Kamikochi : Autumn

I guess Lady luck knocks my door only on weekends : got an invitation from sahu for a drive down to kamikochi the following day, I had no reason to say NO. Last time I been to this place was on 19Aug`03. Kamikochi tends to be busier than Shinjuku around the peak summer. This is one of the starting points for hiking and trekking the Japan Alps.

We started off around 9:30AM. The route had vivid autumn colors,it scores over the Akazawa route that I been to last weekend.Enroute we made a couple of stops, there were a mutitude of streams that were flowing down the valley on either sides.


It took under 2hrs for the 65Kms drive. Well its a bit tricky out here vehicles are not allowed till the base.We needed to park at Suwando parking area and then take a Bus (to and fro costed: 1800Yen ~15USD). The weather was reported to be overcast and late in the afternoon its suppose to rain.

Finally when we set foot at the base the weather nothing better than forecasted.So I was not able to shoot those icon shots, thereby stuck to closeups and macro photography.I picked up the trail which I missed out last time. A sunny day would have made the river Azusa reflect green all around but it looked muddy(courtesy:overcast).

One of the sign boards drew my attention, which has some kind of a moss over it. It really awed me. I walked around it for some time and then called for a Macro shot, since I had one 70-300mm Sigma lense that I borrowed from Anand and it having a Macro support at 300mm. Incompatibility walked its way between the lense and the camera so I docked on to the tripod and switched to manual focus just to hope that it should work. But even my best efforts gave me a blurred shot. May be my best is not good enough for the combination. yup need to work on this later.

We had lots of japanese company and these people out shine themselves when it comes to courtesy. One gentleman asked us if we need a group shot and here we go. If I start writing about Japanese then it will bloat like Leo Tolstoy`s "War and Peace".Anyway some day I will do that for sure.

The acids in the stomach were taking their toll so we perched on the banks of Azusa(well the super fast train that runs from Tokyo to Nagano Prefecture is named after this river `Azusa`).Since all I carried was my photo-gear and a bottle of H2O, so decided to be the scavenger of the day, but I went luck to relish some good Sambar Idly , Kheer and some Pakoda. I guess I ate more than I can. Thanks to Sahu and Gunjan. During the course of luch the rain gods had some fun. I packed up my gear and the lowepro all weather bag came handy.

(click to enlarge)
We moved on for the destination of the day "Kappabashi bridge". It was pouring down. When I confronted another gamut of autum colors I couldnt stop myself from pulling the D70 out in the rain and it gave me the shot of the day.

We relaxed for a while and called it off for the day at 4PM.All in all it was a satisfying day.Now enough of this blogging stuff I need to getback to my studies offlate I am going all gaga with photography, need to strike a balance.

Basking in Akazawa

Its FALL and what can be worst if one doesnt spend time with those wonderful colors. So not to disappoint outselves we planned to go to "Akazawa", some 70Kms away from my home. "Aka" in japanese is "Red", so is this place all RED in Fall ??
I with my good old company Anand and Priya set out on a drive to find out.We crisscrossed the kiso valley river to reach Akazawa, the autumn leaves were just stunning. The river added its share of beauty to the scene.



But what drew my attention was not those colors but groups of Japanese photographers with their tripods, said to myself well I have some company.
[ As I was aware that there are 2-3 blotches on my camera CCD,and wanted to get rid of them but lack the guts. Last night out of the blue I opened it and started cleaning the mirror and some how messed it up with lense cleaning lotion, only to realize in the morning that the mirror looked really bad now. I fiddled with it for awhile to find that the focus is not working so called my camera 911 service "Ashok" {thanks for yahooBB to give me Japan to US calls at such low prices}, well all I needed to do was to unlock the Focus Lock button on his advise. Anyway tomorrow I will send it to Nikon Service Center, I have some complaints with the lense too.]
Once we reached the place we had good number of courses to choose from. We took the one along the river and moved up. We basked in natures splendid colors.
I started off with my D70 once more, but today doesnt seem to be my day, as every shot I tried missed the target somewhy or the other, may be I was not able to concentrate as I came to know yesterday that my aunt passed away. All that comes before my mind is she getting married to my Mamayya and then after 22+yrs of happy married life my mama and his two sons withering the rough. I was trying to get out of this pensive mood.

I failed to capture even a text book shot.I just wanted to walk home rightoff, but waited for Anand and Priya. It was a sleepy drive back. I was sitting next to anand who was at the wheel and Zzzing off. I hardly slept last night. When we reached home Anand remarked "Do you know when a driver feels sick on a long drive ?" yaa. I know that "when all the passengers along with the one next to are sound asleep".Very much I remember even Sudhakar used to complain the same back in india esp when I sit next to him on long drives.
Why dont these guys take it the other way "That ppl feel so comfortable when they drive that they fall asleep..!!"

On a whole todays Photo shoot was a mess. Back home when I was reviewing the snaps , I wanted to enhance the snaps in some way or the other.Offlate I was reading a chapter about Color. So wanted to experiment with HSI color model.Try to saturate so that it looks more pleasing.
Today I set the D70 to output NEF and JPG files on every shot. Color mode of Adobe RGB. I opened in Adobe Photoshop CS (I didnt buy it its trialware, wish someone presents me this ~US$800, oh fairy godmother why dont you!!). The saturations of the DSC_1429.NEF and DSC_1429.JPG are different though they are from the same shot and ( both encoded in Adobe RGB mode ?? ). Well thats the point in question ??

A. Color space management is really getting on my nerves.
B. Managing the growing digital content... guess I need to evolve a digital work flow,else i will end up spending hours trying to organize.

Well finally here is one snap which looked better off when I saturated it by 20% else it will look like the DSC_1430.NEF.

Earthquake III

Just some 6 minutes <5:56PM JST> back I felt the tremors of another earthquake. This is for the third time that I am experiencing an earthquake. I tried to call some of my friends but the phones are dead. So turned on the TV to find the earthquake warning is already on. The epicenter tends to be very close by.
The neighbourhood prefecture : Nigata seems to record 6 on a japanese richter scale of 7, while the place where i stay Nagano reported 5. As I am writing this blog I fell another mild tremor.

Not sure, but what I can make from the little Japanese I know is that the epicenter is just in the very next prefecture.

Gosh!! right now its once more .... again it goes.
Some times staying in japan is really scary.
Again .. here once more.. Ok guys ... if something happens then this is my last blog.

may my soul rest in peace.

I rate this blogging experience of mine as the best of all times for sure.
I wanted to write my blog on Flavours movie which I just saw and now ended up with this :-)

Panoramic Attempt

I was waiting for Anand to come and pick me up for a long drive to Utsukushigahara,but at 9:30 he called it off. Once more my plans of going for a panoramic view shootout seem drenched, but finally we moved out for a new Indian Restaurant "Turmeric" (dishes complemented the name), near the Asama Onsen ,Matsumoto City. After luch we drove down to the utsukushigahara heights. One of the stop overs presented us an awesome view. The silhouette really fascinated me.

(The below has been cropped and resized in Photoshop)

Every second day after I bought the D70 I been dreaming about shooting a panoramic view. I had a tripod which I bought for my Sony P-10, but that doesnt work for this assignment. I was longing to buy the Gitzo's 1228 tripod and Markin's QBall but right off I couldnt afford a US$800 grand, so settled for a 40 dollar one. I got dropped at the Matsumoto Castle to complete my assignment, with very few ppl around it was pleasant.

Back home I used the Panorama maker 3 software which comes with the Nikon Coolpix camera. I blended 4 images to get this one :


But when I tried to blend 5..!! here it went....


all the artifacts started appearing:

A. The exposure setting are not uniform.
B. I should have levelled the tripod more accurately.
C. Either (B) or should have messed up some S/W configuration during blending.

Well anyway one more lesson learnt.I even tried the 360 degree view.Will upload that sometime later.All in all,Not a Bad start, but still miles to go.