Amami Superman Photography

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.

First of all, I would like to apologize for not posting in a few weeks. I'd like to say I was taking a break, but the truth of the matter is I was overwhelmed by work. It wasn't until this last weekend that I was able to actually get a day off. Work had me out and about most of the time, but I found it hard to take time to take any photos. I did get a few opportunities to take some photos, but all in all I didn't take very many this past month.

Last month on the last week of Jade's summer vacation, we decided to go have a barbecue at the river. It was refreshing swimming in the river. A lot cooler than the beach. The barbecue and swimming soon turned into crawdad hunting. In the past we used to catch crawdads to eat; now we catch them to put into our big fish tank.

When we first arrived to this spot, I was surprised to see 5 or 6 aluminum cans in the river. I'm no tree hugging Greenpeace environmentalist, but that's one thing that I really can't stand is people throwing their trash away like that. I borrowed my daughter's goggles and fished out all the cans and a few plastic bottles. The water was very cold and refreshing. After that I put together our small barbecue grill and started up the charcoal.


We were barely finished with lunch and they were back in the river starting to look for crawdads. We actually caught quite few.



That night after we got home I thought it would be cool to take some photos of the crawdads in our fish tank that we caught that day.





I have to admit that it was pretty warm this summer. It's just now starting to cool down. It's still hot and humid, but not quite like mid summer. It didn't rain that much this last rainy season and we didn't have that many typhoons come through. Some people are worried we may have a water shortage next year. That's El Niño for you.

I took Kevin out today to show him some of the more popular tourist spots. Until now, I've tried to stay away from these spots just because they've been photographed so many times.

I don't have Geotags for most of these photos. There weren't any roads on Google Maps but I can show you about where the turn off is if you look here. The turn off is just after a auto shop on the right side of the road coming from Naze. The name of the area is Kinsakubaru. It's a popular tourist spot that plenty of tourist groups bring their customers.

It was cloudy and a bit rainy for the most, but the sun broke through from time to time and I tried to take advantage of it when I could. It was kind of foggy in some areas also.

I took a photo back in March of this waterfall with my wife and daughter. I just thought I would show Kevin and take a few shots myself.



They call this kind of palm tree, "hikage hego". I'm not sure of its actual name.





There are a few famous photographers here in Amami. One of which is Futoshi Hamada. Years ago he photographed a lady standing in the myst amongst the hikage hego. It was a very popular photo and was used as a poster for Amami. He took that photo somewhere around where I took these photos. From what I heard, they had to use scafolding to get her up high enough to make her look like she was standing between them. It really was a great photo, but I couldn't imagine going to all that trouble.




As we drove further along the forest road, we came across a landslide and couldn't go any further. We turned around and headed back to a side road we had seen earlier. I wasn't sure where the road was leading us to, but it's hard to get lost on a small island. Anyway, when I finally figured out where we were, I realized we were near the Materiya waterfall. That too has been photographed many times by everyone and I mostly stayed away from it. Since we were so close, I thought I should at least show Kevin.


As you can see, we had some foggy type myst, but the sun broke through a few times and I tried to get a few shots off.

This was the last day of Golden Week. We decided to go out to the river and see if we couldn't catch some tanaga. Tanaga are crawdads, or crawfish if you will, found in the streams here in Amami. I imagine they're found in other parts of Japan also but I think they call them tenaga instead(TE meaning hand, NAGA meaning long). I think that's how someone explained it to me once. Anyway, I thought it would be a good chance to take some photos for the photo contest the local newspaper is sponsoring.

Judging by the winners' photos of last year's contest, it seems to me the judges like to have the human element in the photo as well. A friend of mine entered a photo of the most beautiful wave I've every seen. I thought for sure he would have placed with it. He didn't. I didn't think the winners from last year were very deserving. I think the judges maybe a bit bias when considering all photos and tend to lean toward the MORE amateur photos. Either way, I'll submit some photos with people in them and some of just rivers and streams and see how it goes. If I don't place, I won't beat myself up over it.


At first, none came out to eat the pieces of rice we were sprinkling in the water. Then we noticed very small ones coming out to eat but none of the big ones we like to catch and eat.



This is our dog Missy. She is a mixed breed. Her mother was a Miniature Schnauzer and her father was a Yorkshire Terrier. We bought her from an online pet shop in Nagoya two years ago. She is a very good dog.



I don't know what these flowers are called but they are in full bloom around the island.




It was pretty warm that day and we even got a bit sun burnt by the end of the day. The cool water felt refreshing.



I got right down next to the water to get this photo. I like this photo and the next one the best. We'll have to see what other photos I can take between now and the contest deadline before I decide which I want to submit.




It was such a beautiful day that day. Looking up the river like this kind of reminded me of the rivers from around my home town in America. We would go tubing down them every year in the summer.


We caught just a few and instead of cooking them up, we put them our big fish tank we have at home. They seem to be pretty happy and content there.