Amami Superman Photography

I went out to teach in Uken at a nursery school today. My wife likes kids just as much as I do and she tagged along with me. On the way home we stopped at several different spots to pick flowers and take photos. This isn't the first stop, but I thought I would start off with these photos to give you an idea of the kind of day it was.

As you can see in the above panoramic photo that it was a pretty cloudy day but it did have its breaks and the sun shown through bright during our many stops.

The above photo was created in Photoshop using the Merge to Panorama option from 3 photos. This is about the angle of view you would have, with a little more vertical width, looking from the side of the road where I was shooting from. It was a very contrasting shot. The sun was shining down on us, but wasn't shining anywhere else besides the foreground. I did a bit of post editing to this panorama because it didn't have the same contrasty feel that I saw when I was shooting it. I feel this is pretty close to what I saw.

Also, the name of the photo is "Somewhere", because I forgot to recharge the batteries for my hand-held GPS and couldn't get the exact coordinates. I tried to look it up on Google Earth, but just couldn't find the spot. I try to geo-encode my photos for the ones that are points-of-interest if you're ever inclined to come to my island. :)

Photoshop did a great job merging these photos. After merging these photos, I upped the Recovery along with the Fill Light a bit and maxed out the Clarity in Lightroom. I also upped the Vibrancy a bit and lowered the Saturation a smigde. After doing this, I felt the clouds didn't have the clarity I saw so I used the Graduated Filter tool and upped the Clarity of the clouds a bit more. This is what I turned out with and I thought it was pretty close to what I saw.



As I was all enthralled at the view at hand, my wife was more interested in the flowers at the side of the road.



I don't know what these flowers are called, but as it turns out, I hear they are poisonous. She didn't know this at the time, but when we got home, my wife's mother told her that they were and that people try to get rid of these flowers as much as possible. I don't think they are poisonous to the touch, as my wife didn't have any reaction to picking them. I imagine, if they are poisonous, that they need to be digested to have any affect.



This photo is straight out of the camera and I haven't done any post editing to it. It's not a good photo but I thought I would throw it in to give you an idea of what I was shooting. This tree's blossoms were kind of high up and my 18-55mm lens just didn't get close enough so I used my 55-200mm lens to get these next shots.

I don't know what kind of tree this is, but it's in full bloom right now. If you look at the panoramic photo I took, you can see some of these blossoms in the lower left hand corner. I mentioned this before in previous posts, but until I started taking photos, I never noticed the different flowers and blossoms that bloomed around the island during different times of the year until I started to take photos. It seems that where ever I go, I'm always noticing new things that I never would have if I had never taken up photography.



As the name of the photo says, I maxed the Contrast to give it this contrasty feel and tabbed down the Clarity to give it a softer feel. It's not a great photo, but I feel it turned out nice. Whether or not you like this kind of photo, I have been more inclined to make photos with more contrast, and it appeals to me. This next photo was posted edited with similar settings.



So those are some of the photos I took on my way home from teaching today. I have a bunch of more photos to share and I'll make posts for those soon.

It's now 11:30pm as I write this and it's a bit late for me. I have to wake up early for work and this usually is the problem I face. I take photos quite regularly, but I just can't find the time to go though them, pick out the photos I like, and make a blog post for them. It's kind of time consuming and I just can't seem to find the time to do it. It's something that I love to do, but the demands on life are a bit difficult. On the other hand, how does that that saying go...

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Post Edit: LOL, I was so tired last night, that I forgot to give this post a title before posing it. That's why the title is "Oops!"