I decided to buy a Sigma 30mm f/1.4. With these 3 lenses I've made my way around Amami taking photos and learning more and more about aperture, shutter speed and ISO. I feel I have a pretty good understanding, but now I just need the experience to know what settings to use at the drop of a hat. I like to take nature photos the most because I can take the time to think about what I'm going to shoot and how to compose a shot. On the other hand, I've had the opportunities of taking receptions photos, sports photos, concerts and the like. They all take some experience to take nice shots and I end up messing a lot of them up. But those bad shots give me the experience I need to take better photos in the future.
Over this past year, I've made the newb mistakes of forgetting my camera batterie, forgetting my tripod, not having enough memory space to take all the photos I wanted to and the list goes on. But now I have 3 batteries, back up memory cards and I leave my tripod in the car. I've also added a few filters to my arsenal, a remote release, a large camera bag to keep my gear in and a hand held GPS that a good friend of mine, Jeffrey Friedl, gave me to help geoencode my photos. I also have to mention that Jeffrey introduced me to Lightroom and the plugins he produces. His plugins are fantastic. They make workflows faster and posting photos easier. Thank you Jeffrey for all your advice and hard work.
One of the accomplishments I'm proud of is I took second place in a photo contest that the local newspaper held here in Amami. I received a trophy, 10,000 yen and got my photo in the newspaper. I suppose that's not too shabby for a newb photographer. :-) They have another photo contest at the moment and I'm still thinking about what I'm going to shoot. I'll post more on that later.
So it was a great first year. I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to read my blog and sending emails. I really appreciate the comments and words of advice you give. I'll be out and about taking many more photos as much as I can and I'll share them with you all here. Happy New Year and I'll talk to you all soon.
==EDIT==
For some reason, I had it stuck in my head that my first blog post was on January 7th when it was actually the 10th. Jumped the gun just a bit.
Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 36mm, 1/30 sec, f/5.3, ISO 640 -- EXIF
RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!
The Squirrels Are Attacking!
While we were walking through the gift shop at Takachiho Farms, I came across a shelf full of stuffed squirrels. They had so many, it made me snicker so I took quick photo of them.
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.
Monument of Power
I've seen wind turbines on TV and on the Internet plenty of times. I new they were big but when you get up to one kind of close, you really start to understand just how big they are. While taking these photos Don Quixote flashed into my mind, but you won't find me tilting at this windmill...
Maybe a Bit Distracting
This wind turbine is located right next to an 18 hole golf course. This driving range is in plain view of the wind turbine. I think maybe some righties will get a bit distracted by its huge spinning wings.
Still Under Construction
奄美 (Amami)
Clouds, Turbines and Golf Balls
From Nagahama
You can see the wind turbine standing tall on the distant mountains in the above photo. My daughter was the first to notice this a few weeks ago.
It was pretty cloudy with sunny patches throughout the day. Sometimes it was bright and sometimes it was very dark. I wasn't able to take very consistent photos on this day. I just need to keep practicing. :D
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