POTW: Hamamasu

(a contribution to Rebecca's on-going Photo of The Week Facebook group...while also being a photo of Things Japanese)


This past week was supposed to be HEC camp; otherwise known as the Hokkaido English Challenge Camp; otherwise known as one of the things I had most been looking forward to for the past few months (or had I been looking forward to it ever since I came to Japan two years ago and it was mentioned in Hokkaido orientation?). HEC camp brings together first grade students from junior high and high school for a 100% English experience at a camp run entirely by us ALTs. What's more, these are the kids who did the best in our ALT-organized English challenge, so all I've heard is how much of a riot they are as they are not afraid of English. 


Last year's camp had sounded like a blast, but I had missed it as I'd been in Canada. Come hell or high water, I was determined to make it to camp this year...that was until a freaking BEAR made it to camp before us, on the very day that we were all meant to ship out (last Friday). Hairy bastard got the camp site closed for a week, and camp got cancelled because, for all that Mark and Heather tried, they could find no other place to host it. 


But, in a hero move meant to salvage something of the weekend, June threw together plans for a bunch of us to go camping in Hamamasu, along the sea of Japan coast north of Sapporo.  That's the long story for where this photo comes from.

I feel like trying to take credit for sunset shots is a bit of a dick move. So long as your camera is half-decent, you're only making a best attempt at capturing an event that is entirely the responsibility of the earth, sun, etc. Basically, I feel like it's pretty hard to take a terrible picture of a sunset.

Thus, here's my cop-out for this week: put forward more because it was a particularly glorious sunset rather than because I did anything particularly exceptional other than pointing my camera at it. 

All in the System

(in which a lot of photographic bullshit goes down--the kind of stuff that won't be of much interest to anyone who does not drool over lenses. Consider yourself warned.)

Back at the beginning of June, the Nikon D60 that had been a gift from my Dad before departing for Japan--the camera that had served me loyally for pretty much two years exactly--died on me.

POTW: Framed

Becca has got me onto a Facebook initiative she's started. It's a group she made with photographer friends to encourage them to post their photos somewhere other can see them. There are no rules or categories: just the idea that you should post a photo a week: one that you think is the best you've done. I have further limited myself to chose a photo I actually took that week. As I've been neglecting the blog of late, I thought it might be the kind of thing I should post up here.


This week, it was a two-way tie between the photos below, each of which were taken in Sapporo this past weekend as I was hanging out with Perry, Lindsay, Max, Mark, and various other folk like Nick Small. 


Then, out of nowhere, I realized that neither of them compared to the sexy focus of the following picture of Perry seated in the window of Kyosuke's Hookah Bar, located on the second floor of a restaurant, right where Tanuki Koji 6 turns into Tanuki Koji 7 in downtown Sapporo.

POTW: Spiderwebs

Becca has got me onto a Facebook initiative she's started. It's a group she made with photographer friends to encourage them to post their photos somewhere other can see them. There are no rules or categories: just the idea that you should post a photo a week: one that you think is the best you've done. I have further limited myself to chose a photo I actually took that week. As I've been neglecting the blog of late, I thought it might be the kind of thing I should post up here.

Here's my first week, taken just after I got home from the Furubira International Exchange Association's Sobetsukai (farewell party) held in my honour. I was contending with a misty sort of rain and annoying little biting insects, but I managed to shoot the following hand-held. The web was on one of the metal railings that encircle the park outside my front door. These railings seem to be a popular hang-out joint for spiders.

Leftovers: Back to Rishiri

It's been a dog's age...again, but I haven't exactly been idle. Two weekends back, Mark Mowbray, Mark Rostrup, Lindsay, and I returned to Rishiri, determined to finally summit the mountain we first attempted to climb in our first September here. It was tough going, but we made it, and there's more of a story to it, but for the sake of expedience, I give you the first cut of our Rishiri Adventure, accompanied by the wonderful Johnny Flynn from his album A Larum: