Amami Superman Photography

These flowers were taken just down the street from me. I saw them earlier this week and at first I thought they were wisteria every time I drove by them, but when I actually went to take a few photos of them, I noticed they weren't. I searched around the interwebz for blue and white hanging flowers, but mostly came up with flowers for hanging pots. These were more of a tree type flower like wisteria. I never found out what they are called. I don't have a lot of knowledge when it comes to flowers but I learn more and more every time I take a photo of a different flower.

In my previous posts, I mentioned a friend of mine, Shoriki Satomura. Before meeting him, I've visited his blog frequently and was always amazed at the different photos he takes. I don't know if I mentioned this in my previous posts, but one day he came to my wife's shop and asked for me. He works for the city hall here in Amami and he got wind of a photo contest being held in the Kagoshima Prefecture for foreigners only. He gave me some information about the contest and said I should enter into it. The contest had three different categories to enter photos to. I'm trying my best to remember what the three categories were, but I think there were "Travel", "Amazing" and "My Best". You could only submit three photos and you could submit them to any category; one to each category or all three to one category. I ended up submitting three photos, one to each category. I ended up taking first place in the "Amazing" category with a photo of the sunset at Ohama Beach with my wife and daughter as silhouettes. Here is the photo I submitted. I won 10,000 yen and received an award. They said they have my photo on display somewhere in Kagoshima City, but because I don't live there on the mainland, I haven't seen it yet.

So that is how I first met Shoriki. After that, we have gotten together to talk about photography and just shoot the breeze a few times. He is a great guy and I feel he has the same kind of enthusiasm about photography as I do. He takes a lot of close up shots of flowers and blossoms that I admire and I thought it would be good practice to try and take some photos like him. I suppose that's how I practice any hobby of mine. So you'll probably see more close up shots of flowers here as well as the other photos I take from around the island.