Shop Lanterns

There are many styles of shop lanterns in Japan. Most are the small barrel shaped lantern, usually red or white with the name of the store or what is sold inside written on them using a traditional calligraphy brush. Here are a few of the more extravagant lanterns. I much prefer these to the neon lights of Dotombori (most famous of which is the Glico Running Man), they just have so much more character. I'll add more examples of this art form as I find and shoot them

Nen-chan who holds the spatula for making okonomiyaki, which literally translates to 'grilled as you like', and is cooked on a table like hot plate right in front of you. It is very tasty and quite filling. If you look closely there are pictures of okonomiyaki on the menu beside Nen-chan.

This impish character is selling some kind of Katsu, which is a breaded deep fried something, could be a pork cutlet, could be fish, noodles, skewered bits of vegetables.

This lantern tower is about 2 or 3 stories tall, it is a bit hard to see the top parts of them, but they are all Fugu, the poisonous puffer fish, sliced thinly and served beautifully arranged on a plate for a good sum of money. I have yet to eat fugu.

Kaiyukan - Osaka

Last weekend I took a trip to the aquarium here in Osaka, the Kaiyukan.

Where we saw many fishes and over heard the odd person saying how tasty a particular fish looked.

An Iguanna, relaxing above the amazonian fishes.

It's looking right at me!

One of the two whale sharks that are major attractions for the aquarium. There isn't much in the back ground give a good representation of the size of this whale shark, but its mouth is about 1 metre wide.

Sardines! Swimming 'round and 'round. Every now and then, the squid in the upper left help themselves to their very own kaitenzushi (the coveyor belt sushi restaurants).

Near the end of the aquarium is a specialized area hosting various jellyfish, who float around and ponder the mysteries of the universe.

Nightfall

These are some shots of Osaka that I took at nightfall.

From the apartment's balcony.

The rest of the series were shot at Osaka Station. Specifically, a pedestrian bridge over the intersection, between JR Osaka, Hankyuu Umeda, and Hanshin Umeda stations, and over top of the Umeda subway station. You can also walk to each one of those stations and many more without ever coming up to the surface world. However, above ground is only place you can see skies like this:

The cars moved a bit, I think I will have fun perfecting this technique. Long exposure, and small aperture. In this case, not quite small enough.

How do they build those tall buildings? Cranes.

And lots of them.

Reaching for the sky:

Macro Studio

I have interest in macro photography.
I had looked at some of the macro studios that are available in the camera stores. The cheap ones running about 6000円. Not really what I wanted to spend on something I might only rarely use.
After a bit of stumbling around various lighting sites. I found an interesting tutorial on making one of these macro studios at Strobist: DIY Macro studio.
That article says you can make it for about $10 (or less).
I re-used some materials and made mine for free.

To make it, I used exactly what you see, and old paper box that originally had recycled A4 paper, some tracing paper and tape.

The orange was free too, it sits on some A4 sized paper.

Lit by the sun coming from the right side, the tracing paper reflects and diffuses the light, throwing a nice soft even light over the subject and almost entirely eliminating shadows.

It's a mikan!

I also found this wonderful maple leaf on the street, after the second time passing it I thought I would take a few shots as it was really quite a beautiful leaf.

Here is the same leaf shot on top of the macro studio at the same angle, without the softening effect of the paper, receiving direct light from the sun.

Cardboard Camera

Inspired by a contest on the site Farktography I decided to build a camera after researching just what a 'pin hole' camera was. Basically a light tight container with a sheet of photographic film and a small hole as the lens. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to develop my own film or even access to a dark room.

I did have access to cardboard, tape and my own digital camera.

The best picture so far with the Cardboard Cam 2

Cardboard Cam 1

The first of the card board cameras was made by guess work. I made a light tight box about 12cm high using an old box. The hole in the centre is the lens and the larger square hole is for my cell phone's camera. Rather than taking photographic film and using that, I decided to use another camera to take a picture of the image appearing on the inside of back of the box.

This is the best picture from Cardboard Cam 1. It is actually a flourescent light, right above the table where I built CC1. It is rather blurry and dark. Two problems with CC1 were the lens being much too wide (roughly 4x the diameter that would have been optimal) and the 'film' the cell phone's exposure being much too fast.

After some research, I found the formula to calculate the size of the hole for the lens.

d=1.9√(fλ）

Got a bigger box and created Cardboard Cam 2.

The small hole in the centre is the lens just like the first camera. However, now it is about half a millimeter in diameter. The larger hole is for the lens of my DSLR camera. The other tabs of paper with holes are additional pinhole lens for the CC2.

A pinhole camera has an extremely small aperature, letting in very little light. Experimenting with the length of time resulted in this interesting series of pictures.
I have left the images unedited and uncropped here. The round, white areas sometimes on the corners are parts of the outside of the cardboard box.

8 second exposure.

4 seconds

2 seconds

1 second

0.5 seconds

1/10 second

By the last of the photos in this series everything is looking quite dark despite it
being about 2pm. I think with if I refined the lens a bit more and used even shorter exposure time with increased magnification it might be possible to see details such as sunspots on the sun.

1/15 second
It might be the corona of the sun or blurring caused by the edges of the hole being used for the lens.

Another interesting effect using a pinhole camera is to use two holes at the same time.

Same as above, just cropped for effect.

Same shot as the first in the post, here uncropped. The pinhole lens casts the image not just on the back of the box but on all of the inside surfaces where a straight line of light can pass through the lens and hit the inside of the box.

Lightning

As summer is well and truly over: my favourite picture from this summer.

I took this shot just before the 2008 Yodogawa Fireworks Festival got underway. It was a 3 second exposure, and was quite overexposed. However, thanks to photoshop I was able to bring the colours back. Shot in .jpg I can't help but wonder how the additional detail in a .raw file would have helped.

I didn't manage to get any shots of the fireworks as this storm rolled over and proceeded to rain for all but 5 minutes of the fireworks show, which nevertheless was quite beautiful.

Gyaru (Gal) Photoshoot

This is the first organized photo shoot that I have been involved in. It was organized by Zach, whos' blog has a link on this one.

(just look to the right -->).

The theme for this photo shoot was Gyaru, a transliteration of the word Gal from English. One of the more extreme forms that Japanese fashion has taken. The styles here have become a bit dated by about 2-5 years or so though it is still possible to see people dressed this way, everyday in Osaka. Zach and Miku, at the entrance of a UFO catcher arcade. Serious concentration.

Serious business.

Posing before the D & G store.

From left: Miku, Kate, Allison, Zach

Shooting: at the former Canadian Consulate

Climbing the walls.

Miku should be on a travel guide.

Miku at the Dotombori bridge.

Miku, Kate and Allison blending in.