All posts tagged: ricoh

Captain’s Log 16/06/2018 – Studio Workshop

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Another fun workshop. Spent the morning introducing the different types of lights and modifiers used in a professional photography studio. In the afternoon we photographed our model Brianda after makeup up artist Jessica Coupar worked her magic. Little Jasmine even joined in at the end of the shoot wearing her own baby uniform. Thank you to workshop participants Tyson and Angie for managing to join us during the heaviest rain in recent history! Thank you to Jessica Coupar for makeup, and Brianda for being our model. Finally thank you to Jasmine for bravely wearing a red shirt and surviving the mission.

Humpback Whale Watching on Okinawa

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Here’s my latest collaboration video with Skylum Software. I take to the waters off the coast of Motobu, Okinawa to try and photograph humpback whales. Please like, share and comment on the video as it will help others find it and allow us to keep on making videos! Skylum Software just released a new update to Luminar this week so it is now faster with a few new editing options also. A big thank you to Okinawa Island Crew for letting me shoot photos and video on the boat. I much prefer whale watching from Motobu rather than Naha as the whales are located much closer to the port. The gear used in the video was the Pentax 645Z camera with the 300mm f4 lens. The tripod was a carbon fibre LEO by 3 Legged Thing, and the bag is the Whistler by Lowepro.

Geisha in the Rain

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It’s raining, but you’ve still got to go to work. So you grab your umbrella and book a cab for yourself and a couple of workmates. The taxi arrives.  The driver helps to keep your clothes dry as you get in the vehicle. Cherry blossom covers the trees. Ready to go, the evening awaits.

Stamp of Approval

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This week, Japan Post released a set of postage stamps to commemorate Karate Day in Okinawa. The series of eight stamps is made up of Okinawan karate masters of different styles. The bottom right image is of Yoshitaka Taira, 10th dan World Matsubayashi-ryu (Shorin-ryu) and is one of the photographs I shot for the Karate Masters Portrait Project. Pleasingly, this is the second time one of my images has been used on a Japanese stamp. The first was around 12 years ago when they chose my photograph of Kabira Bay to represent one of Okinawa’s beautiful landmarks. In all that time the price of a postage stamp has only gone up two yen!

Naked in the Rain

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Ohara Hadaka Matsuri a.k.a. the Ohara Naked Festival took place in heavy rain on the 23rd of September. To clarify “naked” is clearly not an accurate description with the participants wearing far more than the fundoshi loincloths seen at the Okayama Hadaka Matsuri. As this is a traditional Shinto festival a priest gave blessings, and somewhat unusually two arrows were launched into the ocean. Teams carried mikoshi (portable shrines) down to the ocean. It was clear that the mikoshi were heavy and the teams looked exhausted as they shouldered the wooden beams. After dunking themselves and the shrine in the ocean waves they returned to the beach, and managed to raise it above their heads. All images shot with the Pentax 645Z and the 25mm lens. Glad both the camera and lens are weather sealed because they were subjected to rain for half an hour.

Banana Spider – Pentax K-1 and 50mm macro

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Big banana spider in the garden so thought I’d check out trying to maximize the depth of field when shooting macro with the K-1 and a 50mm macro lens. F32 gives the deepest aperture, but requires a lot of extra light. I used a B1 strobe on full power to get enough light on the subject to give the correct exposure. 1/200 f32 ISO 100  K-1 with Pentax-D FA 50mm F2.8 Macro Very pleased to have spiders in the garden, as hopefully they’ll stay busy eating mosquitoes. UPDATE: After finding another spider in the garden I notice there have variations in the color of the pedipalps. (Orange in the pic above, yellow in the pic below.) And yes I had to google arachnid anatomy to find out what they are called.

In the Studio – Yuki

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A couple of  pics of Yuki that I tacked on to another studio shoot earlier this month. The shot above was taken with the 645Z and the 90mm lens, while the shot below was taken with the Pentax K-1 camera and the 28-105mm lens. Although the 28-105 lens has a maximum aperture of f5.6  at 105mm it is still possible to shoot portraits with a nice shallow depth of field. Makeup by Audra Presika. The theme is a mixture of  Titania the fairy queen, and Pris the replicant.