HDR Photography Blog

Driving back from my girl friends house on sunday evening I decided to take the scenic route back. I’ve driven past this field a hundred times but today it had 22 horses grazing on it. I knew I had to get a picture so I raced home (doing the speed limit of course) then raced back.

However when I returned 10 minutes later they had already moved to the back of the field! I’ts time like this I really need to have my camera in my car at all times.

This is a 3 shot HDR taken by using a broken fence in a ditch as a tripod, I like the softness of the colours in this one

Once we checked into the Hotel Konanso in Kawaguchiko the first thing on our minds was getting into our private hot spring bath and relaxing after the long journey we had from Shinjuku.

However the second we put our bags down we heard a knock on the door, confused and puzzled about who it might of been I opened the door to see a small old woman looking up at me. “Do you speak Japanese?” she asked in a confident voice, “Yes” I replied in an equally confident tone and she asked us to follow her, we dropped everything and left the room.

She was holding the lift door open and waving us toward her Amy was taking a while so I shouted Chotto Matte Kudasai! which means Please wait a moment before joining her in the lift. She led us up to the roof where we was greeted by Mount Fuji. I’m glad I took my camera with me because this was such a breathtaking sight! The old woman (who turned out to be the owner of the Hotel) asked us what time we would like dinner and then gently bowed leaving us to enjoy the views of Fuji San.

It was a beautifully clear day when we arrived in Kawaguchiko. We left Shinjuku at around 9am and travelled south towards Mount Fuji via a highway bus, it took us much longer to get there than we were hoping as most of the highways we travelled on were undergoing maintenance so there was very heavy traffic.

Once we arrived at the 5 lakes of Kawaguchiko we had about a 3 hour wait before we was allowed to check into the hotel so we took the opportunity to take a walk around the lake. Kawaguchiko is a sleepy little town and it took us a while to adjust after leaving the hectic and busy Shinjuku.

We went in this bath about 10 times in 2 days. It was lovely and the water was always at temperatures of between 40-45 degrees. This is a 3 Stop HDR taken from our Private Balcony at the Hotel Konsanso in Kawaguchiko Japan.

There were lots of things I loved about Japan, the public transport, the people, the sights, the sound of the crows! Most of all though I liked its unpredictability and quirkiness. You would be walking along a street only to find an ancient temple in between two skyscrapers, it’s this quirkiness that lead me to a quaint and silent temple in the heart of Kawaguchiko.

It was the middle of the afternoon as we walked up the old ancient steps into the temple grounds. Even though the temple was located near a road we couldn’t hear any traffic noise at all. It was completely peaceful and tranquil the only sound came from water that was trickling down from a dragons mouth into a pool of water and an old lady carefully sweeping foliage off the delicately made zen garden.

The old lady gave us a simple glance telling us to mind our manners but we already knew this was a sacred place, as we explored the temple and it’s gardens I came across this flower and decided to get some snaps. I will definitely have to invest in a Macro lens some day.

This was the 1st shot I got of our day out at Cambridge. While researching potential spots for photography I came across this building while searching Google, However for some reason I could only find side on shots of the building. Using Google’s street view I could see that there was almost no space on the other side of the road, just a small walkway about 1 feet across.

I was determined to get a front on shot of the building (which I was able to do thanks to my new amazing Tokina 11-16mm wide angled lens) but realised that I wouldn’t be able to set up my tripod in such a small walkway without pissing everyone off. On the day I noticed a lamp post Directly centered in front of the building with a massive dip in front of it, so I wedged myself in between the lamp post and the 1 foot drop just infrot of it and used the lamp post as a tripod to get my 3 exposures. It was a pain in the ass getting it right without some kind of blur.

Finally managed to get out this weekend after the appalling weather we have been having, also gave me the chance to test out my new Tokina 11-16mm lens. We set out to Cambridge for the day as I wanted to get a picture of the Chronophage clock (which will be uploaded later). As I set up to take this shot by freak chance a bunch of graduate students walked past towards their graduation ceremony. This HDR was made from a single RAW file.