Author: travel67

An unfair advantage…

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Last weekend I went for a bike ride with my friend Tom. He was visiting from California, and as a keen cyclist wanted to get at least one good ride in while he was in Okinawa. The problem with riding with Tom is that he is simply too fast. (Tom has ridden at 66 miles an hour while facing backwards on a recumbent tandem bicycle!) To give me a fighting chance, Tom started 40 kilometers away, riding my old heavy mountain bike. When he reached  my house I joined him on my road rocket and we did a 70 kilometer loop up to Nago City and back. It was a great ride with fantastic weather, and we were both able to maintain a similar pace.  The joys of an unfair advantage.

On the bookshelf – A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005 by Annie Leibovitz

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I didn’t study photography at school or university. To be honest, if you showed me a selection of famous photographs and told me to name the photographer I would probably only get a couple right. ( an Ansel Adams shot of Yosemite and the Afghan girl by Steve McCurry) I am however trying to broaden my knowledge of great photographers. Not knowing where else to begin I thought I’d start reading about one of the most famous – Annie Leibovitz. I surfed over to Amazon.com and ordered a big compendium of her work: A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 by Annie Leibovitz The book is a mix of commercial portraits, and far more personal  images from her own life. Shots of her family, and pictures from her various travels around the world are woven between photographs of  Nelson Mandela, Carl Lewis, Bill Clinton, Michael Jordan, Brad Pitt. and R2-D2. There is a brief introduction and simple captions. I would have liked to have read the story behind each image, but the focus is kept (and perhaps rightly so) on …

RX-78 Gundam model in Odaiba, Tokyo in HDR

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In an earlier post I talked about the construction of the huge Gundam statue in Odaiba, Tokyo. John Burgreen of Okinawa HDR was up in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago and managed to get this fantastic image of the behemoth. What is HDR? HDR stands for high dynamic range. The photographer takes multiple shots of the same subject varying the exposure so that some shots accurately expose the shadows while other shots accurately expose the highlights. Combine all the photographs in Photoshop and you produce a image which doesn’t lose detail in areas that would normally be too dark or too bright. Read more at the Wikipedia page here. HDR is an exciting development in digital photography. Some people love it, some people hate it. In my opinion, it is a technique that is difficult to do well, and can’t remedy an otherwise poor photograph. But, get it right and the images produced can be stunning. John’s Gundam photo is an example of HDR done well.

Suzuki Swift Sport – A quick review

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Now that I have had my car for a couple of months, I thought I would make a few brief comments. Exterior: The motoring press has made a lot of comparisons between the Swift and the Mini. Many comment that the new body shape of the Swift is a copy of (or homage to) the Mini. I am not so sure. If anything, it looks like Suzuki have been borrowing from (inspired by)  the designers at Audi. Compare the front of the Swift and the TT. . . . . Perhaps my favorite external feature of the car, are the subtle twin exhausts. It may seem like a strange pet peeve, but the asymmetry of a single exhaust on a car niggles me. However, a single central exhaust like on the Porsche Boxster just looks a little odd. Of course no exhaust would be even better, but the Tesla Roadster is a little out of my price range. Interior: One of the best features of the Japanese spec car is the option for  grey Recaro sports seats rather than …

Shamisen Rock

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In the interview with sanshin player Byron Jones I asked if he could play Hendrix. Yesterday I found this video by shamisen player Kevin Kmetz proving that you only need three strings to rock! I believe the Japanese dubbed version of Iron Man began with this song 🙂