A Productive Day
Every once in a while, I do go out and today was one of my most productive days ever. I walked around a lot and saw a lot of things. As I was testing out my Sony DSC-F717, I took a lot of photographs. Here then is my PHOTOBLOG post (most photos were resized for web -- tell me if you want to see the original resolutions).
First of all, I went to Wynyard Station via train, and then got off and walked to Town Hall. Along the way, I snapped pictures of road signs for use in my assignment. The 10x optical zoom helped especially as I was on the other side of the road for most of the signs that I wanted to take pictures of. Despite my shakey hands, using the automatic mode ended up giving some quite sharp pictures.
I then went along to Kinko's (a print shop) to get my Aoi Nanase mini-poster laminated. They did it for half the price quoted by the other shop, plus they let me have matte lamination at no extra cost (the other shop wanted to add 4 dollars to the cost). You can see how it now takes pride of place on the apex of my Aoi Nanase trinity. The green poster was also laminated, but not by Kinko's -- I had a specialist framing art shop do it for me.
It is well worth having posters you like laminated, because it stops them from fading, lengthens their life, and also on wet days you won't have them soaking up the moisture from the air and getting wrinkled on the wall (that happened to all the other magazine posters that were up there -- thus the blu-tac scars on the wall).
I then walked along a side road towards the University, and I encountered a scene I had always wanted to photograph. A house with a modern facade, in a quiet neighbourhood. I just had to take a picture.
Luckily, my journey along that lonely neighbourhood (interrupted by the unmistakable chimes of the ice-cream truck) brought me where I wanted to go -- Seymour Theatre complex. This building with an almost full-glass facade, was my intended target practice for HDR photography. With this new camera being able to do 1EV+/- 3-step exposure bracketing automatically, I got to work. Shakey hands (you will notice from the photos multiple ghost lines) notwithstanding the results were quite impressive.
And last in this series, the technology center which backs into the Seymour complex, with its combination of metal and glass.
As you can see, the sky was unbelievably clear today, but there were still clouds. They were however, positioned in such a way that they did not make it into the photographs' backgrounds, but were instead reflected on the glass facades, giving an almost surreal feel to it all.
When I reached the University, I was walking around when I noticed:
Whoa. A bloody Japanese festival, and I nearly missed it! I only saw this by chance. What happened to all the publicity and stuff? No one saw this coming. So I went up to McLaurin Hall, to see multiple areas set up for different activities, but a woeful shortage of people actually there to participate.
Origami display:
Paper dolls:
Dolls:
Cheapo Ikebana (Flower arrangement):
Tea Ceremony!
There were other things like the Japanese multi-stringed harp and gold leafing, but those were a bit awkward to take photos of. I took part in the tea ceremony and learnt a few more tips on what NOT to do during one -- don't let your toothpick stick up on your sweet, and don't reverse the hands when handling the bowl (left hand supporting the underside of the bowl, right hand to wrap around it and rotate it).
The tea ceremony was not genuine in that we did not induce leg cramps by kneeling on the floor -- instead most of the time we were sitting on chairs in front of the master performing the ceremony.
Skip the boring university work stuff, and at last free from the shackles of uni, I go back to Kinkos and pick up my laminated poster, and proceed via bus to Town Hall. Along the way, I drop by a new cake/drink shop which had opened near Town Hall. As the queue was of exceeding length and filled with FOB's, I merely took a few photos and went on my merry way.
A scan of their leaflet/menu:
The special seems to be pretty good, no wonder all the cheapo Asians are crowding the sidewalks. {Insert a Yoshinoya-like rant here} But we'll see how it goes when the opening fuss has died down.
OMFG ITS MY REFLECTION!!!
Next up: Revisiting the old places, and a few more HDR's!
Post a Comment