Life in Japan - Pictures galore !! Arcades, Temples, Rainy days, etc

Yeah, they had a special about in on TV the other day. After a battle Oda Nobunaga would get together with his men for a chicken and wiener fest.

 

I'd like to visit Japan, I'd go to all the gaming stores and look around.

 

Wouldn't buy anything?

 

At the exchange rate it currently is? Probably be better off selling back to the stores.

 

I've started taking a few shots of things on the drive home. Some nice and some moody sites. Here's two from yesterday. It's amazing how fast the weather changed from a dull to very dark rainy night.

Sorry about the poor quality. My phone camera is last!

Check out the lovely cherry blossom trees in the distance.


Lovely moody shot with a Honda shop in the background.


Yakumo

 

if only those cherry trees produced fruits ;_;

 

Akihabara photoscrum



Red sky in Kyoto



Out on Nijima



Not everyone in Akihabara is happy to be there....




Obligatory hanami shot

 

Hey DCharlie, love the photos. What'd you shoot them with?

 

A camera?

 

thanks
Using a Canon EOS 30D and a variety of lenses and my limited skillz.

more photos from day to day :

I pass this at Shibuya station most mornings , it was a little weird to see at first, but i really like it.

first


A local restaurant does a little window box display that changes week on week, we've had traditional weird Japanese stuff, a scene from Aliens, weird lego artwork etc... recently, it's been a little more "normal" but still slightly quirky



Local pet store has a "bucket of fish" method of sales




Japan loves incinerators - at least they usually power a swimming poor with it, but still...

 

I should have you give me a damn photo lesson. I have the same camera... but most of my photos suck.

Inokashira-line, right? I went by there the other day (First time in years) and saw that. Pretty crazy.

Here's a photo I took during hanami season at Yoyogi Park's dog run. If you realize how fast the dogs were running, it seems to be a much more admirable feat. I'm actually surprised neither dog was hurt.

 

well, 99% of everything i shoot sucks, it's just down to throwing a 4 gig+ card in there and shooting over and over and over.

some of the guys i hang out with are all insanely good photographers so i get some tips from them. When i see their photos i am always awed, but they all give the above advice - just keep shooting.

 

It's an art piece by Taro Okamoto a famous Japanese abstract painter. The piece is called Myth of Tomorrow and is a wonderful abstract painting showing the horrors of the nuclear bombs dropped on hiroshima and Nagasaki. I saw it last year at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

 

yeah, have to ride the Inokashira - slightly less painful than the Toyoko line, but not by much! Way more suicides on this line

But yeah, the murial is awesome. I was aware it was by Okamoto but didn't know the story behind it, i was told by a japanese collegue that it was "his vision of the future", but the actual discription makes more sense. Still, it's great seeing it each day. very striking.

 

oh, GP - really like the doghug picture. One thing that's really worth looking at is cropping and editing down photos. Now, not saying i'm in any way qualified and hope you don't mind, but i quickly cropped your photo (and it's a pretty messy crop at that!) :



It's a cool scene - without the extra background you now have two dogs jumping in what looks like a huge, a crowd in the background including one person lookin on bemused, the top 1/3 of the picture tells you its in a park and frames the action preventing your eye leading up and away. But the killer is the white dog who looks to be looking in a "wtf you two doing?" way. Nice nice shot - again, clipping things down and editing things in terms of framing can really add an edge to your photographs.

 

Not enough negative space, IMO. There's plenty of photo to admire, and when you cut it down to some dogs it seems a bit restrictive.


The best elementary thing to remember is the rule of thirds, it works wonders.

 

definitely.
The hardest part of photography for me has been seeing creatively too. There's been a couple of helpful books but it's not an easy thing to just "do"

yup, like i say, it's not the greatest crop and it's not in a good aspect either - but just wanted to point out that with a bit of editing/framing a decent picture can become a great picture.

 

I actually cropped it down a lot.


You could easily do the bottom right hand corner, cutting out the other dogs... but I find them far more interesting than the people.

The photo served it's purpose though. I was seeing how fast of a moving object I could shoot w/o blur, in relatively low light. It was the afternoon, but overcast, and of course under a bunch of trees.

 

some assorted pix