Speeding delivery in the rain

I just signed up 2 1/2 hours ago. Unfortuantely I did only find out about the 52Frames today and I missed the first week of 2023. Never mind. Anyway there was not much time for taking a good shot and the weather was also anything else but ideal. Also I had to cook lunch within the next 1 1/2 hours as my wife was coming home to eat , so some multitasking was required. I took the 100 mm prime lens becasue it has a long hood which protect well from collecting drops. I could take some shots of desparate bicyclists struggling in the rain but unfortuantely none of them framed well. Back home I saw this picture which is kind of cool with the two cars crossing each other. The driver in the micro bus came out quite well focussed and the panning also worked. That's it for this - my first week!

Tokyo Olives

On the roof garden of our high-rise in downtown Tokyo there are olive trees. Thought as decorative they soon started bearing fruit which my interest to do something with them. In 2005 I picked some Olives for the first time. As the trees grew tall so did my ambition and the “Tokyo Olives” brand was borne. The harvest varies on two main threats, the typhoons and the neighbors picking first. 2022 was the biggest harvest yet yielding 25 jars of nice fruits. Curing in salty brine takes about 2 months. Then is seasoning and bottling featured here. Left the process of putting the ingredients which are on the right including rosemary from the rooftop. This year I included the Ukrainian flag and I want to sell the olives for the benefit of a good cause for the war-torn country.

Hi Max at IMAX

Last Friday I met a gentleman who was seated next to me in the IMAX laser movie theater. The program was Avatar: The Way of Water. Here in Japan, it is still mandatory to wear protective mask in public places. Together with the 3D special glasses it covered up much of the faces of the cinema goers. I found out that his name is Max and that was funny to be I and Max in the IMAX. I just took a snapshot of Max with my iPhone SE3 which came out surprisingly sharp and detailed He could cave jumped out of the movie I later found. :-)

Three beauties in Kimono

Asakusa is a place popular for visitors from abroad as well as Japanese. It is an old entertainment district and there is a big temple named Sensō-ji. There is large gate with two daemons guarding the entrance to the temple and the place is a must for selfie taking. These young ladies paid a visit dressed in Kimonos which are very colorful. Nowadays visitors can rent such kimonos nearby for the day. Traditionally they are very elaborate with beautiful print on the silk they are made of, and they are very expensive. The belt is called Obi and is difficult to tie and usually someone else helps to put it on. I made a snapshot passing by which came out pretty nice. The white vignette is to enhance the B&W old style effect with the smart phone being the contrast and link to the present day.

The band in focus which suddenly disappears 😮

This is really about what you miss and what I didn’t expect. I am in the Hakuba in the Northern Japanese Alps for a week of skiing. Here almost as important as snow and slopes are the daily soak in the hot spring. Especially in the morning not only does it fix the muscle cramps and tired bones of the day before. It also provides a beautiful view on the mountains and white slopes with the sun rising in the back. All of that you are missing in my photo with that shallow depth of field, or you would have to guess it. What is in focus is only a small horizontal band on the weathered surface of the railing, running from left to about in the middle of the picture. There it goes vertically down a bit just to disappear altogether. I wouldn’t have thought of that before taking this photo.

Teddy bear on the Bistro chair

For this photo I selected an old chair that I has travelled with me from my hometown in Switzerland to Paris and then to Tokyo. It must have been from a restaurant owned at a time by my grand uncle Ferdinand. It is a Thonet No. 14 also called the “Bistro Chair” and was probably made around 1900. After setting up the shot I found it a bit sad to be all alone in the frame. So I sat another old friend on it, the Teddy Bear from my childhood. He also is quite old as I am headed for 65 next month and he was around already with my older siblings. As my place in Tokyo is quite crammed – especially as we just returned from our ski vacation – the only place was to set it up in the corridor. I used the 70-200 mm lens and made an HDR photo fused from 3 shots at 1.3, 10 and 30 seconds.

Will you still need me, when I'm sixty-four?

Just in time to use the line from this this Beatles’ song I arranged for Yuko and I to sit on our sofa in Tokyo. Next month I will turn 65 and I would have to find another song. My wife and partner of soon 37 years I met her for the first time in a pub in the entertainment district of Roppongi soon after arriving in Tokyo in 1986. It was my second visit to that place and her first. We started chatting over a drink. A few weeks later I went to the same place only my third time and she was there coincidentally for her second time too. The rest is history, and it took us around the world to many places. The Beatles were not exactly in fashion any more those days and we spent no time thinking of being perhaps twice as old one day. Camera on tripod with bounce flash and by iPhone remote.

Kewpie and his car

Not so easy to find a subject this time. Although the first of this year’s Cherry blossoms are out the weather was not good. Then I tried some of my wrist watches, but it didn't give me any satisfaction. Then I turned to the box with old toys again and set up Kewpie in front of a tin car that I had received many years ago from a friend. This time’s photo was inspired by one that I took some years ago with fresh snow on the balcony. Kewpie’s car got stuck in the snow drifts but as there is not snow this time, I could not re-enact it. I will post it in the comment though. I wanted to make a focus stack, but the roof section of the car did not come out well, so I dropped it; the better is the enemy of the good. Well here you go I hope that some will like this photo.

Holi Festival: complimentary complementary colors

A former working colleague invited me to join the local Holi festival in Nishi Kasai, Tokyo. It is also called little India with many people from the subcontinent living there. I knew little about what is also called the festival of colors, Love and Spring when I turned up a little early for our appointment. Quite swiftly is got familiarized by friendly people who promptly rubbed my head in bright green color. To that came blue, pink, yellow and red in due course. When I met my friend, I was a walking color pallet. It was her first time too although she is from India. Pretty soon she was in complementary colors herself, ready for my photo. Good food, music and dancing complemented what had become a very colorful event indeed. Later I added dusting the camera to the postprocessing…

High Noon at 12:00 for the lack of finding better

Not easy to get a good shoot the past week because the weather was not cooperative, still stuck going forth and back between winter and spring. So, what to do if there is no light? I could take a photo of the clock at 12:00 noon. In Tokyo there are no Church or other clock towers to my knowledge. On a pedestrian bridge over the Ueno station is a view on a display that switches between the time and temperature (which was incidentally 12 as well…). Little time to get my shot but the weather had improved. :-) I set up the camera on the tripod and triggered the shot with the iPhone app by remote. But it didn't work well, and I am making a funny face looking at the phone...lol. But it was the best of a series also with the shadows of the other people in quite vertical High-Noon style.

A minuet in candlelight

This week I was very busy with visitors and creating video of a concert of my wife’s choral group. I also turned 65 which means I am officially at retirement age now. What a relief… I used to play the flute and the saxophone, still have both instruments but haven’t practiced in a long time. While I am contemplating to pick up practice again - as I have the time now - one of the instruments came in handy as the object of the photo. I just created a set up with the flute, a piece of music and arranged for the candles on a stand to give the illumination

She watching ice skaters – me polishing the floor

My wife likes figure skating very much. Recently the 2023 work championships were held on Saitama next to Tokyo and she spent four days there watching the events live! Then afterwards she likes it to watch it again at home on the TV. Today in the late afternoon the curtains had to be drawn to avoid strong reflections on the TV screen. For me the opportunity to take a low angle shot of her watching two pair skaters in action. My 9-year-old iPad mini served as live view remote control. It works perfectly well, and I didn’t have to lie on the floor myself (though my wife told me she would like me to so in front of her anyway… lol... that how low it gets...). The tiny RF16 -2.8 allowed me to get a very wide-angle view and it was very easy to place the camera in the right spot.

Jidōhanbaiki 自動販売機

One of the most typical and visual Japanese icons. Literally “self-vending-machine” it can be found everywhere in streets, stations, bus stops – including in the deep countryside – and on climbing slopes and top of the mount Fuji. The majority is for selling nonalcoholic canned drinks and they miraculously switch from offering chilled drinks in summer to hot ones in winter. Peaking at the beginning of 2000 there were 5.6 million units in operation, and some said that one full powerplant was required to operate them all. Mostly still operated using cash. In the famous bubble years of the 1980’s I once observed a machine that was selling 5-liter cans of beer. Some are also for food including rice balls and noodles. I recently saw one for the sale of about twenty different types of earphones!

What is in the that Cloud?

I have been quite busy recently with visitors including photographers. I got the chance to take photos but not much time for creativity. But I took this photo of a bronze with many heads of people by the Japanese sculptor Fumio Asakura; often called the Japanese Rodin. It dates from 1908 and is called [Cloud]. I couldn't find much information on it, but the persons look obviously at something overhead – the cloud – curiously but also somehow distressed or as if something scary was up there. Did the artist foresee the mushroom clouds of 37 years later? I blended 3 very close up shots into an HDR in B&W then separated and overexposed the background in Lightroom. There are two version of the bronze, this one the artist’s museum and another one in the Asakusa Senso-ji temple.

Blue hour Blues in a white sky world

52Frames is teaching me basics of photography which I had been unconscious before. The BH should be my favorite given blue is my favorite color not least as my eyes are blue. I had surely taken photographs in that light condition, but I had just considered part of the many varying circumstances. From my high-rise home I get spectacular views on the skyline of Tokyo with mount Fuji beyond. That is during winter while during the – ever expanding summer period – it often is just white sky from heat and humidity or cloud cover. I was waiting for a clear sky in vain all week. Today I got up before 4 AM to try the morning blue hour, for a change. At first it seemed just white but then it started to get a blue hue and I quickly took a shot. To be continued! I applied the new AI denoise of LR.

Stuffed toy Panda and 3D plastic fake food

This week’s topic isn’t my favorite anymore. With my first full frame camera I documented my own cooking in the early years of social media. It was fun with viewers honestly appreciating my efforts. The smart phone came, Instagram and its brethren appeared, and food porn was born. The glut of – often excellent – pictures of food became repellent to me. In Japan food displays “Shokuhin Sampuru” made of plastic are an artform of its own. They have been around for many years everywhere, in every form looking very real. A bit shriek and kitsch but a kind of real-life Instagram 3D food porn. In the Ueno railway station, I found this display which includes a stuffed toy, Panda that seems to beckon the prospective client. In the nearby zoo rare twin pandas are being raised and are real stars.

The perfect Dram – Whisky Galore and Slàinte Mhath

Many years ago, my wife and I made a road trip to Scotland from Paris. I had not been a great whisky buff before but after visiting several whisky distilleries I got hooked on the subject. And I am until today. Dallas Dhu had come a museum and I bought a bottle from their remaining stock distilled in 1974 and bottled 12 years later. I still have it unopened today. For long I was searching for the perfect whisky dram. I finally found the “Thistle” made by Edinburgh Cristal. Sadly, they have since gone out of business. Thistle – the national flower of Scotland – is beautifully edged and its shape. The book I added to balance the scene in a triangle. It is the novel “Whisky Galore” and is very funny! Scots say Slàinte Mhath for cheers! I used an LED reading light to add light from the top.

Fishermen in the shallow Ariake sea off Amakusa

Travelling from Tokyo south to the island of Amakusa I had the opportunity to experiment with high key photography. First, I took the wing of the plane in flight, then rice field paddy and later a beautiful spot on the seaside. But in none of the photos was a single person so I was happy when I spotted a man in the water fishing, with two boats nearby. It is in the Ariake sea that is separating the island Amakusa from Nagasaki prefecture with the Unzen, an active volcano, in the background. I overexposed the background +2 but postprocessing in Lightroom with masking was required to get the effect. Half of the frame is white suggesting a wide sky in the landscape view. I’m still not sure I got the point of high key photography but kind of like the result. I wonder what others think of it.

Quite surprised with the result

Well, again I had no idea what to do until shortly before the deadline. Recently I have been recovering old photos from the analog days and I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t better then. Just take the shot, drop it to at the developers and wait until the prints are ready. Some photos were pretty good, taken with a point and shot camera in 1993 during a trip to Scotland. I even managed to stitch a beautiful panorama from three shots! I quite like the grain too. Today's shot should show me surprised by what came out when handling those old photos in 2023. I used an LED reading light from the side. My iPad with a fully white screen at max intensity to give light to my face. Why? If I did that with PC screen the Apple would be totally overblown. I used a brand-new lens for the first time.

Ojizo-sama and the spinning pinwheel

The Ojitzo-sama (お地蔵様)is a little statue or stele found on Buddhist temple grounds in Japan. It protects the Mizuko kuyō (水子供養) stillborn, aborted or mis-caried “water-children” on their way to after life. Their fate is especially hard as they cannot lead a full life to achieve enlightenment. They must suffer for the pain done to their parents for parting before them. Quite a cruel fate I find in a religion considered to be based on harmonious believes. There are colorful pinwheels perhaps to make their suffering easier. I like the contrast between old, weathered stone and the colorful plastic wheel and flowers. A nice breeze made the wheel spin quickly creating a joyful scene. Inside the Tōeizan Kan'ei-ji Endon-in (東叡山寛永寺円頓院) temple which was an important family temple of the Tokugawa shogun. SOOC

Lost in the rain?

In Tokyo the rainy season has started. Well it has been declared as having started by the national weather bureau. That is official and I guess unique and only in Japan. It is not easy to find open spaces in the Megapolis of Tokyo where a subject could be isolated in a wide space. I live near a big park, with zoo and museums and often it is quite crowded. But as it was raining and later in the afternoon many people had already gone home. I found a moment on the pedestrian overpass of the Ueno station where a man had stopped and was consulting his smart phone. Was he trying to find directions or answering a message? I will never know. The yellow line is the tactile paving for blind people. Shot with my trusty EF70-200 4 zoom bought 15 years ago for my first safari in South Africa.

In another world

I went photo shooting to find another opportunity to take a shot of people that would be separated well from the background. It was extremely busy under the arcades of the Shinkansen tracks from Ueno to Tokyo main station. The area is called Ameyoko and is very popular amongst locals and tourists. The late afternoon sun shone through an opening in the passage, and I was waiting for the right subject to appear. These two persons seem to be really isolated from their surrounding while walking in the crowd. I was hoping to be able to exercise the Adamski effect which worked out quite well, especially considering I am a dead beginner in Photoshop. This is inspired by and dedicated to fellow framer Ray Reed who posted a brilliant second photo in his comments in the negative space challenge.

All lines meeting in one place

The rainy season in Japan is a horror for the photographer. While it is raining it might still be somehow interesting with reflections in the puddles. The high humidity renders the sky all white. With ample humidity the vegetation grows abundantly and for some month the landscape becomes almost monochromatic green – white. I went out in search for leading lines, rode the circular train and visited a nearby temple to take rows of stone lanterns but nothing really worked out. Then I went to the Tokyo International Forum which is an amazing building a bit in the shape of and old dreadnaught battleship. The roof seems inverted in the shape of ship’s hull structure. Really, there are only leading lines all converging in one place. Even the sun came out and added a nice hue.