Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged architecture, building, contrast, creepy, Japan, skyscraper, Tokyo, winter on April 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Old and New” : Tokyo, 16th March 2012
Right in the heart of Tokyo are existing together these two examples of architecture: an early attempt at mimicking western styles, which looks as if it is crouching in trepidation under the looming mass of the modern skyscraper behind, all under a distinctly creepy and threatening sky.
You can see a larger version of this photograph by clicking here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged clouds, Hiroshima, Japan, light, monochrome, reflection, river, storm, urban, winter on February 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“The Price of Industry” : Hiroshima, Japan, 17th February 2012
Today I decided to walk through some random places in Hiroshima in the hope of finding things to photograph.
I took a couple of trains out to the northern suburb of Omachi, where I got out and strolled about ten kilometres back to the central station, with the occasional snow flurry making things rather interesting weather-wise.
Somewhere along the trail I encountered this fairly bleak view of the sun trying to battle with fat storm clouds reflected on a dirty and polluted-looking river. I make it look uglier than it is, but it’s no secret that Hiroshima is not a very beautiful city.
Just for fun, here’s the iPhone Instagram version I took of the same view: they always look great on a tiny screen, but the low quality is evident when it’s exported, and look at how badly blown out the sky is – all the cloud detail has vanished! Good fun, though…
You can see a larger version of the first photograph here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged bird, Campanile, fog, Italy, pigeon, tower, Venice, winter on February 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Venice Fading” : Italy, 15th March 2011
It may be true that Venice is fading if we think in terms of its shrinking native population and their fears that the unique maritime city will soon become a dead museum. One can also see unmistakeable evidence that the place is crumbling, gradually making way before the power of nature against this very unnatural of habitats (a whole city, built on wooden stilts pushed into the marsh).
However, on this foggy day as I sped past the main square, thinking that the inclement weather would be affording me few photographic opportunities, I hadn’t reckoned on the mist being so low as to partially erase the top of the Campanile, or the obliging pigeon who appeared exactly at the right moment.
Incidentally, this very tower, originally built in 1514, suddenly collapsed one morning in 1902, mercifully not injuring anyone, before being reconstructed ten years later. So it really did disappear from view for a decade:
You can see a bigger version of my photo by clicking here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged branch, dry, Hiroshima, leaf, Nikon, season, sunset, tree, twig, winter on February 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Winter Skeletons” : Hiroshima, 4th December 2010
Late afternoon, just over a year ago, and I went out to test my then new Nikon D7000.
I climbed up Ogonzan, a local hill which commands great views over the Inland Sea and the city, and is reputed to house the villas of yakuza kingpins.
I survived unscathed and took a number of sunset landscape shots before noticing this forlorn leaf cling to the skeletal remains of a tree, bathed in the amber glow of the sunset, and thought it made a great symbol of the stark beauty of winter.
This shot is straight out of the camera, with no cropping or post-processing whatsoever.
Check out a larger version of it here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged Japan, morning, photography, silhouette, snow, sun, sunrise, tree, winter on February 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Morning Winter Tree” : Hiroshima, 3rd February 2012
It was morning. It was winter. It was a tree. Not much else I can say about this one 
Check out a larger version of this photo here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged branches, cold, flora, Japan, photo, photography, snow, stark, trees, winter on February 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Snow Trees” : Hiroshima, 3rd February 2012
Last night it snowed for only about the second time this winter, and by morning there was still enough left on the ground to warrant taking the camera in to work and sneaking around the campus before the 9am class looking for things to photograph.
It was one of those classic winter moments, with blue skies and the crystalline deposits still pristine and untouched, a fairly rare occurrence in this neck of the woods (no pun intended), given the global warming that has taken place over the last few decades.
I say blue skies, but of course in post-processing I opted for this duotone rendering which really emphasises the stark cold of winter more than the natural colours, in my opinion.
As usual, you can see a larger version of this photo by clicking here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged bridge, Japan, monochrome, perspective, railing, urban, winter, woman on January 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Bridge in Winter” : Hiroshima, 28th December 2011
Just to demonstrate that I do occasionally include living things in my photographs, I present this study in humanity, a woman so swaddled in winter clothing as she crosses the bridge that nothing at all can be seen of her flesh. Even her hands have vanished up her leaves. She could be a mannequin for all you know…
You can find a larger version of this picture here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged cloud, cotton wool, cumulus, ephemeral, sky, telegraph pole, winter on December 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“Cotton Wool Cloud” : Hiroshima, Japan, 17th December 2011
Another shot from last Saturday: this is one of the most amazing clouds I’ve seen in a long time.
Suspended there alone in a pallid winter sky above the urban sprawl, this wispy mass of water vapour looked as soft as cotton wool…
Clouds are fantastic, and I never get tired of watching or photographing them, since they are never the same twice: indeed, their very ephemerality adds to their beauty and mystique.
If I’m not wrong, this fine specimen is a fair weather cumulus.
A larger version of this photo can be found here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged fortress, Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan, landscape, photography, snow, stark, trees, winter on November 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“Stark Winter Scene” : Hakodate, Japan, 4th March 2009
Hokkaido is Japan’s northern-most major island, and a place most folks go to in summer to escape the terrible humidity and heat of the southern part of the country.
I, however, went in March when it resembles the Siberia which is geographically very close. From the top of Hokkaido you can actually see Russian territory on a clear day.
The town of Hakodate is a kind of stepping-stone, a gateway into Hokkaido and the wild north.
It’s had a cosmopolitan history, the remains of which can be seen in foreigner’s cemeteries and a smattering of churches, the Orthodox one still having an incumbent priest.
There’s also a large European-style fortress, no doubt modelled after those of Vauban in France, a huge five-pointed star of moats and emplacements which is fun to clamber round, and where I took this stark image of winter.
At times in Hakodate you can almost be fooled into thinking you are in Europe…
A larger version of this photo can be found here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged clouds, gloomy, grey, Hiroshima, landscape, panorama, storm, urban, winter on November 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“Heavy Sky” : Hiroshima, 16th February 2011
Last winter I bought a 10-24mm wide-angle lens and wanted to test it out, so one cold weekend I climbed up Hiroshima’s Futabayama and pointed the camera south.
In the foreground lies the city, the typical ugly concrete and wires of modern urban Japan, but if you look carefully (especially if you view the larger version), you can see the Inland Sea in the distance, dotted with small islands that make refreshing day trips out of the grey industrial blight . This body of water separates the main Japanese island of Honshu from Shikoku, the smallest and most rural of the four major landmasses that make up the nation.
Below this forbidding heavy sky I shared the mountain with a large metal pagoda, a gift from the government of India to memorialise the victims of the atomic bomb, the perfect apocalyptic accompaniment to the roiling storm clouds above…
