Amami Superman Photography

A Place to Share My Photos

Jan 12, 2010

Sakura in January

Posted by Amami Superman

They have over 100 varieties of cherry blossoms here in Japan. The variety they have here in Amami usually starts blossoming around the beginning of February to middle of February. Last week we had had a few days of gorgeous weather which in turn brought the temperature up a bit. Some of the cherry trees here in Amami got a bit faked out by this and started blossoming early. I took the family out yesterday to look for some of these and we found just one tree with blossoms (and not that many I might add).


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 36mm, 1/160 sec, f/5.3, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Pretty in Pink


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/50 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 -- EXIF
"Perfect... They are all... perfect..."
(Katsumoto from The Last Samurai)


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Paler Than The Others


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Meh...
I thought the colors were nice.


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Buds to Blossoms

Well, I wasn't thinking about The Rule of Thirds when I took these photos. I used a PL filter when I took them. The only post editing I did was upped the exposure a little on one or two of the photos. Other than that, they're just as I took them.

I didn't get the chance to go out last year and take photos of the cherry blossoms so I'm excited to go do that next month. Most of the cherry trees are lined along mountain roads here in Amami. It will be fun to see if I can take some creative shots. I'll have to take my time and think about it for a while.

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Jan 11, 2010

Something I learned

Posted by Amami Superman

As I was writing my anniversary blog post, I thought of all the different things I've learned over the past year. I do read as much as I can about photography and how to take photos, but I find that I learn best by just going out and doing it. I don't know all the jargon and lingo of what I do, but I thought I'd share one point of what I learned just going out and taking photos.


I took these photos the same day as my previous post and and I said, I was antsy to take photos of something. Here are two of the shots I took yesterday.

Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/60 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 -- EXIF


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 200mm, 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 -- EXIF

Both of these photos were taken using 2 different lenses using the same technique. The goal I had in mind was to have the subject in focus and have a very burred background and maybe a blurred foreground depending on the composition. I basically have my lens zoomed in to maximum, set the aperture wide open, compensate with ISO and shutter speed and shoot at minimum distance focusing on what I want to be my subject. After learning more about aperture and depth of field, I now understand the concept behind this. This may seem like elementary photography, but it was a BIG step for me.

So that was one of the things I learned over the past year. It opened my eyes to what kinds of other lenses I would like to have, but I'll stick with what I have and practice a bit more before buying a new lens.

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Jan 10, 2010

Amami Fruit Sauces

Posted by Amami Superman

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.

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Jan 7, 2010

Winter Vacation Homework

Posted by Amami Superman

It's Amami Superman Photography's 1st anniversary!
And what a year it's been.

Well, I thought about what I wanted to do for a blog anniversary post for a bit. I really didn't have any good ideas myself. A few mentioned maybe having my daughter Jade as a guest writer, but she just wouldn't go along with it. I thought of going out and taking photos at the same spot that I took last year, but I decided against it. So what should I do? I decided to do the same thing I always do and maybe talk about my experiences over the last year. But first, lets get around to the photos.

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.

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Jan 6, 2010

Moe's Coming of Age Day

Posted by Amami Superman

Japan's Coming of Age Day (seijin no hi), happens on the second Monday of January. If you turn 20 between April 1st the previous year and March 31st of the current year, you are able to attend the ceremonies and festivities they have for these young adults.

Every city and town hold their own ceremonies (seijinshiki), for their residents who come of age. The ceremony is to congratulate them for joining the ranks of adulthood. But more importantly, it's a ceremony to encourage them to understand the importance to look forward and plan for the future.

I had the opportunity to participate in a seijinshiki when I was 20 years old. I happen to be living in Fukuoka at the time and they held the ceremony in a huge auditorium that seated thousands of people. It's been so long ago that I really don't remember who spoke that day. I want to say that they had an olympic gold medalist for Judo speak to us but I really don't remember.

Getting back to the subject of the post! Because the regular Coming of Age day is held on the 2nd Monday of January, it's tough for most college students to make it back for their Coming of Age Day here in Amami when they have to be at school the following days. So Amami holds it's own Coming of Age Day on January 5th when most are home for the holidays.

Moe is my wife's cousin. She is back from college for the holidays and her Coming of Age Day. I wanted to go out and take photos of our new adults here in Amami but I had to work and just couldn't find the time. I did however wake up early to meet Moe at a beauty salon to take some photos of her getting ready.


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 46mm, 1/30 sec, f/5.3, ISO 250 -- EXIF
Hair & Makeup


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm, f/3.5-5.6 @ 35mm, 1/60 sec, f/5.3, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Tools of the Trade

When they finished with most of her hair and makeup, they took her upstairs to put on her kimono. I took this time to go check out another nearby beauty salon that my friend owns. It just so happen that I bumped into one of my previous English students there.


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 200mm, 1/25 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Kazuma


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 200mm, 1/25 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
More Serious

Kazuma is a good kid. He doesn't cause his parents too much grief and he's kind and helpful. He plays guitar and sings in a band. Although I've never heard him play, I hear he's pretty good. He told me that one of his band members is going to purpose to his girlfriend that day. What an exciting day.

I went back to the beauty salon to check if Moe was ready and they were just doing some finishing touches. She had a reservation at a photo studio close by that she needed to get to so I just snapped a few shots just outside the salon. I really would have liked to have taken her to the beach or somewhere a little more photogenic, but we didn't have the time.


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/20 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Finishing Touches


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 105mm, 1/200 sec, f/4.8, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Voila!


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 125mm, 1/100 sec, f/5.0, ISO 400 -- EXIF
Looking to the Future


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 72mm, 1/160 sec, f/4.2, ISO 400 -- EXIF
And Off in That Other Direction...

Her kimono is Tsumugi. Tsumugi is the special kind of kimonos they make here in Amami. Most of the time, the girls wear what they call a furisode kimono for their Coming of Age Day. A furisode kimono is a kimono with long sleeves. Furisode literally means, "swinging sleeves". Tsumugi on the other hand doesn't have the furisode style. Her Tsumugi kimono is more a traditional kimono from here in Amami.

I also did a bit of post editing on the last 3 photos in Photoshop CS3 to take care of some facial blemishes that young people are prone to. Nothing too serious. I also added some vignettes from Lightroom 2.

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Jan 5, 2010

New Year's Day 2010

Posted by Amami Superman

Every year, on the 1st of January, my wife's mother's family all get together to celebrate the New Year. The celebration is held every year at my wife's uncle's house near Tebiro Beach in Tatsugo.


This year is a special year because my wife's grandmother turns 97. So why is 97 a special age? Because it's the year of the tiger this year and that's the year she was born in. Now, some of you maybe thinking, "The Chinese calendar only has a 12 year cycle so shouldn't the special year have been 96?" This is very true and let me get around to that. I was thinking the same thing and I was trying to figure out if she was 96 now and turned 97 this year or if she was 95 now and turned 96 this year. It turns out that she is only 95 at the moment and turns 96 this year. So why did they say they were celebrating her 97th birthday? They have a thing here in Japan called "kazoedoshi".

What is "kazoedoshi"? Kazoedoshi is a traditional way of counting someone's age. For the most part, no one in Japan uses this method of counting age besides the elderly and in some special cases such as traditional ceremonies. The whole idea behind this method is a person's age starts at conception. You would also call a baby 1 (not 1 year old mind you), even though they are only weeks old. As soon as the New Year rolls around, that baby at the age of 1 turns 2 at the beginning of the New Year. So you could actually say, if a baby was born on the 31st of December, they would be 1 and on the next day (New Year's Day), they would turn 2 (even though they are only 2 days old). So you can see that using this traditional method of counting age would make a difference of 1 to 2 years if compared to the western age counting system we use. I could not get my head around this talking to my mother-in-law and I finally just did a wikipedia search and found this if your interested. It explained pretty well I think.

Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/150 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Group Photo
(The Izumi Clan)

There are a handful of my wife's cousins that couldn't make it back home this New Years. Most likely the ones that didn't come back for New Years will be back to visit sometime in the summer.


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/200 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 -- EXIF
Otoshidama From Great Grandma

There's a custom here in Japan where you give children money during New Years. This money is called "otoshidama". The money is usually put into small decorated envelopes by the adults and handed to all the children in the family. The amount of money usually depends on how old the children are, but for the most part, we give them all the same amount (1,000 yen). Our daughter Jade racked up over 20,000 yen this year (most of which is going into the bank).

Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 200mm, 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Harue Izumi
(Homachan)

Great Grandma has been around the block. It wasn't until recently that she has started to lose her memory. She couldn't remember most of the family visiting her this day. She's pretty healthy and goes to daycare a few times a week so other than her memory, she still gets around.

She used to come stay with us when my wife and I were first married. She would tell me stories about World War II when the Americans occupied Amami. She would talk about what it was like when there were no cars on the island and a trip to the next village would take 2 days. When I think about it, I'm amazed at how much change she has experience over the decades. On one hand, I think I would like to live to be that old. On the other hand, I don't know if I'b be comfortable with someone changing my diaper...


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Great Grandma Gets Otoshidama Too!

She didn't actually get otoshidama. Instead, the money given to her in the envelopes is for he 97th birthday celebration.


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 86mm, 1/400 sec, f/5.0, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Jade on the Piano

Jade played a few songs on the piano for Great Grandma to hear. Great Grandma is Catholic and she enjoyed hearing Jade play Silent Night.


Nikon D60, Nikkor 55-200mm f/4.0-5.6 @ 65mm, 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 -- EXIF
HUGS!


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Rokuchou


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
Monkeys in the Trees

As the older family members sat around talking, the younger ones were out and about getting into mischief.

Those were some of the photos I took on New Year's Day. It actually took me longer to figure out the whole "kazoedoshi" thing than it did to edit the photos and write this post. I had it stuck in my head that they were all wrong but I wanted to make sure so I tried to ask my mother-in-law about it. She couldn't explain it that well why they counted that way and the more I talked to her about it, the more it sounded like they made a mistake until I looked it up on the interwebs. Now I know.

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Jan 4, 2010

Happy New Year!

Posted by Amami Superman

Another year has ended and another year has begun. I hope everyone's holidays went well. We had plenty of things to do. I tried to go take sunrise photos on the New Year's day but it was overcast and a bit rainy despite the weather forecast. It did however clear up about an hour after I returned home from trying to take the sunrise photos. This was good because the wife's family gets together every year and celebrate New Year's day together and it's usually outside at her uncle's house.


It was a special year because my wife's grandmother turns 97 this year so they had a special celebration for that. I took some photos of that but I took a lot and I haven't had the chance to download them to my computer till today so I'll just make a small post of the shots I took today.

It was great weather today. It was warm and sunny so I decided to go out and take some sunset photos. I went to a nearby beach park called Ohama and found a nice spot. The photos didn't turn out that great. I did a bit of post editing changing the exposure, temperature while upping the vibrancy and saturation. The colors are pretty exaggerated but I think they turned out OK.

Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 18mm, 1/1250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 -- EXIF


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 24mm, 1/160 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 -- EXIF


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 24mm, 1/10 sec, f/25, ISO 100 -- EXIF


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 20mm, 1/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 -- EXIF

So those are a few of the photos I took today. As I said, I did a bit post editing so the actual photos weren't this colorful. :P

With that, Happy New Year to you all and I'll talk to you soon!

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