Ibaraki Temple

So this first one is my attempt at something called 'instagram.' It comes from the effect of taking pictures with crappy cameras in order to get a certain look - often aged or faded. The old cameras people tend to use are lomo (I think they are\were manufactured in Hong Kong) and one of the types of this crappy looking photography is lomography; I might have mentioned it before.

Anyway, this type of photography has its place in the world, as do all the other types. The problem is that people tend to think that this kind of massively washed out look has now replaced the idea of taking a good picture. Instead, you take any old garbage and then put filters (the computational kind) on top (hence instagram, the phone application). This is my attempt at recreating that look without using any nonsense.

All the pictures are directly out of the camera, converted to very low quality .jpg in order to speed the process of putting them on the net. I'll go back and modify them properly at some point.

The next two are my attempt at trying to capture the sunset. The colours are, frankly, wrong. However, I haven't gone back and modified the pictures in any way, so when I do, that'll be the first thing I change. Then again, I see my pictures on a lot of different monitors and they all look different colour wise, so maybe I should just leave them be. I have no way of knowing what a black or red or any other colour will look like once it's been printed. In most countries I think the cheapest way to find out would be to get a monitor calibrator. Here I think the cheapest way would be to take a few test shots down to the printers after a few test shots and simply have them printed out.



The young lady was on her way to her coming of age ceremony. I asked her in broken Japanese if it was okay to take a picture because she was wearing a wonderful kimono. I've seen a few black ones around lately (ones with a base colour of black because they're never all one colour) and it seems to be the latest fashion. If you're spending 5,000 USD on one of these, I would be surprised if anyone would try to keep up with fashions, but they do apparently.