The visibility in winter is amazing. I feel more freedom in terms of the choices of lenses I can use, especially for wide angle views. When outside temperature is warmer, I guess we get more noise (dispersion & diffusion?) in the air, and with wide angle views, it’s hard to get crisp Pan focus.
The same is true (maybe even more so) at night (The photos below are from early 90s with film).
I missed seeing fall leaves in Japan this year. I was looking back some files from a number of years ago, and found some pictures. Fall leaves reminds me of my childhood in where four seasons in the country side were much more discrete and dramatic than the city where I live in now.
I stay at hotels quite a bit. Each hotel location is unique, and so is the view from each room. I started taking photos whenever I see interesting/impressive/beautiful scenes and weather patterns. Here are a few of those images:
I’ve been busy at work, and neglected posting anything new here for over 2 years. Shame. Now I feel like starting back again, though I’m no where near less busy.
I walked to Brooklyn from Manhattan while I was in New York about a month ago. Brooklyn changed quite a bit in the past 10 years in a very positive direction, and provides places where I can go to wind down at the end of a busy day.
What I’ve realized is that, with the wide spread of digital social medias (Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.), blogging already sounds like an old school way of putting your thoughts and ideas to public… I’m rather from an old school, so may be it’s a good fit.
From now on, I probably won’t associate what I write here and the pictures I post, because when I try to do it, it’s time consuming. I enjoy spending time on it, but that’s why I hadn’t been able to post anything for long time.
-m
It had been a while since the last time I visited New York with camera. I managed to get out in the morning and night, and take some pictures before and after work. This time I used Old Hasselblads, 38mm Biogon and 80mm Planar (non T*). Though they are old, they are still fantastic lenses! Also, they are rather compact, compared to more recent models, so I can shoot without a tripod.
The ocean in Okinawa in Japan is so beautiful. Not just the ocean, but the skies, the clouds, the beaches, they are so beautiful beyond what words can express. The time seems to progress much more slowly than it does while you stay in cities.
Sometimes it feels like I have to slow down my shutter speed when taking pictures there in order to compensate for the slow passing of time.
The pictures posted here are taken recently with an old camera from 60’s. The lens was produced way before the modern coating techniques and materials became available, but look at the color and how crisp the pictures are! I’m not saying the modern technology is useless, and I actually believe in the contrary.
But what I’m finding (at least to me) is that, good pictures come from the combination of;
– Good subject,
– Right timing and moment,
– Right equipment that you feel comfortable using,
– Right creative and open mindset, and
– Skill set that allows you to execute effortlessly when the moment arrives.
There are a number of different sets of camera equipment that I feel comfortable with, and this old set from 60’s is one of them. Though the operation is somewhat cumbersome ( no AF, no AE, no SD card, no LCD, no auto anything), I feel comfortable as it’s sort of like a ritual before taking pictures, and the air and slow time in Okinawa were perfect for this set of equipment.
The weather was pretty nice over the weekend, and I went to the beach. I didn’t bring my usual camera (shame), and all I had was my smartphone. But I thought this may be a good opportunity to take pictures with it.
I was never good at shooting photos with smartphone cameras. There may be because of a number of reasons (Don’t ask me why, because I don’t have answers). I tend to prefer (or I’m used to),
– Having some weight in my hand while waiting for a moment to capture;
– Having some discrete feel when pressing the shutter button, followed by a solid confirmation that I have indeed pressed the shutter;
– Keeping one eye looking through a viewfinder, while the other looking directly.
Smartphones are too thin to hold steady,and there’s no feel for shutter except some light sound. But maybe I should think of smartphone as something else, something totally new (and they are something new). I’ll come up with a way so I can get used to taking photos with smartphones.
I came up with the phrase Glacialis Lux to mean “FrozenLight”, because to me, that’s what photographs are. Not sure if it’s grammatically correct in Latin, but I like it.
I was looking back my old negatives last week, and found the pictures of World Trade Center posted here, and coincidentally, it was September 11th. The New York cityscape looks different now, but the inside these images that I took, probably in ’95, the time and light are frozen.
Nowadays, I take digital photos, but scanning those negatives was fun, and I will continue to do so time to time. I have a bunch of positives to scan too.
Hi,
Here’s a photo of a daybreak in Tokyo from a hotel room. I thought I’d share this for my first post!
Glacialis Lux