Author: travel67

Cherry blossom at Nakijin Castle

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A few shots of cherry blossom at Nakijin Castle. All taken with the Pentax 645Z and 90mm lens at f2.8 I used a Priolite HotSync strobe for flash which allowed me to shoot with shutter speeds above the cameras sync speed. These images were shot at 1/500 sec, but I could have shot as high as 1/4000 sec. I’m using Priolite’s M-Pack system which has the strobe head separate from the power pack. I placed the power pack in a should bag so that my assistant Gary was fully mobile. Being able to shoot with strobes at high shutter speeds is not a necessity in these static shots, but the HotSync system is still useful allowing me to use strobes with wide apertures without having to resort to ND filters. I’ll put up more detailed information about HotSync flashes in the future, and how they differ from the more common High Speed Sync systems. Thanks to Gary and Jamie for assisting on the shoot, and of course to Yuki for modeling.

An ounce of prevention

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Main computer had an glitch, had to use Time Machine to get everything back to normal. Good job I have multiple backups so that occasional minor issues don’t become a major calamity. Currently I use  4TB external hard drives for backing up data on the Mac Pros, but I  will soon have to switch to an 8TB external hard drive on the newer computer as the amount of data grows. I also keep off site backups of data on other external hard drives just in case of fire or flood at the office. Finally all documents and a selection of images are also saved to the Cloud with Dropbox. Hard drives fail. Protect your data.  

Cherry blossom blooms in Okinawa

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Cherry blossom is blooming in Okinawa. At Nago Castle Ruins the dark pink blossoms add color to the stairway leading up to the shrine. The white pieces of paper tied to the branches of trees at the shrine are omikuji or fortune papers similar to what you might find in a fortune cookie. They are usually sold from machines at Shinto shrines. After you’ve checked your fortune most visitors tie the paper to something at the shrine before leaving. Hanami or cherry blossom is also a popular time for Japanese to dress up in yukata (top two images) or the more formal kimono (bottom two images) .

Oba-san

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This is the lady who always makes my workshop students and me delicious satandagi donuts. As I was captioning images I realized I don’t know her real name as she is always referred to as Oba-san (auntie) or Oba-chan (granny) by everyone. Will have to remember to ask her real name next time I see her!

2015 Year in Review

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2015 began with a quick trip to photograph the snow monkeys of Jigokudani Onsen, Nagano. Back in Okinawa I continued to document the karate masters and the people of the Ryukyu Islands. A few weeks in spring were spent in the UK where I hung out with family and took pics of some local icons. Back in Okinawa I had to update the Okinawa and Kyushu chapters of the Fodors Japan travel guide.  I popped down to Iriomote to check out the options for visitors. And up to Kumamoto for a bit of history. Around the same time I was  working as a location manager for the Okinawa episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. A cool experience introducing Okinawa to a huge new audience. On March 25th, I bought a house in the morning, then in the afternoon Yuki and I got married at the town office. A good chunk of the summer was then spent renovating the house and making it weatherproof. Yuki and I got some wedding pics done by being models for …

Maserati GranTurismo MC Stradale

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A few pics from a recent shoot with some beautiful Italian craftsmanship. The first couple of shots show the difference created by lens selection. Both were shot with the 645Z camera but for the image above I used the 35mm wide angle lens and the image below is the 90mm. For these final shots I have to thank Patrick for driving so that I could get images of the car in motion. A really fun shoot!