People Archives - The way of the exploding fish

Jingu Michi

Posted on 18.5.201519.5.2015 by Sami

Jingu Michi is a road stretching from the Heian Shrine to Maruyama Park near Chion-in temple on Wikipedia temple. Our planned route was to walk along Jingu Michi to the park, then continue along Nene no michi at Japanvisitor.com, a famous flagstone road to ninenzaka and sannenzaka and finally to the Kiyomizudera temple on Wikipedia.

The photo is taken about 800 meters from the Heian Shrine close to the Shōren-in temple that is known for its ancient camphor trees, some of which reach over the road. I processed the image with warm tones that have an old-fashioned feeling to emphasize the historical atmosphere and the warm sunny weather.

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Heian Shrine

Posted on 9.4.20153.5.2015 by Sami

There’s a short walk from the giant torii gate to the actual shrine. You enter the shrine through the main gate, called Ôtenmon, pictured above. The Heian shrine is a shinto shrine built in 1895 to commemorate the 1100th anniversary of Kyoto, and it was modeled after the old Kyoto Imperial Palace. In reality, many of the buildings have been rebuilt in the late 1970s after a fire ravaged the shrine, but that doesn’t make the shrine any less majestic.

In addition to the great torii gate which, being 24,2 meters tall, is one of the tallest in Japan, the Heian shrine is also known for its gardens. Having a tight schedule we decided to see them another time, but at hindsight we definitely should’ve visited the gardens as well. The entrance to the gardens costs 600 yen, but the entrance to the shrine itself is free and there’s plenty to see there too if you just want to admire the buildings. Even though I have been to the Heian shrine a couple of times, the size of it still blows my mind. I hope the following photos give you some idea of the size of the area.

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The building on the corner in the photo above is called Sôryûrô (Blue dragon tower) and on the other side of the yard there is another one called Byakkorô (White tiger tower). The photo below shows a close-up of the Sôryûrô.

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New year, new tricks

Posted on 3.2.20153.2.2015 by Sami

We’re already well into 2015 and I’m ashamed to notice that I’ve let this blog and my other social media endeavors wither as I’ve become busy with all kinds of work and photography-related things. That is about to change, however. As an unofficial new year’s resolution I’ve decided to post more images this year and also resuscitate my Tumblr and Facebook accounts.

I’ve had big plans for this website and my photography for a long time, but never really got around to implementing any of them. So this might as well be the year to do that. As a first thing, I’ve added links to the sidebar to my images that are available for licensing on Getty Images and Alamy.

If you’re on Instagram, you can go to my account to see some travel photos that don’t end up in this blog. That’s also the place where I’m currently the most active and where I post new photos first, so if you want to see what I’m up to, follow me there. Even you don’t have an Instagram account, you can go to the Instagram page on this website to see the latest images.

The photo above is from the shinkansen (bullet train) platform at Tokyo station. I took this a few years ago when I was traveling around Japan. We were heading to Kyoto but had to wait for the staff to clean the train before we were allowed to board the train.

1.10.2009 – Day 4, part 1: Sendai in three photos

Posted on 10.3.201431.7.2014 by Sami

We woke up early because we had a busy day ahead of us. After a sturdy breakfast we checked some details from the Internet at the hotel lobby, packed our gear and headed back to Sendai station. Here’s a few images from the walk back. These are not very representative of any tourist attractions Sendai offers, just general views of the city. It was a cloudy day and everything looks a bit gloomy, but despite that Sendai seemed like an attractive city.

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This next building caught our eye (or actually the thing on the roof did). It turned out to be a wedding hall called Palace Heian, which explains the unusual architecture. I think the style of the roof construction is called Shinmei-zukuri.

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A midsummer silhouette

Posted on 24.12.201315.4.2019 by Sami

Here’s some light for your Christmas eve. It’s not a very festive image, but I don’t have access to my images at the moment as I’m not home during the holidays. I’ll take a couple of days off from blogging during the holidays and return with more images after Christmas. Meanwhile, have a Merry Christmas, everyone!

Skiing into the sunset

Posted on 11.7.20131.8.2014 by Sami

I went out to photograph the sunset on a cold January afternoon because it looked like there might some nice colors in the sky. As I was looking for a good position, this man skied past me and I knew I had to get him in the frame with the sun. I had my camera hanging on my neck, but I wasn’t really prepared to take any photos. Luckily he wasn’t too fast and I was able to adjust my camera settings and take this photo. Looking back, I think this was the best photo I took that day.

For those of you who are interested in tech stuff, the image is a blend of two differently exposed versions of the same file. Blending allowed me to adjust the exposure of the snow and the sky more easily to my liking.

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Walker

Posted on 20.6.201312.4.2019 by Sami

Here’s another image from 2007. Google was kind enough to give me a free copy of Nik’s plugin bundle and this was the first image tested it on. I used a very randomly selected set of filters from Color Efex to get this look and the image instantly became one of my favorites.

As a side note, I’ve created a Facebook page for my images. If you don’t like RSS feeds, you can now keep keep up to date with this blog by liking the page. If you like the images there (or here), feel free to share them to your friends.

I’ve still got loads of exciting news to share, but I’ll try to keep my posts short, so more on those next time.

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