After a nearly nine-month break, my wife and I are back to practicing shodo (Japanese calligraphy). I wanted to post my writing attempts on Flickr, and found, to my surprise, that when I started doing the same thing three year ago, my first post was of exactly the same writing (the image below is from three years ago.) It reads “しゅんらいききむかう.” As with many of the sayings typically used in calligraphy, the exact translation is a bit elusive (and somewhat missing the point), but “Welcome spring” is close enough. This is kaisho – formal script.
When I wrote this three years ago, it was also a re-start of our photo practice. Our daughter was just a newborn, and we would bring her to our teacher’s house. She would sleep peacefully (at least, this is how I remember it now) in her car seat, while my wife and I would write and then eat incredibly delicious dinners cooked by our sensei’s wife. Having a child with us was a major change in dynamics of our practice from the time when there were just two of us. I guess, this is just another illustration that shodo, like kendo, is a mirror of of the entire life.
Our daughter is not a little bundle laying in a car seat beside the chair anymore. She is a person, who wants to draw, and write, and play, and watch TV, and read, and eat, and drink, and talk. The change of dynamics and pace seems to be continuous. Perhaps, embracing it is the point of practice.
These days, our daughter likes to do everything together with us. I know that this will pass, as the need to assert her independence will take over, but I wonder if one day we would have a chance to write calligraphy side-by-side.
.”
The indigo dye was developed in India, and it was a very rare commodity in Europe in the middle ages. During Napoleonic wars, which coincided with the development of technology that allowed mass production and dyeing of fabrics, the 
(habit à la française) were dyed with indigo.
is often made on vintage shuttle looms, developed by Toyoda company in the 1920s. These looms are slow and produce a nonuniform fabric by today’s standards, but for denim, this is a valuable feature, as slight variations and imperfections is what makes the jeans unique.
. In fact, the letters are the primary reference for many studies of his life.
resonates with the modern challenges of work-life balance. On one hand, it is comforting to know that we are not the first to come across these issues, but on the other hand, the fact that two millennia later we are still searching for a solution tells us that, most likely, there is no magic formula that works universally for everyone.
, which has an incredibly shallow depth of field and a fixed focal length. Having worked through these challenges makes the resulting even more meaningful.
, since it has higher resolution than a 
. The higher framing rate of the 1D X offer no advantage in this case, since the motion will be frozen by the flashes.
, but a 
might be a better option for shooting from greater distance.
