Another photo, Cooled, has been published in Camerapixo, in the Body Language edition, p34. See the original Cooled in Shino’s gallery. Thanks so much to Camera Pixo for choosing this photo for yet another great edition put out by them.
Cooled published in Camera Pixo’s Body Language, April 2015.
It has been quite a while since I’ve had time to do a Photo of the Week (POTW), and I apologise. Life gets a bit wild, busy, hectic, stressful, loaded, crazy, fun, and more. This photo was taken last year with a great model, Hieu, in Vietnam. For this others, and more like it see Hieu’s gallery in my PhotoShelter portfolio, and my agent’s website.
A young Vietnamese lady wearing an ao dai.
This Photo of the Week is of a recent shoot done with Shino in Osaka. It was taken of course at night, and with a special selective focus lens. For this photo, and more like it see the Shino gallery on my PhotoShelter portfolio and (soon) my agent’s website.
Over the weekend I did a trip to Osaka and was able to work with two models, Brooke and Shino. Night portraits are always a fun challenge, so here is Shino in one of the photos at a point where I decided to just have a bit of fun while shooting. The technical photographers will want to know all the details of how I acheived this, I used a camera, a big black one, with one or two hotshoe flashed connected to Cowboy Studio trigger & receivers, and most importantly, Lensbaby 50mm at f2.8. This is the first and only image I’ve published so far. More will be coming out in the next week or so at both my Agent’s website, Henry Westheim of Asia Photo Connection, and my own PhotoShelter portfolio.
This Photo of the Week is all about summer, and so it’s almost fireworks season in Japan. For Japanese, fireworks help them feel cooler from the summer heat (or perhaps distract them it). From the end of this month, to mid to late August there will be fireworks shows in various parts of whatever region you’re in in Japan.
I was recently reminded of this image. It’s actually an ugly bridge painted in a dreadful pastel green. It’s typical of modern Japan in architectural utilitarian style. A building needs walls and water proofing, and so it gets plain painted concrete. People need to get from one side of the river to the other, so a thoroughfare that can withstand typhoons is constructed, and here it is… This image, and others like it, are available on my PhotoShelter portfolio.
The super moon at 7.12pm on the 6th May 2012, where it was 357,047km from Earth, appearing about 14% larger. Here’s the BBC News story, and below is my image of the heroic moon rising over Nagoya Port and Japan’s automotive export hub:
Yesterday’s supermoon:
This Photo of the Week (POTW) comes from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Shirakawa. This village is well known for being the place where traditional mountain rural farm houses were moved to and maintained. The thatch roofs are massive, and requires a team of a lot more than 50 people to help build. These thatch roofs need replacing about every twenty years and it is a real community project. My guess is that they plan whose house is to be done next, and they would probably have all the houses on a roster. Shirakawa is a living open are museum. People live in the houses, these houses are real shops and museums, and private homes. The village is great to stroll around in the day, and very nicely lit up at night (as seen below). I do have photos of the whole village at my PhotoShelter portfolio, please browse for more.
Ishidori is the Stone-bringing Festival, an annual Shinto event held on the first weekend of August. It is reputed to be the loudest such festival in Japan. It is not well known, but a very lively festival, and perhaps a best-kept festival secret. The festival apparently dates back to over 300 years, and involves more than 30 portable shrines representing each of the wards (or towns) within Kuwana City. Photos for this festival are being processed and should be available soon at Asia Photo Connection.
In the mean time, here’s the preview.
Shirakawa is a small village in the Japan Alps, and is protected as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. I arrived with two friends to find the place in constant snow, and it got heavier by dusk. It’s an amazing place to experience. I spent several winters wondering how to get there, as most Japanese people seemed to believe that it was snowed in for the entire winter. In contrast, the village organises a series of light ups for tourists to come in and view the village. The day I was there, the day time high was two degrees Celsius (a shade above freezing), to minus six below freezing.
Shirakawa, Japan – Images by Andrew Blyth