Author: travel67

Baraka

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A couple of years ago I met up with Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, a Tokyo based photographer who produces fantastic images for clients ranging from The Guardian to Greenpeace. During our conversation he asked which photographers I was inspired by. There was a rather embarrassing pause, followed by me admitting that I had always been inspired more by TV and movies than photographers.  The truth is it was the images from documentaries like The Trials of Life and movies such as Dances with Wolves and Braveheart that were truly awe-inspiring. There is one film above all others that really affected me  – Baraka. Baraka is a fantastic journey through 24 countries with breathtaking cinematography.  I was amazed when I saw it 14 years ago as a university student, and it still inspires me. One wonderful thing is that I have now been to some of the places captured in the film. I have witnessed snow monkeys relaxing in their hot spring pools, and thousands of commuters surge through Tokyo’s stations. In a previous post I talked about film size and the tradeoff between film size( …

Do you use a tripod?

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Short answer: Yes, most of the time. Longer answer: As mentioned before the Pentax 67II is a big heavy camera. You can use it handheld, but it is both tiring and you don’t get the same level of sharpness you would with a steady base. I don’t use a tripod when I am moving around at festivals, as I am usually shooting portraits with a fast shutter speed. 90% of the time, however, when I fire the shutter I have the camera firmly mounted on the tripod. This is essential when you are taking night scenes, you are working in low light, or when you are shooting a landscape and want both the foreground and background in focus. Even longer answer: There are several factors that determine what is a good tripod, but the importance of these individual factors will depend on the needs of the photographer so there is no one perfect tripod for all photographers, you have to find which works best for you. There are several factors you should consider. Weight: A …

Childhood Inspiration

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  There are a few really memorable people from when I was growing up. Family not included, these people tended to inhabit the grey box in the corner of the living room.   This morning I saw on the news that one of my TV heroes, Tony Hart, had died. He inspired a generation of kids to draw and paint through his show Take Hart on the BBC.  As a child I used to watch in amazement at he chatted to Morph, his animated plasticine sidekick. There was also something strangely calming about “The Gallery” when you stared at the creations kids from all over the country had sent into him while a mezmerizing jingle played in the background.     Both Tony Hart and Morph will always be a wonderful part of my childhood, and I am sure the feeling is shared by thousands if not millions more.

Police Performance

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The South Yorkshire police recently acquired a new pursuit car in the form of a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. British police have for several years used Mitsubishi Evo’s and Subaru Imprezas which have helped catch numerous wayward motorist and provided a steady stream of exciting chases for shows like the BBC’s Car Wars.  The main police car in Japan is the Toyota Crown (rebranded in the US as a Lexus) but they also have a few special cars including a Godzilla… and a wonderful, yet somewhat impractical, Honda NSX.

Edy & Free Flights with ANA

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Flying around Japan is expensive. There are no discount airlines offering ridiculously cheap fares. For the most part, there are just two options ANA or JAL, and neither are cheap. You can save some money if you fly around your birthday with the special birthday tickets offers, or by buying tickets more than a month in advance. Another option, which is very popular with Japanese, is to get a hotel flight package from a local travel agent.  The cheapest way to fly, however, is to use an airline’s mileage programme and get tickets for free. Both ANA and JAL have a mileage club, and both are affiliated with numerous other airlines to help you build up miles.       Last summer when I flew back to the UK the cheapest flight was with Qatar Airways. The flight was good, and as a bonus the mileage from Qatar Airways could be put onto my ANA Mileage Club card. At the start of December I checked my mileage balance and saw I had  10,400 miles. Unfortunately, …

Tokyo Intersections

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Tokyo has several iconic intersections. They turn up again and again in movies whenever cinematographers want to show a dazzling display of neon lights, traffic, pedestrians and undecipherable kanji. You’ve probably seen them in Lost in Translation, The Fast and the Furious – Tokyo Drift and most recently in Jumper I’ve taken photographs at the same intersections. Here’s one of Ginza yon-chome and one of Shinjuku Perhaps the most famous intersection is the one in Shibuya known as Hachiko Square Crossing (named for the nearby statue of the dog Hachiko) Akihabara intersection is at the heart of the electronics district but rather than show a photo I thought I would post a video by fellow Japan blogger Danny Choo who likes to spend his time free time bringing a smile to the faces of tired salarymen and office ladies.

First 10 km run.

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Yesterday I went out on my bike and, using the bike’s odometer to measure the distance, rode up the coast  for 5 kilometers. This morning I put on my old sneakers and my new Polar heart rate monitor (thank you little brother for my X-mas present) and jogged the 5 kilometers up the coast and back again. My first ever 10 km run. My heart rate monitor gave me my total time as 1 hr 4 mins with an average heart rate of 165 bpm. Now I am sure that taking over an hour to run 10 kilometers is not a good time, but this just leaves me a lot of room for improvement. One thing I do need to sort out is that my heart rate monitor seemed to suggest that I should be training with a heart rate of  between 140 and 160 bpm. Unfortunately, for almost the entire run my heart insisted on beating at around 166 bpm. This resulted in the watch continually flashing and beeping a warning signal, the watch …

Sapporo Snow Festival

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One frustration I have with some travel blogs is that you usually hear about exciting events after they have happened. Several times I have read about a fantastic festival, and wish that I’d known about it previously. So here’s one that’s coming up. The 2009 Sapporo Snow Festival ( Sapporo Yuki Matsuri ) will be held February 5 through February 11. You can read more details about visiting Hokkaido in winter here.   This photograph brings back a lot of memories for me as it came from the first roll of film I put in my first SLR camera way back in February 2000.

The joys of a “waterproof” camera.

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The photograph of Pudding and I playing fetch the stick reminded me about the joys of a “waterproof” camera. A few years ago Pentax came out with a point and shoot digital camera called the w10 that was waterproof to 1.5 meters. My girlfriend, Seiko, got one thinking it would be a great thing to take to the beach or even snorkeling and it has been really fun to use.    Of course the picture quality is not as good as a larger digital SLR (or higher-end compact digital cameras), however, it’s a camera you simply don’t have to worry about. Use it and abuse it. Leave it in you jacket pocket when it rains, let the dog slobber on it, throw it in the bag full of sandy wet clothes, or simply forget to take it out of your pocket when you jump in the ocean.  I recommended the camera  first to my sister and later my dad so we now have a range of models and colors in my family.  The latest model the Pentax …