Category: Travel

Travel photo notes

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Dublin: Temple Bar a night

The lively Temple Bar district is very photogenic at night. Using a tripod and long exposures allows capturing the decorated exteriors of the pubs (the main feature of the district) while blurring the motion of the crowds, which adds atmosphere to the images. Experimenting with shutter speed is also interesting, as it results in various degrees of motion blur, sometimes producing surprising effects.

On a winter Irish night, photography is fun only until the photographer’s fingers start losing sensitivity in the cold. Fortunately, the best place to regain warmth is inside a pub, and there is no shortage of those in Temple Bar (or in Dublin in general, for that matter).

Follow the link to view my photos of Temple Bar.

Please leave a comment if you know of other photogenic pubs in Dublin.

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Malahide Castle: a day trip from Dublin

Easy access by train from Dublin center makes Malahide Castle a perfect destination for a day trip. After a 20-minuter ride on a DART train from Pearce station, I was walking through an expansive park towards the castle.

 The castle itself is visible only from one side – the front façade. From all other sides it is obscured by trees. During my visit, most of the façade was covered by unsightly scaffolding – a common feature of European historical sights. I managed to take a couple of photographs of the fragments of the castle with a 70-200 mm lens. The architectural details are quite interesting, and are best photographed in a diffused light provided by overcast sky. When the sun briefly appeared from the clouds, the mood of the scene changed, and I used the moment to take a few shots of the roofline of the castle.

 The guided tour of the castle features an excellent collection of furniture. Overall, the interior offers an interesting glimpse into the lifestyle of several generations of the Talbots. Particularly impressive is the dining hall, where 14 members of the family had breakfast on the morning of the Battle of the Boyne, which took place only a few kilometers from Malahide in 1690. All of them died in the Boyne Valley on that day. The walls of the dining room are covered with portraits of the prominent Talbots as well as a great painting depicting the Battle of the Boyne – a pivotal point in Irish history.

 Follow the link to view my photos of Malahide.

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Ouchi-juku

(Shimogo, Fukushima prefecture)

We visited this old postal station, which is located between Aizu Wakamatsu and Tokyo, at the end of the day. At that time, it transformed from a frenzy of busy souvenir shops that were catering to the crowds of tourists to a quiet Edo period village.

From Tokyo, it takes approximately four hours to reach the Ouchi-juku by car. Consequently, most of tourist groups leave the village by approximately 5 pm to return to their homes or hotels. The life in the village slows down, shops and restaurants close. One can really feel suddenly transported back in time.

Our friends wanted to give us an authentic Japanese experience of eating soba noodles in an old restaurant located in a period building. Although that particular restaurant had already closed, the owners accommodated us and prepared a wonderful dinner of cold soba and tempura. The building itself was fascinating, with its straw roof, hibachi in the middle of the room, and centuries of black soot covering the wooden beams under the ceiling.

The thatch roofs in Ouchi-juku deserve a special note. A typical roof is very thick. It provides excellent insulation and keeps the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It takes a great skill to maintain a traditional roof, and people carrying this disappearing trade are highly regarded in Japan.

Later, when we returned to Canada, we saw a program on NHK about the Ouchi-juku, featuring the very same restaurant where we enjoyed our soba dinner. Apparently, the current owners of the restaurant are descendants of the original owners, who settled in Aizu area in the 17th century.

Please follow the link to see our photographs of Ouchijuku.

Photography Notes

This particular trip demonstrated once again the difficulties of combining photography with conventional sightseeing. Our non-photographer friends, at times, had different pace and sightseeing priorities compared to us.

Here are some suggestions on how to manage to take a few useable photographs while accommodating other people in the group:

1. Take every opportunity to shoot. There might not be a better angle, light, etc. than the current moment.
2. Have the camera ready at all times: on your neck, turned on, lens cap off.
3. Use a zoom lens (wide-to-short tele or normal-to-short tele).
4. Use the aperture priority mode with f>=5.6 to ensure large depth of field and a relatively high ISO setting to reduce motion blur (unless the blur is intentional).

Please share your experiences/suggestions of combining photography with vacation travel.

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Aizu Wakamatsu: Samurai spirits

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The day trip by car to Aizu Wakamatsu from Tokyo was one of the most memorable highlights of the entire visit to Japan. Our thanks go to Toshi san for spending his time with us. It wouldn’t be the same experience without him.

The city itself is located in a valley, surrounded by mountains. After a long drive (about four hours from Tokyo), an unexpected view of the great white statue on Kannon overlooking the city leaves a surreal impression.

Aizu Wakamatsu Castle (Tsuruga Jo)

The castle contains a very nice museum, and the grounds still retain the atmosphere of samurai history. There is a kendo dojo in the castle grounds. We heard the unmistakable sounds of clashing shinai and kiai, and followed them to watch the practice. The walls of the dojo were removed, which must have made the practice in the heat of the Japanese summer at least bearable. There were mostly very young people in the dojo (probably, middle- or high school students). It was nice to see that the castle grounds are still being used for martial arts practice. I had a similar feeling of history being naturally preserved in the castles of Czech Republic.

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The castle has many enclosed areas that are not apparent at first, but are a pleasure to discover. For example, if one looks out of a window from the main tower, one can see a small inner courtyard filled with bonsai trees.

In one of the halls, there are portraits of Byakkotai (“White Tiger Corps”) – young (mostly teenage) samurai, who committed seppuku when they saw smoke from the castle town and assumed that the castle had fallen during the Boshin War (1868). It was very sad to see their faces after we just observed a kendo practice inside of the very same castle walls. With all the flare of chivalry, it is definitely important not to forget the darker side of bushido.

Buke yashiki (Samurai residence)

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Another excellent samurai museum is in a restored household of the chief retainer of the Aizu clan, Saigo Tanomo.

The architecture of the old buildings is fascinating, and the museum gives a glimpse into the daily activities during the Edo period.

There is also an example of a deadly resolve to protect the clan dispayed by the people who used to live there – the “blood room,” where women of the household, to avoid being taken as hostages, killed their children and themselves when the compound was overtaken by enemy troops during the Boshin War. The story is that the last woman mortally wounded herself, but was unable to deliver the mortal blow. She asked a soldier, who entered the room, to assist her, assuming that he was an ally. He was, in fact, an enemy, but he did help her to commit suicide in order to ease her suffering.

These days, the room is starkly empty. The screen paintings in the room are placed upside-down (gyaku-byobu) to indicate that there has been a death in the family.

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Dublin: walk around Trinity College

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Visit gallery for my first impressions of Thrinity and surroundings. As always, it is a good idea to have a camera ready at all times, as photo opportuities quickly come and go due to the ever-changing light. It appears that, as far as the lighting conditions, Irish winter brings intermittent period of high-contrast sunlight (watch out for sharp shadows on building facades!) and diffused light from the overcast sky. This intermittency of light quality dictates the choice of composition — the overcast sky looks washed-out, and often has to be excluded from the frame. On the oter hand, the diffused light is good for showing architectural details.
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Yokohama

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The iconic Yokohama skyline with the dominant Yokohama Landmark Tower and the Grand InterContinental Hotel buildings are very impressive from the Osanbashi Pier – the International Passenger Terminal, which is located across the harbor from the Yamashita-koen park (map). The boardwalk on the pier provides an unusual foreground. Mt. Fuji was unfortunately not visible due to high humidity (we visited the place in August). Otherwise, the view must be truly spectacular.

At night, the sidewalk along the amusement park with the rollercoaster rides and the Ferris wheel was lined with photographers, who were trying to capture the colorful light trails of the rides with long exposures.

From the observation floor on top of the Landmark Tower, the millions of lights of the city below offered many attractive possibilities for photography. One needed to be careful to avoid reflections in the glass and occasional bumps from the many tourists, who were crowded into the observation floor.

gallery__MG_5272_08-18-07An interesting incident occurred during our visit to Yokohama that once again demonstrated the power of the all-penetrating technology. Our friend lost the parking receipt from the parkade. Since the receipt contained a time stamp, he was quite concerned that we would have to pay the maximum charge. However, as we were exiting the parkade, it turned out that the license plate of the car was recorded on video when we first entered, and that video could be used to determine the time of our entry. As much as we were relieved at that time, one has to wonder about the implications on privacy of the widespread use of video surveillance on Japanese highways and elsewhere in the cities.

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Paragliding

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Visit gallery

Paragliding is a very photogenic sport. While the images are filled with action, they are actually quite easy to capture. If the wind conditions are right, the paragliders can hover in place, giving many opportunities to take photos without requiring extremely fast shutter speeds. They can also fly very low to the ground and maneuver precisely, so that the background landscape can be included in the frame.

Here are some general suggestions:

  • Find location where air flow is relatively steady and is directed upwards, such as at the edge of a cliff – the paragliders can hover in the rising airstream. (In Victoria, paragliders often fly at the Clover Point).
  • Do not shoot against the light to avoid dark silhouettes (unless this is the effect you want).
  • Try to capture interactions between paragliders in flight or between the paragliders and the spectators.

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Please let me know if you have other related tips on photo techniques and/or locations and dates of the flights.
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Osaka

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Visit gallery

Arguably, Osaka castle is the next best thing in this city after takoyaki. Just as this great food, the castle is also a heritage from the era of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He was one of the three great unifiers of the warring state era (sengoku jidai), two other being Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Although they were contemporaries, these three leaders were strikingly different in personality. Yoshikawa Eiji wrote the following variation of a popular verse about them in the preface to the epic book about Hideyoshi (Taiko):

What if the bird will not sing?

Nobunaga answers, “Kill it!”
Hideyoshi answers, “Make it want to sing.”
Ieyasu answers, “Wait.”

gallery_CRW_3637_08-14-07Photography notes

Amazingly, Osaka castle dominates the skyline of the city even these days, at the age of skyscrapers. The panoramic views from the main tower are breathtaking and are straightforward to photograph. Wide lenses are useful for capturing golden architectural details of the building in the foreground.

The main tower houses an excellent museum of the warring era, where photography is allowed, but light levels are low. Typical considerations for photographing in museums apply there.

We only had less than a day to explore the castle, as we were staying in Kyoto. Hopefully next year, I will have an opportunity to explore the city some more. If you have tips on things to photograph in Osaka and/or related techniques, please leave a comment.

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Nara

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Visit gallery: Nara

Nara, the ancient (8th century) capital of Japan, is famous for its temples and pagodas. The main building in the Todaiji temple complex houses a colossal bronze Buddha statue (Nara Daibutsu) is said to be the largest wooden building in the World.

Photography notes

Inside the temples, flash photography and tripods are prohibited. Consequently, one needs fast lenses. Wide-angle lenses are especially useful for three reasons: first, for a given aperture, a wide-angle lens would give a greater depth of field, compared to a telephoto lens; second, short focal length allows for slower shutter speeds, which is helpful in the low-light conditions; third, the interior layouts of the temples often call for a wide angle composition, as there is often no opportunity to step back away from the subjects (statues and people).

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Besides architecture, another interesting subject is a large population of deer that live in the streets of Nara. The dear are, technically, wild, but they definitely substantially rely on the tourist traffic in the city. Street vendors sell special biscuits (shika senbei) that can be fed to the deer. The deer quickly approach people with the treats. They actually learned to bow their heads when begging for food.

Travel notes

We spent a day in Nara with our friends, one of whom lives relatively nearby in Osaka and often travels to Nara to enjoy the leisurely pace of this ancient city.

In Todaiji, the monks offer the tourists to predict their fortune. For a small fee, one can draw a narrow wooden dowel out of a prismatic box that has holes on one end, like a giant salt shaker. The dowel contains a number that is matched to aprinted piece of paper that describes your fortune. Fortunes range from “extremely bad” through “moderately bad”, “neutral”, “moderately good” to “extremely good”. High resolution of the fortune scale definitely feels satisfying. The papers are then tied to the strings outside of the temple, so that the good fortunes come true. Overall, this fortune-telling ritual feels very appropriate for the settings in which it is conducted (dim lights in the grand temple, giant statues of gods, etc.) despite the irony of the fact that it is done by the monks who generally preach “being here and now”.
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We actually had a chance to test our fortune prediction on the very same day by experiencing a variation of the story about a proverbial camera left on the train in Japan by a foreign tourist, only to be safely recovered hours later. In our case, Svetlana, who drew a “moderately bad fortune” in Todaiji, forgot her watch in the restaurant where we had lunch. She returned to the restaurant two hours later with a friend (who drew a “very good fortune”), and the owner was very glad to return the watch to the rightful owner. Apparently, he even ran after us when he found the watch, but could not find us in the maze of the narrow streets of Nara. Thus, one could argue, the good and the bad fortunes of the two people in our group cancelled each other (the rest of us drew largely neutral fortune predictions).

After the day of walking and taking pictures, our friends suggested that we go to Osaka for dinner, because “there is no good food in Nara”. After a short train ride, we arrived at Osaka station – a massive complex of shops and restaurants. Takoyaki! Osaka has been famous for this food since the times of Toyotomi Hideyoshi – sufficient time to perfect the recipies.

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Nijo castle, Kyoto

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Visit gallery: Kyoto

During the Edo period, Nijo castle (Nijo jo) served as Kyoto residence of Tokugawa shoguns. The Ninomary Palace (Ninomaru Goten) consists of five connected buildings located on the same level. This architectural layout can be considered as a single-level analogy of a traditional five-story pagoda. The buildings are intentionally misaligned, so that one always has to change direction when moving from one room to the next. This feature made the palace more defensible in case of attack. For example, the misaligned rooms would not be in the pass of flying arrows shot through doorways.

The interior corridor that runs along the main building has a specially-designed wooden floor. The planks are suspended on hinges that squeak when someone steps on them. This is a security feature, designed to alert the castle guards against an attack. The chirping sound made when a person is walking along corridor is similar to a song of a nightingale or Japanese Bush Warbler (uguisu). The wooden planks of the floor are called uguisu-bari (nightingale floors).

My first thoughts when learning about the uguisu-bari were that this squeaking floor could easily be a construction imperfection, which is being passed as a design feature with a poetic name. After all, naturally-occurring imperfections are often praised in Japanese art, as they bring elements of nature into man-made objects. Examples of these “random” features in art are jagged edges of a calligrapher’s brushstrokes, intricate crack patterns on the surface of a glazed ceramics, intermittent wavering sounds of a shakuhachi, wavy patterns of tempered steel at the edge of a samurai sword, etc. However, just as in the examples above, the apparently random features of an art objects are, in fact, carefully controlled by the artist. In the case of uguisu-bari, the architects of Nijo-jo designed the hinges that produced the chirping nightingale song by employing pieces of wood that rubbed against each other under pressure. Indeed, the detailed drawings of the squeaking hinges are part of the castle exhibit.

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Photography notes:

Photography is prohibited inside the castle building, but it is allowed in the beautiful and expansive gardens and the castle grounds. The trees and even the grass are meticulously manicured by hand. The gardeners pruning the grass by hand under the punishing August sun are examples of dedication to one’s profession that is evident in so many aspects of Japanese culture.