I have added a new album of Japanese landscape photography scenes here. These were taken with with a Hasselblad (80, 50 and 180 mm lenses) over the course of 48 hours at the end of January. The location is in the north of Nagano, near Omachi, historically the gateway to the Kita Alps, and also famed for being along the historically rich “Shio no michi” (塩の道), or “salt road”, along which trade between the mountain and coastal regionals flowed for centuries. The film is Fuji Velvia 50; no filters (not even a polarizer); and the slides were scanned on an Epson GT-X970.

This scene (click here) was taken in late November in the foothills of the Japan Alps, also known as the Kita Alps (北アルプス, meaning “North Alps”) . The location is the village is Miasa (美麻) and it’s on the road between the city of Nagano (長野) and the village of Hakuba (白馬).

Some of you will recall that Nagano was the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics; events were spread out throughout the prefecture, with slalom and snowboarding in Shigakogen (志賀高原), curling in Karuizawa (軽井沢), cross-country in Nozawa spa (野沢), skating and hockey in Nagano city, and the major downhill events as well as biathlon and ski jumping in Hakuba. I was actually working for the organizing committee at that time, responsible for the men’s ice hockey event. (I think my assignment definitely had something to do with the fact I was Canadian).

Last year, I was driving in the early afternoon on the way to the Sea of Japan from Nagano to shoot some scenes along the coast — but as I got closer to Hakuba and caught a glimpse of the white mountains against the blue sky, my heart started to race and I decided to make a detour up into the hills behind Miasa. At this slightly higher elevation (around 300 metres above the main road) I could enjoy this gorgeous view.

The mountains in the background, Kajimayarigatake (鹿島槍ヶ岳) and Goryu (五竜) are just under 3000 metres, which is why they are capped in freshly white snow — the cold Siberian winds start to whip across the sea at this time of year bringing the white stuff down at that altitude. You can’t see the lower parts of the valley from this view, but there would still be patches of green here and there. This combination of white + autumn orange + green is referred to by the Japanese as “sandankoyo” (三段紅葉), meaning “three layers of autumn colours”. Landscape photographers across Japan flock to areas where these conditions often occur, such as Niigata, Nagano, Toyama and Fukushima.

What can I say — how do you NOT take a great picture with these conditions? It is all there in front of you! I guess the main points to think about are:
- metering (of course, as always)
- desired composition (which informs choice of lens)
- and, based on composition and choice of lens, depth of field issues

As far as metering goes, the main issue here is to make sure that the scene is properly exposed so as not to burn out the white (and thus the mountains’ texture) but at the same time not underexpose and thus lose the details of the darker areas of lower part of the frame. I spot-metered the snow with my trusty hand-held Sekonic to get a feeling what I had to start with, and then took various readings on the orange and sky. Actually, being autumn, with all the orange in the foreground and the strong, unobstructed light coming from the sun from about 10 o’clock just behind my left shoulder, the brightness was evenly balanced across the entire composition. It would have been tricky in summer, for example, if the foreground had been a dark green; then, without a neutral density filter, I probably would have lost more details in the darker areas.

By the way, some of you might wonder why I start with metering before composing the shot. Actually, this is always the way I do it. I think many photographers make the mistake of painstakingly trying to compose the frame before getting a good sense of the range of light intensity in scene. You need to first determine what elements are within an acceptable range  (usually 5 stops or so for slide film, or 7 for negative film — digital, from what I can seen is also around 7 but weaker in the darker ranges) before committing to including those elements in your picture. So before I even bother to look through the viewfinder, I usually spend a few minutes spot metering with the hend-held Sekonic just to get a sense of what is going to work exposure-wise. When I met Charlie Waite, the famous English landscape photographer whom I really admire and in whose work I find a lot of inspiration, who was in Japan several years ago, one of the best tips he gave me was that one has to “see” the picture in the mind before even thinking about depressing the shutter. I think that (“instant confirmation  / gratification” digital photography aside) this is what attaining the highest level of skill in photography is all about– being able to see and predict exactly how a scene will be rendered (on film) before even taking your camera out of the bag.

So with these balanced lighting conditions, I was pretty well free to compose as I wanted. The issue with composition in this case was not to get too excited by the beauty of the scene and overly anxious to cram everything in — or, on the other hand, to slap a telephoto on and just take a tight-cropped shot of the mountains against the sky. No, too mundane.

Too much or too little — always the same challenge.

I needed some kind of focal point. I just stood there for a few minutes with my hands in my pockets, looking around, taking in the fresh air and the sun. I eventually found it in the middle of the rice paddy just below the road: the wooden racks on which harvested rice is hung to dry. To frame that in the foreground somehow with the alps in the background, I had to go with the standard 80mm lens (remember, I am shooting in 6×6 medium format).

To ensure maximum depth of field (i.e. the range within focus from front to back), I focused on the rack and stopped right down to f22 (which gave me a shutter speed of 1/60, I recall). If I had focused on the background, the foreground would have definitely gone soft, even stopped down.

Just for reference, I did experiment with other focal length lenses. I composed a few shots with the wide angle 50mm, which allowed me to get in even closer to the rack and achieve an even wider depth of field – but then the alps became too small in the background. Moreover, I increased the distance between the rack and the camera and composed with a medium telephoto (180 mm) and could achieve a similar frame, BUT then it was not possible to bring both foreground and background into focus at the same time.

Well, that’s what ended up happening, anyways:　I shot a couple of rolls of film from different angles and different focal length combinations. The more I walked around and took in the scene, the more compositions and varying themes came into my view (eye and mind). It became a great photo study of the interplay between this distinct, uniquely Japanese man-made landscape ornament, and one of the most spectacular backdrops to be found anywhere in the country.

Needless to say, I never made it to the Sea of Japan that day. A couple of hours passed before I knew it, so, with the coast still a two-hour drive away and with no chance of making it in time for the sunset, I headed for a nearby, secluded mountain outdoor hotspring (露天風呂, “rotenburo”) and relaxed in the steaming water under the fading alpine dusk light.

(For more pictures of my photography in the mountains of central Japan, please check out my gallery in the excellent ski and other winter sports website Snow Japan.)

It is an easy peak to access. When I took this picture, I had left Yokohama in the early evening, arriving in Nagano around ten, where I borrowed a car, driving on through Matsumoto and arriving at the base approach around midnight. I remember that night — sleeping in the car and looking at the stars which were unbelievably bright at that altitude. From there, it was only about a two hour hike to peak. I took many photos that morning, but this is one of my favorites.

It was already “late” (around 8:00, and mountain photographers know what I mean), and the lighting was changing constantly because of the clouds being whipped across the summit by the wind. There were only a handful of hikers up there, so it was very peaceful and quiet. I knew all along that framing the roof of the shrine would make a good shot — it was just a matter of waiting for the sun to break through the clouds and throw light on the foreground, and to time it so there was some interesting cloud formation in the background.

Metering was not difficult. I used a hand-held incident reading in front of the shrine, and spot-metered the sky just to be sure.

The main point about this shot is the lens work. If you rolled over your cursor on the image, you will have seen that I shot it with my Hasselblad and a 50 mm wide-angle lens, hand-held. I read all the time that you “can’t” shoot medium format without a tripod, but I do often with my 50 mm lens. I love that lens — I think it is perfect for hand-held work. In any case, I had no choice. To get the composition I wanted, I needed to climb up the side of wall of loose rock that had been piled about shoulder high around the shrine to protect it from the elements. I could not have used a tripod even if I wanted. (I almost did not get to take this picture. When the kaminushi — 神主 or shrine priest — heard me scrambling around on the rock, he came out from inside the shrine and was mightily irate with me…). So hand-held it was, making maximum use of the wide angle lens’ depth of field — stopping it down to f22, which still gave me a shutter speed of 1/125 — more than enough for a hand held shot.

No filter — not even a polarizer. I was tempted use one, to really punch out the blue. But underexposing half a stop was enough. The Fuji Velvia 100 did its job. (My further thoughts on filter technique found here.)

I like the gorgeous blue contrasted against the sun-bleached silvery wood of the shrine. (If you look closely at the wood, you can see that the grain really stands out. This is from the “sand blasting” effect of the dirt and wind at that altitude.) It could be a mountain peak anywhere in the world, but　of course with the shrine profile it says “Japan”. There is also a nice sense of altitude, I think, because of the hint of the highlands below.