Amami Superman Photography

Just another random photo of my daughter holding an acorn-type nut in her hand. I forgot to mention that I recently bought a new piece of gear for my camera. As I was out taking time lapse photos of the stars, I was trying to think of the best way to deal with my batteries running out of juice and I decided to by a battery grip for my camera. The grip I bought allows me to use 2 camera batteries or 6 triple A batteries. I don't know if it's just me, but I put fully recharged batteries in and I don't know how many thousands of photos I took before I had to recharge again. I'm pretty excited.

Speaking of time lapse photos, last month on the 8th was a new moon. I told you all how excited I was to get out and try some more time lapse and hoped for some clear weather. Well, I got my wish. That day I got all prepared and put my tripod in the back of the car along with my snake catching gear just in case I come across a habu. I filled the car with gas and was all set to go. Night time rolled around and I put the rest of my camera gear in the car and headed out. I tried a few different locations trying to find a nice spot. When I actually found a spot, I went to the back of the car to grab my tripod and low and behold, NO TRIPOD! What the freak! I knew I put it in the car. I called my wife and asked her if she took it out and she said she didn't. Then she says, "Oh wait, my older brother borrowed the car today. He probably took it out to move his stuff." I was furious at the whole situation wondering why I just didn't check before I left. Lesson learned, AGAIN... By the time I got home, it was too late and it clouded up the next couple of days so I missed my chance. The next new moon is this week on Thursday and I'm hoping for some clear weather again. I'm also going to use a film camera this next time to see if I can't take some star trails. That would be neat.

If anyone knows me, they know that I hate spiders and bugs. Can't stand the thought of them. But there's times like these when I bite my lip and try not to run away in screaming hysteria swiping at those invisible bugs and spiders crawling up my legs and back... But it's all good when I get home and look at the photos I took and think, "I got pretty close to that sucker!"

I'm still going through the couple thousand photos I took this past month or so of different schools' undokai (track and field days). So just another small post.

"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.

We had a holiday here in Japan and I took the family out for a drive. We headed down to the southern city of Koniya for some gelato and then took our drive to the mountains. As we drove this is one of the many shots I took of different things I thought were interesting. I'm not sure what these blossoms are called. They weren't on a bush but more of a larger, almost tree, type plant. I don't have a clue what it was...

So I took a few photos here and there on our drive and I'm trying to make some time to make some posts of them. Nothing that great, but I thought they were pretty or interesting. Anywho, I need to get back to work so I'll talk to you all soon.

Well, I'm back into the swing of things. Summer vacation is over and I'm back teaching again at the elementary and junior high schools in Uken Town and at Shinai Yochien (the Catholic preschool here in Amami City). As before, I don't have the much time to get out and take photos as much as I would like, but I'm trying to make some time for that and we'll see how it goes.

It was another blazing day today and I rode my bike to work this morning. I forgot to put on some sunscreen and I got quite a nice sun burn on the way home and now I'm starting to feel it.

These photos were taken last month when I took the family to the river. When we first got there we were the only ones there. After a bit, a few more people came to catch crawdads. The guy in these photos is a school teach for one of the schools here in Amami City. I forget which school he said, but he was there with a few of his co-workers. This teacher is from Kagoshima like many teachers here in Amami.

This was the first time I've seen anyone use this method for catching crawdads. Usually they use some sort of bait like cooked rice and find a nice calm, shallow spot to sprinkle some rice in and sit and wait without putting their whole body in the water. These guys brought along goggles and snorkeling gear for the job. I suppose it's a lot more fun and cooler this way, but my wife's family never does it like this. My wife's family are crawdad catching pros. I'll be out and catch 5 or 6 and they've already caught like 20. It's crazy how good they are. It makes me wonder if there's some sort of trick to it. I don't know.

Some people boil their crawdads, others fry them in a pan. I like mine deep fried so they're nice and crunchy. Crawdads here in Amami (I'm not sure about other parts of Japan), are quite different from crawdads in America. The crawdads I've caught back in America look like small lobsters. These look more like shrimp with long thin claws. Here is a photo I took last year of Jade and a crawdad she caught. And here is a post I made from last year with some photos of crawdads we caught and put in our aquarium in our classroom.

I wasn't very conscientious about framing when I took these photos, but after getting them all on the same page like this, I realized I really like them. Most of all of them have a sense of depth to them and certain elements that make these photos look nice like the bokeh of rocks in the foreground as well as in the background. As for framing, I think the Rule of Thirds is starting to get instilled in my brain and it's becoming a natural thing. As I said, I really didn't think about the shots I was taking, but I think they turned out pretty nice. Even if they are of a wet, half naked guy... Not really my cup of tea.

I have all these lenses I think I need and would love to get, but I think I find myself wishing I had a wider angle lens than anything else. So I've made the decision that my next investment will be a new wide angle lens.

Oh, and how did YouTube get that gaudy top photo for this movie? None of the photos I used looks like that first photo. It's kind of deceiving.

The settings I used for these shots were: Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 26mm, 30 seconds, f/4.5, ISO 3200, Auto Focus off and White Balance off. I'm sure that I zoomed the lens all the way out when I first set up the camera. I don't know how I zoomed it in to 26mm. The shots were taken with a 30 second shutter and about 30 seconds between each shot. The movie was put together with 71 photos at 15 frames a second.

Post Edit: I was just trying to read up a little more on how to take photos of the stars. It seems this section of the Milky Way is the Scorpius and Sagittarius region. I didn't have a clue what I was shooting. Not that I care what part I'm shooting right now, I just noticed a lot of people said what part they were photographing.