Narrative Disorder » Behind the Camera

Modegakuen “Spiral Tower”, Nagoya

Danielle — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:37:00 +0000

The very first day we arrived in Nagoya, on our house-hunt a month before we moved there, a building just down from the main JR Station junction caught my eye with it’s stunning spiral lines. I was told that it had only just been finished and that, among other things, it housed the local design institute. The Modegakuen “Spiral Tower” remains my favourite building in Nagoya and I loved to walk above ground from Nagoya Station just to go by it and see it from another angle. When I took up photography again, the building made me long for a fisheye lens, so I could play with its glass and lines and try to distort them into a fluid, moving, breathing thing.

It took me a year to get my 10-17mm fisheye lens and I finally managed to get down to the building in the dying light of our last day in the city. I was terribly sad that day, and much of it was spent doing obligatory things with other exiting ex-pats who couldn’t give a damn that they were leaving, were actually excited about it and even laughed when they noticed I was struggling with tears, so snatching those couple of hours to do a walk about the city I’d fallen in love with and spend some time with ‘my building’ was precious.

I really should have got around to it earlier as I learned a lot from looking at the images afterwards, and would have loved a second go, but here are some of the results.

Do full screen the slideshow if you can, it will heighten the fisheye effect. I hope you enjoy this beautiful building.

I miss Nagoya, today.

Danielle — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:37:27 +0000

That is all.

Have CameraBag, Will Time Travel

Danielle — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:34:47 +0000

The last few days, I’ve been playing with a little desktop photo processing toy which I discovered through one of the photography blogs I follow. It’s called Camera Bag and it’s a hoot! I believe it began as an iPhone app but it is now available for both Mac and PC desktops. Essentially, it applies a number of filtering effects to your photos, which can be mix and matched by checking the ‘multiple filter’ box in the tool bar. My favourite effect so far has been the one titled “1974” which gives your photos that good ol’, overly yellow, 1974 Kodak look. “cinema” is also fun. There are also options for cropping, rotating etc… All of these effects/results would be possible to replicate in Photoshop and other more complex apps but I honestly doubt it could be done so easily by the most experienced Photoshop user, of course there would be more control to tweak and make it more original, no doubt but hell for 19.95, I’m having a ball! Below are some examples of my play (I'd annontate it but WordPress is worthless when it comes to laying out images, let alone lining up text - any suggestions for plugins would be appreciated!)

Osaka and Osamu!

Danielle — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:19:12 +0000

Considering the ease with which one can get to Osaka from Nagoya and the number of times I have been back and forth to Kyoto and Tokyo, it does seem odd that we had not visited Japan's second largest city till last weekend. Our only real pull was that we felt we "should" go, so, when Superman's parents expressed an interest we decided we would join them. On Friday we drove the, now familiar, road to Kyoto, picked up the in-laws and went straight through to Osaka.

The overall impression of the place? Urban SPRAWL. From the outskirts of town right through to the ports, Osakans live, work and play in high rise boxes which give way only to the extraordinary network of roads and railway lines winding in and around, over and through every available space.

Highlights of the trip were the evening spent in Dotonbori (a bustling shopping and dining district which is open all hours), the night view from the Floating Garden atop the Umeda Sky Building (where I played with my gorgeous new f1.8 lens purchased for just such evening photos) and the Sumiyoshi-Taisha Shrine. Sumiyoshi-Taisha is a pre-Buddhist Shinto Shrine, built in the 3rd century but, like most active shrines in Japan, it is kept looking like it was built yesterday - thatching and all. We arrived just in time to see a wedding procession and ceremony. I did not take shots during the ceremony though afterwards I turned and found, to my horror, that Superman had filmed the whole thing!

On Sunday we headed down to Kobe but it was pouring with rain so we headed for the Tezuka Osamu Museum and spent a lovely afternoon amongst the works of the man whose stories so inspired me as a child (sorry, no pictures allowed.) Though there was little English, it wasn't hard to understand his early four-panel comedy strips and it was fun getting some bemused looks from the Japanese as I laughed out loud. Catching chickens seems to have been the bane of his young existence! We also watched the full first episode of Atom Boy (Astro) which I had actually never seen (except the "alive!" scene, of course) again, you didn't need to understand the soundtrack to know exactly what was going on. It was wonderful to have made the pilgrimage!

As always, here is the Flickr Slideshow for you to peruse - apologies for the order, I really need to work that out. Enjoy!

I’m back!

Danielle — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:35:40 +0000

View from chopping board over my workspace and beyond!

The New Zealand retreat was wonderful! I cooked and ate clean, NZ produce, drank and washed in sweet rainwater, chopped kindling and built a fire for my heating each day and I managed to slow my brain right down and get lots of writing done. The Northland winter was astonishing, equally cool, sunny, blue sky days and wild, wind-whipped stormy days which made one think in sympathetic wonder about Tasman and Cook and the men who lived through that weather out on the seas to find the place. I was highly inspired by both the isolation and the scenery. The fiction writing mood continues, however, so the blog writing feels a little like time taken away from it - hence the tardiness and brevity of this post. This slideshow is mostly of photos I took from my little house – you will see why I felt no need to leave and why the creative juices flowed!

In fact, this post was a little longer but I was writing it on the WordPress dashboard – which looks better than it did in 2.7 but seemingly still fails as a writing tool because when I pressed ‘publish’ it published it’s own autosave from fifteen minutes previous. I’ve written this in Live Writer which developed issues with images with WP 2.7 but frankly I’d rather have to manually insert an image than lose fifteen minutes of writing. Grrr wordpress – welcome back to technology, me

For those missing out, a virtual Hanami…

Danielle — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:22:47 +0000

When we first came to Nagoya to find a home here it was late May and it was the Summer green of the trees in the street, which filled the view from the study window, that sold me on our house. The bark of those trees also filled me with a quiet hope - I suspected they were some kind of stone fruit tree, all of which have beautiful blossoms. Well, the verdict is in - not only are they stone fruit but Sakura, Japanese Cherry trees and their blossoms are magnificent!

The view from my study window was just too beautiful today and I took my camera out for a play in the sunlight. The flickr slideshow is below, there are around 50 shots you can full screen it for your own virtual hanami experience. I hope you enjoy it.

Technorati Tags: hanami,cherry blossoms,japan,spring,flowers

Kyoto by Day

Danielle — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:30:26 +0000

Our last day in Kyoto was Sunday and the weather finally cleared so it was both safe and worthwhile to get the dslr out. We strolled Gion again (still sweet but not half as romantic as in lantern light) and failed to see the Imperial palace (it seems you have to make a booking in advance - be warned) but enjoyed a walk in the surrounding park where the cherry blossoms were just beginning to bloom. We also went to the International Manga Museum which was essentially a huge manga library in an old primary school with added exhibitions and an artists' and cosplayers' hang out. The slideshow below contains no photos of the latter hehe. Resolution should be high enough for you to full screen it - enjoy!

Hooray! Hooray! Spring is on the way!

Danielle — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:31:21 +0000

Hello. It's been a looong while, I know. Since returning from Sapporo I've have had all sorts of exciting experiences including a genuine bout of Influenza A (not something one experiences in Australia, really) followed by a delightful secondary chest infection because the Aussie in me didn't think a fever and a bad cough was worth heading to the doctor, until Superman got it and had to get a certificate for work (a certificate to say he could go BACK to work it turned out, which he has written about here) and was instructed to bring me in. I am certainly glad that Spring is coming!

That the cough was clearing up this weekend was excellent as the time had come for us to make our trip to Kyoto - finally! 'Twas a lovely weekend coinciding (deliberately) with the opening of the lantern festival which is essentially a chance to experience Kyoto's old town (the Gion district) in flickering light which hides electricity wires and other such things which, in daylight, take away from the olde worlde experience. It was truly magical.

All that means that, with Sapporo in there too, there is an enormous backlog of photos to edit and post! Essentially, I'm writing this little post to break the back of it so that it feels less overwhelming and to give a pre-warning that I might just be doing photo posts with very little commentary but it is all coming! I know the pics are all you want to see anyway hehe!

So, here is a taste of the first blossoms at the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Enjoy, more on the way.

Technorati Tags: Hanami,Kyoto,Spring Flowers,Japan

Meiji Mura on a perfect day!

Danielle — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:05:26 +0000

This past Saturday we went for a drive with a couple of our American ICT friends to the open air museum Meiji Mura. "Meiji Village" is a park with over 60 original buildings from the Meiji era (1868 -1912) transported and restored so that we can get a feel for what it was like during the period when Japan was opening itself to the West. I believe that by train it is about 45 minutes to the station and then there is a bus but parking was plentiful and cheap and as long as you stay off the expressways driving was probably just as cheap - and far more enjoyable too! The park is in the hills about an hour out of Nagoya and Just being amidst the greenery and smelling air infused with soil and leaves and fragrant wild flowers was magnificent! Of course the DSLR got a good work out. Enjoy!

A colourful surprise.

Danielle — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 06:25:29 +0000

Opening the blinds today to take advantage of the bliss that is a day cool enough to open the windows, I was met with a lovely surprise! I had thought that the variegated grass plants in our tiny terrace garden were just for greenery but it turns out they are for lilac-ery too!

Nagoya International Centre Photo Contest

Danielle — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:04:48 +0000

While browsing the NIC newsletter the other day I noticed they have a regular photo contest. This Summer's theme is "A Japanese Summer" and I thought: what is more Natsu than fireworks except, perhaps, for flowers in full bloom so I thought I'd enter my "Hanabi no Hana" from my Gifu Natsu Matsuri evening. It probably won't be particularly unique lol but it can't hurt to enter, right? Getting involved is what being here is all about after all!

Here is my entry:

Information about entering can be found here

If you do enter, best of luck!

Technorati Tags: NIC Summer photo contest,fireworks,photography

Natsu Matsuri in Gifu

Danielle — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:14:00 +0000

Though I am basically just hiding from the heat while Superman works and sleeps and works again, we did manage to get out on August 2nd and take in the fireworks in Gifu. Gifu is somewhere that I have longed to go all my life as they have some astonishing flower festivals in Spring. I'm delighted to know it will be an easy drive so I can take as much camera equipment and picnic gear as I like! (Assuming we finally have our Japanese licenses by Springtime!) The fireworks were, of course, beautiful and went for about three hours all up AND no silly music, popular or otherwise, to bare with as there usually is in Australia. It was simply tens of thousands of people happily celebrating the beauty of light and fire. At 3pm we met some of our new friends/Superman's colleagues at the Golden Clock in Nagoya Station to take the 45min train trip to Gifu Eki. From there we joined the long queue sauntering through the heat for about 10mins to the bus terminal to get into the blissful airconditioning of the buses instead of walking for 45mins in the heat. As I was previewing this picture I noticed the man in the yukata and his partner are looking at the camera (she is making the ubiquitous "V" symbol) This is something I have noticed a lot when uploading photos here, I rarely take pictures OF people exactly but blow me down if the Japanese aren't as aware of a camera as a cat! Now, you may say "Hey, I saw the pic of your camera in a previous post and it's pretty hard to miss." Sure, I'll give you that - but here's the same shot with my zoom lens set at 50mm equivalent (that's human eye equivalent)... I call that Eagle-eyed! Natsu Matsuri (Summer festival) is an excuse for the girls who wish to do so to dress up in their light, cotton Yukatas. I am told that they can be cooler than dressing up in modern clothes but it depends how heavy your obi is and how tightly you tie it around your waist - mostly, though it is a full dress-up occasion and comfort has little to do with it! The Yukata fun is not just for the girls! I'd suggest that mostly the men did it to impress the girl they were taking to the event (lots of couples there being sweetly romantic) but it's entirely possible that they simply wanted to. Japanese men LOVE to dress themselves up and primp away at least as much as the girls, if not more! So, the bus took us through Gifu to the banks of the river (I think it's called the Nagara.) I'm not sure if the 200 yen we paid as we jumped off the bus was fare for the bus or an entrance fee but it was a pittance to pay for either! This was the view from our spot - you can see the crowds across the river just beyond the bridge which was the prime spot in front of which the fireworks were fired and the low lying ones danced. To get those spots you had to be very, very early but we were happy being less crowded and saw plenty. From the hills off camera to the right of the shot above, Gifu Castle watched over the scene. It was a loong way off (my zoom was at max for this shot) but I couldn't help wondering what the fireworks must have been like from there! Of course a festival isn't a festival without sharing food - so we made our way back up to the road where there were lots of food stalls with delicious things-on-sticks! The fireworks began about 45 minutes before sundown with some fireworks which didn't so much sparkle as explode in multi-coloured smoke. They were few and far between and unfortunately those I managed to catch were badly exposed either one way or the other, as I fiddled with my settings trying to access the long-ago archived photography folder of my brain, in the fading light. As the sparkling ones began, the dusk light made for some delicate colours, almost pastels... At one stage, everything went pink and I turned to find the sky had gone all sentimental... (this photo has been cropped to remove some head-silhouettes along the bottom but not colour-processed in any way - it was truly breathtaking) At last, the sun set over Gifu... And the show began! This was my first chance to play with my camera and I was excited to take some fireworks shots but, as we were going with friends and I didn't want to be too anti-social, I didn't want to bring a tripod which is really essential for good fireworks shots. Nevertheless the handheld, and therefore faster (yet still too slow for the hand) shutter speed, made for some interesting effects not entirely un-pretty... Zoom was fun too... And this one was even a little eerie... The audience was mostly silent but would ooh and ah and swell with "Sugoi!" (Amazing!) at the big fluffy ones which produced the most light but my favourites were some I hadn't seen before which exploded in the shape of flowers... and, my very favourite, butterflies... or perhaps they were magnificent birds dancing for the joy of Summer... Afterwards, the crowd made its way to the stone steps in the wall to climb up from the grass. No amount of Pentax built-in Image Stabilization was going to make up for the jostling as I took this dreadful shot but I had to get it. Obviously we were already up by the time I took it, some 45 minutes after the fireworks ended - imagine how huge this pool of people was at the beginning! Everyone was actually very patient and calm - we were just pushed together. I can't imagine being given safety permission to hold an event with such a bottle neck of an exit in Australia! The walk back to the station was leisurely in the warm (still 28 degrees) evening and had something of a community feel to it as we streamed through Gifu's streets. The convenience stores en route were having what must be one of their biggest nights of the year as we all piled in to buy drinks and use their "facilities." An hour and a bit later we were on the train and an hour after that enjoying cool, cool showers before collapsing happily into bed feeling it was worth breaking the vow not to leave the house till Autumn!

Technorati Tags: Gifu fireworks,Natsu Matsuri

Prettinesses pt 2

Danielle — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:13:24 +0000

Need I say more..?

Also pretty in it's own way, after much (possibly too much) research and investigation I have purchased my first DSLR, my first real camera since I lost access to the family SLR 17 yrs ago! I swear I was going with Olympus but when I picked up the camera I had chosen (mostly because of the new Zuiko lenses... drool) it was just too darn heavy! SO after some changes to my analysis I am a Pentax girl again! I know, I know, superzooms aren't the best thing to go for but all the tests say this one is a beauty of an S-zoom and, as a beginner, I don't yet know which lenses I wanted to spend money on! I figure with this one I can find out which lengths I use most, whether I need something wider or even longer and have the option for macro, all the while feeling my way with a camera again. And what a place to do it!

Technorati Tags: Pentax K20D,Tamron 18-250mm

On Sydney Skies and their Storms

Danielle — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:23:04 +0000

Some people are City people, some people are mountain people, some feel landlocked if they are not on the coast - myself, I can live anywhere if there is enough sky. From our balcony here in Sydney sky is plentiful and spectacular. My high school geography tells me its the meeting of the mountainous terrain and the coast that does it but here in Sydney we get frequent, intense storms which I adore. Lightning and thunder do their show-off thing at all times of year but the thing I love most about them is the incredible cloud formations as the storms roll in. I snapped this shot from my balcony a few weeks ago - it doesn't quite capture the astonishing domed shape of this cloud which drew across the sky from the south in the space of about 10 minutes but you clearly see the discrete edge of this astonishing formation. When presented with clouds like this I am always struck anew how small we are on this planet and how vast is the universe beyond them.

I wonder what the gods were doing up there that they drew this curtain between us?

Barely five minutes after this was taken visibility was barely a foot as this massive cloud hurled itself to the earth with it's full weight. The skies were bright blue again within ten minutes and, as with most Sydney storms, the temperature did not change more than a degree either way from before this formation made its appearance.

I wonder what Nagoya storms are like...