All posts filed under: Photography

Shisa Artist Sano Toshio ( Portraits with the 645 FA 150mm )

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Shisa artist Haru Toshi was at the sunflower festival in Kitanakagusku Village.  He said he had a face like the lion-dog talismans he creates. The 150mm lens for the Pentax 645 is a great portrait lens. It is the equivalent of a 118mm lens on a 35mm FF body so it gives nice proportions to the face, and at wide apertures gives a very limited depth of field. If we put the following information into a depth of field calculator: 645D sensor, f/stop 2.8, lens 150mm, focus 1m 20cm it gives the depth of field as 1.58cm. This means if you focus on the eye, the tip of the nose and ear will be fading into bokeh.  (Interestingly it’s about the same D.O.F. as you get with an 85mm at f/1.4  at 1m 20cm on a FF)

Senior Shoot – On Location

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As well as shooting in the studio, Kevin and I went outdoors in search of some locations that would show he’d spent his formative years in Okinawa. By the end of the day we had a great selection of images that I think Kevin’s family will be very pleased with. As for Kevin I wish him all the best after he leaves Okinawa. He’s heading back to the States to study pre-med at Liberty University, but I’m sure he’ll always have great memories of island life.

Senior Shoot – In the Studio

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A few months ago, a friend asked me if I was available to do a senior shoot. My initial thoughts were that he wanted me to photograph his elderly relatives, but it soon became clear that one adage still holds true, England and America are two countries separated by a common language. The thing is that, in England, we don’t have proms, high school graduation ceremonies, homecoming balls, or senior photo shoots.  In many ways it’s strange that we don’t celebrate these glory days, and taking a series of portraits of someone who is about to leave home and make their way in the world is a great idea. I discussed with my friend and his son Kevin the kind of photographs they’d like, and we decided that we’d shoot a selection of images both in the studio and on location around Okinawa.  Here are a few of the shots we got in the studio.

New Year, New Camera

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For many years I’ve been putting off shooting underwater. My Optio W60 is a great waterproof compact camera, but it doesn’t have the depth rating for scuba diving or the image quality for professional use. I looked into an underwater housing for the 645D, but there were none available off the shelf and a custom built housing would be many thousands of dollars. (It would also be like scuba diving with a submarine.) Ikelite, perhaps the biggest manufacturer of underwater housings, has however just released a housing for the Pentax K5/K7 cameras. For many reasons (that I’ll explain in future posts) I decided to buy a K5, a 10-17mm fish-eye lens and the Ikelite housing. The housing is on its way from the States as we speak, while the K5 and lens arrived a couple of days ago. Bear’s friend Ref posed for a few shoots so I could test out the fish-eye lens. Underwater photography is going to be an exciting challenge. Already have plans to shoot a lost city, a few sharks, and …

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.

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 …