The eye of the beholder

So my Christmas present this year was 5 private photography lessons, with a photographer I have worked with on various projects over the years.

The first lesson covered the basics of shooting in manual mode - aperture, exposure, camera shake and the like. For the homework, I needed to show examples of different shutter speeds and depths of field. So around the house I went, looking for ways to take the required photos.

I understood these photos to be exercises - a way of showing I'd understood the concepts. So I was a little unsettled to have them judged on their merit as a photo. And very surprised at how the photographer saw some of them.

This one for instance:

I was actually quite pleased with this. I got the required depth of field (without any zoom - not so easy with my lens) and I thought it wasn't too bad as a photo.

Yeah, well, technically it's fine... but meh. 

OKaaaayy.

Now this is a powerful photo.

Huh? For me this was a bit of a desperation shot - I needed 5 photos with a large depth of field and was really struggling to find even passably interesting things to photograph inside (it was cold out). I see this as technically OK but otherwise very meh.

I love this one! All those lines and then that one bit of mess coming out of the basket. It's great!

I did not compose this at all. I did like Quincy cut by the glass, but it was even more of a desperation shot than the one above.

This is really great! It's timeless! It says, I want to be a kid and jump!

I thought I'd completely failed this one. I was meant to pan on a moving object so that it would be sharp and the background blurred. But it was nearly dark, so I couldn't get a fast enough shutter speed to prevent Lukan blurring too.

But the biggest surprise was this one:

I had to show examples of camera shake - so I used the ones where I'd gotten the shutter speed too slow.

Wow, this is incredible powerful!

Um, it is? Surely it's just blurry flowers?

This week's homework is portraits. I'm interested to see what he says of them!

Japan Day 13-14

Rather day-by-day, I'm going to put the remainder of our time in Tokyo - and Japan - in one last post.

Lukan was desperate - DESPERATE - to go to the Pokemon Center, but we heard from Yumi that it was just a big shop. So we figured the shop at Tokyo Station would suffice.

He wanted to buy a Pokemon. We could only see the balls that they came in, not the Pokemon itself, so he picked one out. The photo above was taken just after the purchase, before opening the ball... which, it turned out, contained a magnet. There was much sorrow and wailing.

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Téo was very happy to go to the shinkansen (bullet train) station. I think he could have stayed there all day, watching the trains come and go.

We meanly dragged him away - although he still got to see a lot of trains.

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There were quite a few places we wanted to show to the kids. One was Akihabara Electric City, where one goes to buy electronics.

Electric head massagers. 

French maids - not electronic, but they do offer massages. More here if you are interested.

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Meiji Shrine:

 Caskets of sake given as offerings.

These girls wanted a photo with the kids, We said that they needed to pay, but they didn't get the joke.

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Harajuku:

We had wanted to see the dressed-up kids on the bridge between Harajuku and the Meiji Shrine, but there were none! There were still costumed people elsewhere however.

Harajuku is the home of the most-looked-forward-to place of the entire trip, by the kids at least: a giant toy store! Much birthday and pocket money was spent.

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Odaiba:

We went to Odaiba with Yumi and Daiki. For the kids, the Legoland Disocvery Center was the best part.

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We were taken out to dinner by Akie, C's homestay mother from when he first moved to Japan. She took us to a restaurant famous for fugu - a pufferfish that can be lethally poisonous if not prepared properly.

It was delicious. And happily, not lethal.

The restaurant is owned by an ex-sumo player - who was there! He asked the kids if they knew any Japanese... despite having been coached by Shabolz to say cute bum in response, the kids claimed not to know a word.

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On the last night we went out with Yumi, Satoshi and Daiki.

And then the next morning we had to get up early, to go to the airport. The kids had their last edamame and chips meal (yes, for breakfast!)...

... and then it was time to go.

A wonderful, wonderful holiday!