Yokohama Fall - Minato Mirai From Yamashita Park

Minato Mirai From Yamashita Park
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

This weather is great for sports, fitness, and being outside, but refrain from mountain climbing and hiking since all the clouds hang at about 6,000 to 7,000 feet. Thick fog and drizzle does not make for a very fun photographic environment, but it does require creativity and is a challenge! Anyway, have decided that my next climb will be after three things:
1) The new winter-rated sleeping bag arrives (supposed to be tomorrow)
2) The weather breaks long enough to get at least one clear night and morning
3) I complete this wireless security project

All of this will come to pass by about next Saturday when I MAY go to Hirugatake, then go off the trail around Fudonomine and descend straight down upon Hayato Otaki (water falls).... but... I have to go to my daughter's sports day event next Saturday, so may hold out for a three day, two night venture to Okutama the following weekend. Or, maybe both if I can leave the house by about 2:30 or 3:00 p.m. next Saturday - then hike into the night (ugh!).

To pass time photographically over the past couple weeks, have been taking advantage of the clear weather spots here and there, but no where in particular. Mountains and nature has turned into such a subject for me, that I feel awkward taking pictures of city scenes these days.

I got out of the house early morning late last week and caught a couple of these pictures of Minato Mirai at about 8:00 a.m. The light was harsh and exposed rather harsh despite the CP filter used, so I let HDR work some wonders. Have figured out how to consistently get a painting, artsy look by adjusting luminance and contrast in opposite directions. Give it a try, or leave a comment or question.

Clear Days Coming - Wet Marigold

Wet Marigold
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

Although the past couple days have been just as warm as before, the humidity has dropped. Also, the evenings have cooled down, which is something that I didn't notice until i woke up with a soar throat two days ago.

These cooler fall days are also supposed to bring a series of clear weather days. This is something that I'm looking forward to. Planning a trip (again) to Kumotoriyama during the first weekend of October, but have to purchase a -5 degree or -10 degree sleeping bag prior to departing.

This picture was taken on Saturday morning right after typhoon #13 passed. I saw the flower in all its wetness and thought that the texture would come out really nice in HDR. While all my expectations came to fruition, I realize now that some illumination adjustments would have helped before releasing.

Camp Site

Camp Site
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

I look at this picture and get a bit frustrated. Since this last mountain climb, there has not been more than a single day of clear weather that would be suitable for good mountain climbing and photography. At this very moment we are waiting for typhoon #13 to pass eastern Japan. This will go on through early morning, then will return to muggy, cloudy weather for a couple of days.

Tomorrow or the next day will make my way into Yokohama to shop for a new sleeping bag. I need a zero degree bag now that winter is upon us. I would get a minus five or a minus ten if those were not so big. The last thing I want is to layer up for a fall or winter hike, then have to fill my backpack with sleeping bag. I figure that I can probably get away with going just a little (not too much so) light on sleeping bag, then layer up when I go to sleep. We'll see, but also do not want to figure out that this won't work when I get to the top of a mountain and wake up freezing at 3 a.m.

Bridge Before Minoge

Bridge Before Minoge
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

I post-processed this picture, then put it through the HDR process about two months ago, then sat on it. Early this morning while perusing my collection, I scratched my head and wondered if I had actually uploaded this to flickr. After a bit of search through my flickr page, discovered that this little gem still had gone undiscovered.

By the time I reached this river toward the end of the hike, I was absolutely parched!

In framing this picture I tried to get more water visible within the frame, but it was next to impossible with all the trees and branches fallen over the top - which also made for an interesting scene.

Some Jobs Just Don't Pay

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Originally uploaded by PC Virus

Damn! What a job... found this surfing on my 'third' weekend day.

Sigma 10-20mm

Funny Aya
Originally uploaded by kirtbird

Spent some time surfing the web this morning looking for reviews, sweet spots, and other good, bad, or constructive information about my Sigma 'ultra' wide angle lens. There was a lot in this article at Nikonians that has confirmed my end-user experience over the past couple months. This article shows that the sweet spot is probably at about f/11 or f/8 above 12mm. This lens is so wide at 10mm that I cannot use any filters without having to crop the corners. Even the Cokin wide angle adapter gets in the way at the very corners. But have also found that at 10 mm the chromatic aberration is noticeable in the corners - more noticeable than this review lets on. CA really starts to show if you do any HDR post-processing, so try and avoid it as much possible.

Now that I know the widest 'sweet' focal length is about 12 mm to 14 mm (14 mm if I want to use the lens mount polarizer), I now have to go back to evaluating hyperfocal distances.

For the sweet spot on the Nikon 18-135 mm and the Nikon 18-55 mm VR, stay tuned! Digging up some information on those next.

The picture on this blog is my younger daughter.

Tanzawa Mountains To Fuji - HDR Workflow

Tanzawa Mountains To Fuji
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

This was an email sent to this guy who has a cool phlog and some cool flickr pix, but as I finished the email, thought it would make for a useful phlog entry of my own.

Here is a good HDR introduction and tutorial.
http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/
This explains it with Photomatix, which is the software I use.

Normal process:
1) Take what we think may be a cool picture.
2) Drop it into Aperture, Capture NX, or iPhoto.
3) Adjust the colors to my liking, especially greens and blues.
3) Adjust exposure, if necessary, then recover any lost highlights, if possible. Watch for graininess when doing recovery.
4) Pull into Photoshop and do dodge and burn on select areas, if necessary. Skip this step usually, but that is how I pulled the river in the valley out of the this photo.
5) If perform #4, then save as full resolution TIFF, then save back into Aperture, CaptureNX, or iPhoto.
6) Export as full resolution TIFF to desktop. Then save two more exposures at +2 and -2 as full resolution TIFF to the desktop.
7) Drag and drop those into Photomatix Pro
8) You're on your own from here, since it gets a bit more creative - read the URL above.

This is a simple workflow, but could have more from looking at what others on Flickr are doing with post-processing effects. Any additions? Any necessary clarifications left out? Please comment.

Cool Weekend

Fuji-San
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

The minute we reached the 1,000 meter level on the Wednesday afternoon climb up Tonodake, I knew that cooler days were soon to come. Pouring with sweat from a consistent one hour trudge up the side of the first mountain coldly stung against my skin as the pre-autumn breeze past. Then, being the person that I am, I grew concerned about a cold or catching pneumonia, so walked faster to the next spring where I could wash and change.

This is quite a popular photo of Mt. Fuji. It was taken at sunrise this past Thursday morning. When I crawled out of my tent to see this about an hour after sunrise, the feeling itself really made three climbs up here to get a good view very well worth the effort.

Google Earth users can plug these GPS coordinates in to see where this picture was taken - Latitude = 35°27'15.63"N, Longitude = 139° 9'47.45"E . This is a long rough climb for the nominal altitude gain. The view, however, is almost 360 degrees panorama. One can see the great Kanto Plain at night, a sunset just to the right of Fuji-san, the Izu Peninsula - the only obstruction is to the North, which is covered by Hirugatake.

Enjoy.

Tonodake Twilight

Tonodake Twilight
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

On Wednesday morning I woke up with a pounding headache. Lately I have tried to slow down on drinking, and even have made efforts to quit completely. Well. my Wednesday morning experience after staying dry for a couple of months may be the last. I woke up with head pounding, but with a plan to go to Kumotoriyama - the tallest mountain in Tokyo. "Do I go with a hangover?", I ask myself. Then I reason with the situation and decide to check the weather forecast first. Well, it turned out that Kumotoriyama was going to cloud over a day earlier than originally forecasted.

I grabbed the Millet, already packed for a two-night stay (always pack it that way, so I can stay an extra day if I choose to), and headed for Tanzawa's Tonodake. This was the third time to this mountain, but every other time in the past, it was clouded over and could not get the photos I wanted. Those days are past me now. Up on Tonodake on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, I took a total of 285 photos - mostly sunsets, sunrises, and landscapes.

This photo was taken on a previous trip to Tonodake where the clouds rolled in just before sunset, but not enough so we could not see the sun set. It was taken with a Nikon D60 and a VR 18-55 mm lens without any filters. Enjoy!

Sunflower Bumble Bee - HDR

Sunflower Bumble Bee - HDR
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

This picture was taken at Akeno just before the sunflowers were in full bloom. Well, at first sight you would say it looked full bloom, but good enough. This is a good example of using HDR technique to pull more detail.

This past weekend was a lot of fun with the kids. Now it's time to find a two day window to head for the hills. I gave the Okutama map a good once-over last night and it looks like that'll be my over-nighter for the upcoming long weekend.

Based on the map symbols, it appears that there is much water in Okutama, but I wonder how accurate that is. So far, with the Tanzawa map, only two of the water spots have worked for me out of passing about six different spots - parched many times. The way cool thing about Okutama, however, is that tents are not banned. Not that banning tents in Tanzawa keeps me from standing one wherever I have the whim.

If any of you have experience in Okutama, please confirm the some of the mapped water spots... or comment on anything else.

TGIF - Tonodake Sunset

Tonodake Sunset
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

Normally I would preparing a backpack for the weekend, but since I managed to sneak out to the mountains earlier in the week, and since the weather is crumbling apart again, I am planning a family weekend. My next zany adventure to the mountains will be on Wednesday thru Friday next week, and will probably be a trip to Okutama. I have not pulled a multiple day hike in Okutama yet and look forward to it. From a review of the map, it appears that water is much more abundant there than in Tanzawa. I just want to get up to some place high and finally get a crispy sunset picture.

My Mountain!

My Mountain!
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

This guy was a funny character. I arrived to the top of Tonodake after a casual six hour hike up the east side of the mountain, then descended down the west side about 100 meters, where I setup camp from a perch. The camp site looked over the facing valley and would have a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji once the clouds cleared.

It was still 3:30 in the afternoon and I was ready for some fresh water and something to eat, so I packed everything but the sleeping bag and tent and descended on a spring that was about a 5 minute hike down. The spring water was cold and flowing heavily since we had a lot of rain lately. I ate pasta and carbonara sauce, washed up and massaged my worn feet, then returned to the base camp.

Just before I arrived at the base camp on ascent, this deer and several others were casually munching away at something on the ground. If I moved suddenly the younger ones jumped, but the large males would just look and keep on chewing - with kind of a drunk or stoned look of ecstasy on their face.

Back To Tanzawa!

My Flower! No, Mine!
Originally uploaded by typh00nrider

The weather finally looked like it was going to break for clearer days late Sunday, so I planned a hike that evening. The planning was not that difficult, since I only had one day, one night, and had to be to work by Tuesday afternoon. Since I really wanted pictures of Mt. Fuji and mountain ranges, and some animals if possible, I decided to go to the nearest location - Tanzawa's Tonodake.

I set out from the Minoge entrance and bus stop then headed for Yabitsu Pass, then up Sannoto. Nice walk and water throughout the first one-third of the hike. Despite everybody warning, I went anyway, and the only rain was residue from the thick fog experienced while on the trip up. The night was clear as a bell, and there was deer everywhere. When I stopped to get closer and take pictures, they just stood there and chewed, looking into to the camera for some great poses... those to come on the flickr page later.

This photo was shot right on the street corner in front of Fujimi Mountain Shelter just at the end of Yabitsu Pass - right where the real trail starts. I also managed to get a picture with two bumble bees on the same flower, with this butterfly on top, and another bee flying around the flower, but that one did not come out as sharp. Enjoy and comment, please.