Author: travel67

Kurama Fire Festival

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This year’s Kurama Fire Festival was a mix of rain, mud and flames. I liked the costumes, but the degree of pyromania  and the level of drunken chaos was pretty tame compared to other fire festivals I’ve been to in Japan. I think the close proximity to Kyoto, and therefore the entire Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe metropolis means you get too many people for what is in reality quite a small event in a very small town. The big plus however is that the Kurama Fire Festival takes place on October 22nd the same day as Kyoto’s Jidai Matsuri. Watch the Jidai Matsuri in the afternoon then head over to Kurama for a smokey evening. This year the Jidai Matsuri was postponed by a day, but I wasn’t leaving Kyoto until I’d shot a samurai.

Umeda Sky Building

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Flew up to mainland Japan on Friday night. Landed at KIX then got the bus to Umeda in Osaka. Before heading on to Kyoto, I stopped in at Yodobashi Camera to get a new lens case and then took another look at the Umeda Sky Building. Exposure was about 15 seconds which causes the blurry clouds. I set the white balance to tungsten to give it the blue futuristic feel.

Google Plus

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After a little prodding from friends I have now joined Google Plus. You can find me here and add me (or encircle me) to follow my various exploits. I hadn’t realized that some people are googlers rather than facebookers. If you’re a tweeter, I’m sorry, but I haven’t opened that can of worms just yet. As for the usefulness of Google Plus I will give it a bit of time before reaching any conclusions. I have however made several new contacts already, and received a nice email from Pentax Europe introducing themselves and asking about prints. All in all, it’s good to be prodded from time to time.  

SDXC Memory Cards

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Pretty much as Mr. Moore predicted, there has been rapid growth in computing power, and at the same time data storage capacity. The original “standard capacity” SDSC cards had a max capacity of 2GB. These were supersceeded by the “high capacity” SDHC cards that ranged from 4GB to 32GB. And now we enter the era of the “extended capacity” SDXC cards ranging from 32GB to  2TB. One of the recent firmware updates to the Pentax 645D camera was to allow the use of SDXC cards. I currently use two 32GB SDHC cards in my camera, and write the data to both cards simultaneously. I needed to get an extra set of cards so thought I’d try a pair of the SDXCs. A Transcend SDXC 64GB card is about 90 dollars on Amazon.com, 7500 yen on Amazon Japan and a cringeworthy 66 pounds on Amazon UK. As with all tech equipment you can be happy that by waiting you didn’t have to pay the $150 List Price. However, in six months to a year prices will have surely dropped, if not halved, …

Okinawa Island Produce

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Okinawa Island Produce brings organic fruits and vegetables right to your door. The company’s founder travels around Okinawa making contacts with the local organic farmers. She takes orders for the produce through her website, and then makes home deliveries. It’s a wonderful idea. Her company supports the local farmers and provides her customers with the freshest, tastiest fruits and veggies available.

On the Bookshelf – Robert Capa

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Robert Capa was one of the great war photographers. He was also one of the founders of the Magnum photo agency, along with Henri Cartier-Bresson. Capa covered five major conflicts from the Spanish Civil War in 1936 to the First Indochina War in ’54. His images of the D-day landings are perhaps Capa’s most haunting. The shots taken as he scrambled from the landing craft towards the beach are iconic. It feels almost absurd for me to sit in eerie silence and stare at an image that was taken during the chaos, violence and noise at Omaha Beach. Capa was masterful at photographing people, whether they were his famous friends like Hemmingway and Picasso, or prisoners of war, the poor and the destitute. One of his portraits is of a French woman holding the baby she had fathered with a German soldier. The sequence of images shows her with her head shaved, and then being jeered as she is paraded through the town. The smiles of the crowd would have been pleasant in almost any other situation, but …

Trash Talking Okinawa

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In Okinawa, you have to pay a small fee for the disposal of trash. You must buy specially marked bags for your regular household waste, and buy special labels to stick on larger items such as washing machines, televisions, or refrigerators. The problem is that old appliances now appear as if by magic at your local park, woodland or beach. I feel the rage inside of me growing…