日本海の夕日

A scene along the Sea of Japan (日本海の風景写真）, at the hamlet of Nadachi (名立）. One of those calm, humid July days with a lot of  moisture in the air. Perfect for late afternoon photography, shooting into the sun and getting great colours.

This is one of those medium format photos that you can’t quite appreciate to the fullest on the internet. I took it with the Carl Zeiss 180 mm lens, which performed beautifully. Two things impress me most about this image. First,there are no ghosts or flare even though I am shooting into the sun. This is partly due to the lighting conditions — which is why I always take advantage of conditions like this to shoot directly into the soft light. It is also due to the quality of the lens — the lens element design and precision, and the coating on the lens surfaces.

The other is the the amazing detail. This photo needs to be enlarged to appreciate the back lit water ripples and the fisherman’s translucent line.

Exposure was not that tough on this one. I used a handheld Seconic spot meter and took a sampling of readings near the fisherman’s silhouette because exposing his outline was critical. Then I took a few more readings near  the sun to get a feel for difference between the darkest and brightest areas in the frame; finally, neutral areas in the clouds. The final setting was a gut feel “overall average” between the readings, with a little more weight toward the fisherman.

Because the only clear definition is in the foreground I was not worried about maximum depth of filed; nonetheless, I set to f16 to take advantage star effects of the lens diaphragm on the glittering ripples. Shutter speed was 1/60, so I used a tripod.

The Japanese have an image of the Nihonkai being rough and stormy, reinforced by constant references in literature, popular drama, enka songs — you name it. But it has gentle side beautifully  apparent here.

The poet Basho (芭蕉) walked along this very route several hundred years ago during his 奥の細道 (oku no hoso michi) trek.

かやぶき屋根の民家

In the old days, the prefecture of Niigata (新潟） was referred to as Echigo (越後). I lived for many years in Nagano (as you may know if you read my other posts) which is directly adjacent to Niigata. I also spent two years studying at the International University of Japan (IUJ, or 国際大学 as it is known in Japanese), which gave me even more opportunity to get to explore and photograph the landscape of this fascinating  area. It is famous for it koshihikari rice, hotsprings, and beautiful mountain and coastal scenery. (Coming from British Columbia with the mountains and ocean, Niigata feels familiar.) Niigata has traditionally had an image as one of the isolated back-country regions of Japan (uranihon, 裏日本）. It is incorrect, actually, to think of Niigata as having been somehow cut off from  ”civilization”; it, along with other supposed isolated areas such as the Noto peninsula (能登半島） had much mercantile and cultural contact with other regions in Japan and mainland Asia due to the sea trade routes.

Niigata is also historically known as “snow country” (雪国) due to the massive amount of snow the cold winds from Siberia bring down onit. Dealing with the snow has had a strong influence on the people of Niigata — on their character and their lifestyle. One interesting physical manifestation of this is how the traditional homes were built — with doors on two stories, one for the summer on the ground floor and one on the second floor for access when the snow piled 2 or 3 metres high (it does — I have dug myself out of it).

The tiny thatched roof house or kayabukiyane no minka (かやぶき屋根の民家) in this scene is to be found in the charming mountain village of Matsunoyama (松之山）, which  these days is known for being one of the few remaining areas with a high concentration of thatched-roof dwellings. Throughout the country, such traditional thatched-roof dwellings are fast disappearing, either being covered in metal or being torn down and rebuilt entirely. It is a shame, because these farmhouses (the design of which is distinctive to each region of Japan) are one of the most charming aspects of the man-made landscape.

This picture was taken on a brilliant morning while driving from Nagano to Yamato-machi; after a heavy overnight snow fall, I knew taking a slight diversion through Matsunoyama would afford some great picture opportunities. I had passed by this scene several times before during different times of day during different seasons. This was the first time to see it blanketed in snow. The composition with my 180 lens was pretty straightforward. I took a few shots with the camera tilted a little lower but I prefer this framing, with a little bit of the top of the mountain showing to provide context.

The trickiest part of this shot was the exposure. Snow at the best of times can be difficult because of the reflection; however, this shot was complicated by the top-back-side light. I took reflective reading off several parts of the scene and calculated an average. I compared this average to a reading based on the incident light meter held at and angle to to simulate the angle of the sun. With the Sekonic 308, you can retract the white hemisphere into the unit, so I took another reading to simulate the shadow incident reading. After taking all these readings, I found a kind of overall average and then adjusted for gut-feeling. Aperture was at f16, and shutter speed at 1/60.

I did not use any filters. The blue cast is mainly from the high colour temperature of the light in the shadows. I find the blue cast from Kodak Ektachrome the most pleasing of all the films, and usually only use Ektachrome in the winter, as opposed to Fuji Velvia the other seasons.

As a postscript, I am sad to say when I visited this scene again not too long ago in the spring I found that the farmhouse had been ripped down. I remember when I first started taking pictures of this scene, I would often see a single elderly lady tending to the adjacent garden. Winter on her own must have been very difficult, having to deal with clearing the roof of snow. Many of the elderly are vacating such dwellings to live in more convenient communal dwellings closer to towns. I don’t blame them. But it is a waste that the dwellings are torn down. I know of several foreigners that make a living renovating such farmhouses into attractive homes. For some reason, the Japanese seem  to be less interested in keeping this part of their cultural heritage alive.

This photo was taken in the prefecture of Nagano (長野） in early May, just after rice planting, near the tiny mountain village hotspring of Takazawa　（高沢）. I had just been driving through the Utsukushigahara (美ヶ原） highlands when I received an e-mail from the office that I had to sit in on an important telephone conference.  I had to quickly come down from around 2000 meters into the valley where my cellphone would pick up the signal. I was racing — while lamenting over the fact that I would miss watching the sunrise from Utsukushigahara as the call was scheduled for around that time.

To cut time I took a shortcut — an old mountain road that I had not been on since living in Ueda (上田) in the early ’90s. I had completely forgotten how isolated this area was, how much old-world scenery it still retained. I passed by several thatched-roof  ”kayabukiyane” （茅葺屋根 ) farmhouses, several idyllic  hamlets perched over the valley and many tiered rice paddies.

Racing along, I could not help but notice over my right shoulder the scene you see here with the flowers in the foreground and the lines of seedlings being lit from behind, a little to the side. It was perfect light that brought out the fresh bright green of the “nae” （苗）.

Risking to miss my important call I quickly pulled the car over and got to work setting up my tripod and Hasselblad. A farmer sitting off to the side looked on in amusement at this foreigner frantically grappling with all his gear.

I used a 180 lens, so the issue with this shot, given that I was shooting from an angle above the paddy, was the depth of filed — the area in focus both in front of and behind the focal point. I stopped down the lens to f32, and, using the old panorama focus technique (which you can’t do on the modern Digital camera lenses!!), aligned the infinity mark of the focusing ring to the f32 mark on the aperture ring, thus bringing everything within 7 meters and infinity in focus. Perfect.

Next, metering. As I was standing in the exact same light at the subject, and there were not any challenging conditions such as clouds or nasty reflections, I used incident metering, tilting the white sphere of the meter slightly toward me to simulate the angle the the sunlight was hitting the seedlings from behind. Just to be sure, I spot metered, but it turned out the incident metering was perfect. Actually, I use incident metering quite a lot in landscape photography if the lighting conditions of where I am standing and the subject are the same. Good sunny days are easy. On overcast days, a trick I learned from a Japanese photographer is to point the white semi-sphere to the sky and then increase the reading by a stop. That always works well for me.

I took 2 or 3 shots, the last on that roll and then hurriedly started to pack my gear so I could get going again and make my call.

And then it happened.

As I always do immediately after finishing a roll of film,　I began to take the roll out of the magazine so as to have ready for the next new roll.  However, in my half excitement (“Oh, this shot is going to turn out great!”), half-haste (“My boss is going to kill me!”), I neglected to roll the film forward completely on to the pick-up spool — and as I took the film out of the magazine, I realized that I had exposed the last few shots to the sunlight! The best ones!!!

I don’t remember if that farmer was still there, but he must have been doubly amused to see this foreigner, now, just minutes later, cussing streams of all obscenities imaginable to the valley winds.

Ahh, such is life.

No choice — I quickly loaded a new film an shot the whole roll (12) just to make sure.  Camera off  the mount, tripod folded (again, in excitement and haste, fingers pinched between the metal legs and more obscenities　– what was this farmer thinking?), in the car, in gear and — vroom — racing again to get into cell phone range.

Usually, photography is a more deliberative, meditative process for me. It makes no sense to me to hurry hurry hurry to “get the shot”. Photography for me is more about the process than the end result. But sometimes, when pressed for time but you just know the shot is a winner, you throw all that away and just go for it. I prefer the more leisurely pace, but I am glad I pulled over that day. Must have made that farmer’s day, too.

First, I should mention that most of the photographs I have initially selected for the current four albums in my gallery are from an exhibition I held recently in Yokohama and Kobe. The great people at Patagonia made the exhibition possible — twenty three of my photographs were on display in two stores for most of June and early July.

The common underlying theme of all of these photos is that I took them while travelling along the ancient Japanese kaido (街道) roads in Shinshu　（信州）, Echigo （越後）, Echizen (越前) , and Echu (越中）.  (I would like to talk about the “kaido” in a later post — they are a fascinating way in which to understand better the Japanese topography, ethnology and history.

A few words about the technical aspects of the images.

These are all shot on slide film — mostly Fuji (Vevia 50 and 100, and Fortia, which appears to be available only in Japan); I sometimes use Kodak Ektachrome in winter. Generally, I do not shoot negative film, although I do have some black and white work I would like to post in the gallery at a later date.

The flip side of this as that none of the images here are digital, nor have they been digitally altered. I may need to tweak the saturation or contrast a little, but this is only to get the scans as close as possible to the orginal slides. I am against digitally altering photographs. I don’t see the point; I am trying to capture on film what moves me as I really see it with my own eyes, not create an idyllic memory of it. (More on this topic later, too…)

As a rule, I don’t use filters. The only exceptions are, depending on weather and lighting conditions, I may use a polarizer filter, a half neutral density filter, and/or if appropriate, a light-balancing filter to compensate for light-temperature related colour shift. I talk a little about my “filter philosophy” at this post. And anyways, filters get in the way of the brilliant optics of the Carl Zeiss lenses I use.

Unlike examples of my work you might find on-line elsewhere , which is mostly shot in 35 mm format, the focus of what I want to showcase here has been shot in medium format (6 x 6). The subject matter and style is subtley different, I think, than what I do in 35 mm format. I would like to talk about the interesting differences between 35mm and 6 x 6mm in a later post. For reference, I use a Hassleblad 503 cxi and three lenses: 50mm, 80mm and 180mm. I sometimes use a 2x teleconverter.

As you can see, there are four albums in the gallery, which you can move between by clicking on the little icon in the lower left hand corner (some people miss this). If you roll your cursor over the image, photo data will cascade down from the top of the image. I have not finished adding all the data, but will update as time permits.

I hope I have answered some of the questions you have been thinking about — most of the above is based on what people ask me. Feel free to submit any questions or comments you have!