29/365

29/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Who doesn't love bokeh?! Here's a man bathing in the stuff.

28/365

28/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Don't believe I've posted any real food shots as part of this project yet... Nothing rounds off a hard day of work like juicy steak and potatoes with homemade onion gravy, and accordingly a fitting subject for niku-no-hi (29日).

27/365

27/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

It's been 3 years to do the day since I first had a drink out on this balcony, and while the drink in this instance is tea, the sentiment is the same.

And this was when I noticed how hard it is to light the balcony naturally – it falls mostly into shadow, and has no apparent bounce target, which made this another exercise in flash work. Manual was of course a must because of the excess of very light and very dark colour, and it was all to easy to blow out losing the natural shadows from the outside lighting.

26/365

26/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Playing with controlled DOF at macro levels, and bounce flash illumination that doesn't cause weird catchlight – ended up having to illuminate a section of wall immediatey behind me so I would personally block the most direct reflections, and it seems to have worked. Was unable to avoid the reflection of my desk quite so easily though. That's something for next time.

25/365

25/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Sometimes a cup of strong cooked Turkish coffee is just a cup of strong cooked Turkish coffee... Busy day...

24/365

24/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Continuing from yesterday, this was an exercise in optimal pre-focussing. Focal distance set to approximately 7.89 meters at f/11 on a 50mm lens should in principle give you 3.94 meters to infinite focus. So I did that. The harsh midday lighting made metering a nightmare, so decided to expose for the light and contrast a chunk of the picture in shadow. Also tried to keep perspective distortion to a minimum.

23/365

23/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Today's theme is distance, scale and DOF. After having downloaded a super free application called iSee4K for the iPhone which lets me calculate DOF on the go, I thought I might apply it. So for this set-up, I calculated my height, divided it by the length of the sensor and multiplied it by the focal length of the lens to determine that I would need to stand 5 meters from the (estimated) central nodal point of the lens in order to fit in frame at a 100mm focal length, and then further calculated that at f/2.8 I would have around 20cm focus either side of me, which is more than sufficient to keep me in focus but also give the background some blurring. I then set the ISO to 50 and bounced an off-camera 580 EXii at half power off the ceiling about two-thirds of the distance from the camera to me. And it worked – hence the smug, but slightly tired look!

Wanted to shoot this at 135mm, but my house just wasn't big enough.

22/365

22/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Alone with my iPhone, and curious to see just how much I could get away with in terms of minimal lighting. iPhone screen is primary light source, landing light providing the rest from outside the door.

21/365

21/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Very little time today, so played with close focus at a wide aperture on a long lens.

20/365

20/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Not the exact scene I had in mind – I had the night lights in the background arranged just how I wanted them, so people walking by on the right hand side would contrast darkness on one side and the light from the koban on the other. Sadly, all too many came out like this due to the auto-focus missing. Mental note – must learn to manual focus on the go at 135mm. While holding an umbrella...

That said however, this one jumped out at me at being remarkably successful despite the subject taking centre frame. Structurally I liked how she appears to be in a spotlight flanked by darkness. Aesthetically there's a definite pathos.

19/365

19/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Focussing on keeping perspective distortion at a minimum, despite the camera being at knee level and not being a tilt-shift. I found the constantly changing colours of this road surface worked well with this.

18/365

18/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Yeah, I like taking pictures of cats. Much more than dogs. Dogs always put on a pose, whereas cats just threaten you with legal action.

17/365

17/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Little looks better on a saturday afternoon than a BBQ hunk of pork. This example was particularly succulent.

16/365

16/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Ayran, possibly one of the nicest soft drinks ever invented. This is a stable of my daily non-alcoholic drink intake.

There's been talk of a yogurt intervention. I've been consuming it by the liter lately...

15/365

15/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Had something else in mind, but my mind saw it better than my camera. Luckily I was taken in by this scene on my way home. The banner and lanterns are for a festival going on in my neighbourhood this weekend. I particularly liked the way the lanterns snaked off into the distance on the right hand side, forming a triangle with the left lanterns and the banner.

14/365

14/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Decided to try out some macro today, with a special focus on tripoded long exposures at a narrow aperture. The ornamental part of this bottletop is about an inch high, so was shot at just under 1:1. PP also included playing whack-a-mole with sensor dust.

13/365

13/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Standard long exposure from the middle of a busy road. Unexpectedly, the fisheye lessened the fear factor, as some of the vehicles were passing uncomfortably close

12/365

12/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

More experimentation with self portraiture using fill flash, this time bounced off a white surface and using a longer lens (135mm).

11/365

11/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

One man and his bus. This man's job is to stand around with his lightsabre making sure the buses don't crash right in front of the terminal, station, or koban. A mostly thankless task.

10/365

10/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Another cat that was pleading to be photographed in the Golden Gai part of Kabukicho.

9/365

9/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

About 2 minutes from my house, I'd never noticed the way that looking from the alley, the bright shopfront is half-framed by the tree and other plantlife.

Taken with a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. Macro wasn't required, but it's also a good general lens.

8/365

8/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Elections are coming up this weekend, and I think the dog is the most promising candidate.

Taken with diffused off-camera flash from across the road in an attempt to reduce glare on the surface of the posters. Mostly successful...

7/365

7/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Saw this while walking to the supermarket. The house was on the other side of an empty lot, which gave me plenty of room for framing with a 135mm.

6/365

6/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

A local playpark under a motorway bridge.

I particularly liked the way the lines of the climbing frame worked with the lines of the bridge beams. The rope then adds a hint of instability.

5/365

5/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

The book I'm currently reading. Apparently it won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.

Taken with a 135mm lens at f/2.8, with off camera flash bouncing off rear wall and ceiling at full power. In order to handle f/2.8, I had to drop the ISO to 50, as I'd rather do that than use a higher ISO with less light. That would be a world gone topsy-turvy.

4/365

4/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

No real story behind this. The bike appeared a little too far off the beaten track to have been simply left there while somebody ran off for an erand, yet was too close to have been abandoned.

3/365

3/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Spent the afternoon at the local temple to see what I could find. Had a couple of flash projects in mind for illuminating a statue behind a wire grid, but somehow they just weren't coming out the way I wanted them.

Then this cat turned up. He was a stray with large chunks of fur missing, but I could see he wanted to model for me. His years spent on the cruel streets of Tokyo really came through in his eyes.

2/365

2/356, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Focussing on lines today, in particular stable and somewhat mundane lines. The weather was rather overcast which added to the bustling lifelessness.

1/365

1/365, originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal.

Beginning with a self portrait then I guess.

Trying out some experimental off-camera fill lighting. On this occasion I used ETTL as I had the diffuser on and couldn't properly calculate the exposure value. Will focus on that in later pictures.