happylife

To Take a Picture with a Doll

When we travel we usually have a camera and often take pictures. The more popular digital cameras have become, the more pictures we take because we don't take care of their film cost any more. We are happy enough to take any pictures we like, however, our pictures are mostly dull. They are almost same -- when we visit a tourist spot, we take pictures of the specialty over there from the same camera spot with the same angle. Most of such pictures are not better than the advertising picture which was taken by a professional cameraman. We sometimes take pictures of our family or friends at the tourist spot, but they are dull, too. Who can enjoy the pictures of ordinary people with the same say-cheese smile and V-shaped fingers? When I was traveling around the Sulfur Mountain the other day, I found this woman taking a picture of something odd. It was a stuffed cat. She may write a travel photo blog with the doll. I think it's a good idea because the picture will become more unique and get to have a story in itself. It's also good from the point of photo framing because the cat will make the photo more three-dimensional. It's a good idea, but I won't do the same thing because I don't like myself looked like Mr.Bean.

Night view in Tokyo

It's bright even at night in Tokyo. We can't find perfect darkness at anytime in everywhere in this city. I don't think this situation is good because it's unnatural, but I can't do anything to stop this never-dimmed city. As proverb says, "Do as Romans do!" and I found a good way to enjoy this brightness at night; I sometimes enjoy night walking and taking pictures on the way. This picture shows a typical small park in my neighborhood. The place is far from relaxing because it has no greens, no ponds and of course no sea, but it is always full of people mainly small children and their mothers. I had had no interest in this kind of small park, but it changes into something different at nights. This picture is taken with a long time exposure and it looks brighter than it really is. Doesn't it look like a toy world with no people, no sun and some artificial lights?

Digital print service

Seven Eleven is one of the largest convenience store chains in the world and it is especially successful in Japan. As you know, this type of store, lots of items and services in a small store, is extremely popular in Japan and we can find a couple of convenience stores every block in a small city and on each national road in the suburbs. Making good use of this popularity and universality, lots of new services are offered almost every week. This digital print service is one of them. We can get prints from our digital camera then and there by using this service. All we have to do is whipping out the memory card from the digital camera, inserting it into the copy machine in the store, selecting our favorite shots and number of prints and waiting for a few minutes. It's really easy and speedy. The cost of printing is 30 yen per print and in terms of the printing quality, I can't distinguish from the traditional DPE service. If you go on a trip with your friends and take a lot of pictures, you can exchange your pictures in the end of the trip before breaking up.

Fireworks photography

The second fireworks festival was held this Saturday night in Obihiro and of course I went see it. The number of shots was as half as the previous festival which took place two weeks ago, but it was still 10,000! I felt it was more beautiful than before for some reasons; I could get a better seat because of less spectators, the moderate wind blew off the smoke after each shot and all the fireworks were launch one after another in the shorter time. I could occupy a good place by a sign pole which I used as a tripod. As you might have experienced, it is difficult to take a good picture of fireworks. The basic technique is simple, to close the stop with the longer exposure time around two seconds, but the most difficult thing is when to release the shutter. We need to push the button just before the fireworks come into flower, but how can we know it? All we can do is just to estimate and press the button as many times as possible. This is the best picture that I took in this festival with the help of the sign pole.

Vignette

I'm always carrying a compact digital camera so that I can take pictures of what I was fascinated. As you know, a digital camera is dramatically improving day by day; it is getting smaller and lighter with a brighter lens, a longer-life battery and more functions. Compared to an SLR (single-lens reflex) camera, it is way easier to use. As I'm not a professional cameraman, I think that the compact digital camera is the best choice for me and it is enough except for one thing. We can't usually take a beautiful vignette with a compact camera because its lens is too small and it is the major difference of pictures taken with an SLR and compact camera. To take a good picture with a compact camera, we have to care about the background. As we can't vignette the noisy background we have to think about other methods we need to delete the background by changing the angle or coming closer to the main object. What I want to mention in this article is about the third method. It is that we can use so-called a "macro mode" on most compact cameras. By just clicking the button with tulip icon, we can get a vignette like this picture with a $200 compact digital camera.

No photos

I almost always carry a digital camera in my bag to take some pictures for this blog, but I found that I had taken few pictures for the past several days since I came back to Tokyo. One reason is that Tokyo is not such a photogenic place like Vancouver and most scenes out there are too familiar for me. The other reason is that I worry about being blamed or sued in the worst case scenario for taking someone's pictures without permission. As you might know, most cell phones in Japan have a built-in digital camera and all of them make a loud shutter sound when taking a picture so that no one can take a spy photo. It's rather hard to take a picture here notwithstanding we have a various selections of great cameras. It is similar to the case of cars in Japan; we have various great cars made in Japan, but we have few empty roads to drive them on. Anyway, I'm now lacking for latest photos for this blog and I'm thinking about using rather old pictures which I took and stocked in Vancouver for a while.

The next camera

I think it's a quite natural feeling that we want to capture and record a beautiful scene. I have had this feeling quite often in Vancouver and have taken quite a few pictures. All of them are stored in my hard disk and I can browse them whenever I like. It's very enjoyable to recall the scene in the past days looking at the pictures. The quality of the image is one of the most important factors to enjoy the pictures in this way. Of course it's not the only one factor, but it's true that the better the picture quality is the more enjoyable it is. To get a better quality of pictures, we need a better and newer camera, and they are coming on sale every month in Japan. It's not that my present camera is bad, but I sometimes feel if it had better image qualities. For example, I found an ultimately beautiful crescent moon today, and of course I took it with my digital camera. This is the picture of it. I used a tripod but it's still blurred. It was the limitation of my camera. I'm thinking about purchasing the new camera after going back to Japan next month. Fortunately, as prices of new cameras are going cheaper and I can sell my present camera on the Internet auction, I don't have to spend so much money. Investigating new cameras is also interesting.

How to capture the great sunset

Today's sunset was really great. When I was facing towards my PC in my room in the evening, I happened to notice that my room was purple and orange in color. I went out to the balcony and took this picture. Unfortunately, it doesn't show the exact color of the sunset I really watched, but this is the limitation of my camera. When we see something beautiful, and if we had a camera, we try to take pictures of it and capture the beauty forever. It's a quite natural behavior but I think it's a kind of waste because we can't fully enjoy the real beauty in front of us while we are taking pictures. As we are not a professional cameraman, we don't always have to take pictures. It's a trade-off between enjoying the real beauty right now or capturing the imperfect beauty for the later pleasure. After I took one shot of this picture, I fully enjoyed the great sunset for the rest of the time.

Eagles!

I had been chasing the eagle living around English Bay for these days and today finally succeeded to take this picture from my boat. They were perched on the top of the sand mountain on the barge in English Bay. I was very happy when I found there were two eagles. I can't say for sure, but the right one looks male and the left one is female. They must be a couple because they were standing so closely. Anyway when I came back to the marina with a happy feeling, I fell into an unhappy mood because Doug told me that my boat's engine has something wrong. It drained poorly and the engine was rather hot. I'm afraid I can't sail until it is repaired even though the weather is so good, but I can say I was rather happier because the engine didn't stop in the middle of Straight of Georgia.

Prospect Point

On the way back from North Vancouver last night, I stopped at Prospect Point which is one of the most popular sight spots in Vancouver. As I have visited there many times, I usually stop there by myself, though this time, I had a purpose. It was to test my new tripod which I got a few days ago. It worked pretty well as this picture shows. I could choose the shutter speed of 8 seconds, which is off course impossible without a tripod. I'm happy because I could capture the lights of the Lions Gate Bridge, North and West Vancouver, and the Grouse Mountain ski course with the silhouette of trees. Though I didn't have a remote shutter I could use the 2 seconds of self timer instead. It worked pretty well too.