Sunday, August 17, 2008

Furano Heso Festival

When talk about furano, many know that it's famous with Lavender, but there is also a very special event take place during Summer, called the Heso festival, on July 29.

A team of English Engineering Education Program (known as e3) international students of Hokkaido University took part in the dance, while I joined as the team's photographer.

The celebration of Heso festival involving the performance of belly dance at the street. Thus for preparation, the dancers first have their belly painted by some well-trained artiest, then follow by dressing up:

See the word e3 in the above photo? Ya, some advertisement here of our English education program. BTW, also worth to mentioned that I will be the very 1st Malaysian who join the program :)


After all the 'makeup' and 'dressing up' is done, our team took some dancing practice, for about 15 min... ya, it's not that hard as it sounds... The little girl in the above photo helps in the dressing up of our dancers, by bringing them the hat (ya it's the big blue one as shown in the photo above). After they all are done, now is her turn.
Guess what, just after she delivered the hats and turned around, I raised my camera and pointing to her, and she raised her hand and gave me a simple smile accompanied with the Japanese-girl-must-do "peace" sign, 'click'! - Done! so naturally and spontaneously, yet, I am most satisfied with this photo among all that I took during the trip.
Plus, I love Snoopy too!

They decorate the street with lot of lanterns...

There are also some tents selling foods and drinks... I bought a hot dog to fill my stomach.
This is our team marching... Actually the international team is not only us, anyone who are interested may join the team; The place that we do the dressing up is beside the Furano Train Station, some tourist came to us and ask "may I join the dance?" "sure!" Then they are painted, dressed up and marched together...
See the many flags...
Big drum...One of a kind drum...

Among all, this is the most upstanding belly...
When he move, so is his belly, which made the face seems so real (too bad I don't have video to show you)Beside belly dance, there are also other type... and what is this, traditional sleeping cloth of Japanese?
Basketball dance?!!
And it is not Japan if without Cosplay...
And among all the Cosplay, I found this one most upstanding...

Notice the kid in blue (in the photo above who trying to take the picture of the 'most upstanding one'), he first tying to take the picture, but then missed it as the 'most upstanding one' is marching too fast. Then the kid runs to the front pass the 'one' and then jumps out in front of the other audiences and wait for his second chance (as shown in the pic). He got it this time, in fact the 'one' had purposely made a funny posed for him. He was very delighted and runs to his parents afterward.
Me too felt very delighted to see such spirit in the kid - He didn't give up, and has the courage to pursue what he wanted!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Sunflower shoots - tiring attemps

Does it looks like a book cover or something? I do have the intention to publish some photography booklets, but not the time yet.

Photos in this post are some of the shots I did recently after discovered that there are sunflowers growing in Hokkaido University campus.

It took me three visits to make the shots...

The 1st visit was because of I woke up at 5.30 am early morning and found nothing else to do, so I decided to go shooting. I arrive at the farm at about 6.00 am and shoot for about 2 hours.
Just when I am very happy with the shots, I realized that the picture size in the camera have been set to small. This means the photos have not much use for me beside displaying on the computer. Trust me, nothing is more frustrating than this for a photographer (be him amateur or pro)!

So I check up the yahoo website for weather forecast and confirmed that the sky will be sunny the next morning and revisited the location for second shoot. After arrived to the spot, I found the yahoo forecast being quite accurate, it was sunny... but unfortunately, it was a strong windy sunny morning. That means the sunflowers are waving, dancing in the wind, instead of standing still smiling at you ready for photographing. This is what yield the 3rd visit and luckily some good sunflower shots are made :)

The colour of following shot is directly out of my camera without touching up in photoshop. See how blue the sky is and how the sunflower 'pop'. The trick is simple, use a polarize filter; as have been mentioned in my previous post.




The next photo was a composed of 2 shots using photoshop. I found that I love the foreground flower very much, but then the background was a white building, apartment or something. During the shoot, I didn't notice the building was there, as everything behind was totally off focus. However, after watching via my computer screen, I found it to be really spoiling for the whole scene;

Sunflower + Building = ?

See, it is mathematically incorrect as all components in a single equation should be homogeneous in dimensions. So I replaced the building with some sunflower and using Gaussian Blur to make it off focus. The result is this one of my favorite desktop background:

BTW, after seeing the equation thing, guess now you know why tech geek made a good photographer ya?!!

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Furano - home of Lavender

After the disastrous attempt, as described in my previous post, this is my second trip to Furano on 27 July 08, joining the family trip of my Malay friends, who are also doing PhD at Hokkaido University.
On this trip, we travel by their own transport, so we can pull over at will, making traveling very convenient.

Look closer at the sun glass and you will see me taking the picture, and the guy in red is the friend who has invited me to join the trip, thinking that I have an international driving license so can take turn during the journey (about 2 hours of driving from Sapporo to Furano).

To place the sun glass on the sunflower and photograph it is his main aim of the trip. Luckily we found it so I can shoot this funny pic, and he has no regret of the trip.

The rice packed in banana leaf with some spicy condiment made of chili is called 'nasi lemak' in Malay. Literary translated as 'fatty rice(?)'. It is one of the very popular Malay's food in Malaysia (Malay make it, and Chinese love it too! maybe that is one of the reason why we two different races get along very well in Malaysia) I didn't expect to have a chance to taste it here in Japan, but then it came into my surprised... love it!


Here is our first stop, somewhere between Nakafurano and Biei.

In photo below, notice that the colour of Lavender wasn't that vibrant?
If you are going for Lavender, you should visit in mid July. By end July, almost 50% of Lavender has faded. I once told a friend this:
"lavender in mid July is like girls around 18, in late Aug... like women around 30... "
Quoted directly from the email that I sent... I was wrong though, it should be women in late 40 by late August. So plan your trip wisely!!

At Funaro, you are not only getting Lavender. Furano is a town of agriculture, so there are many other farms which make good landscape.
See how blue the sky is... my investment in B+W polarizing filter paid off.
*Polarizing filter - a piece of glass that we put in front of the camera lens to filter out polarizing light, and thus bring out the true colour of the subjects; If you have experience wearing glasses with polarizing feature, you'll understand what I mean. So polarizing filter is what landscape photography must-have accessory.

Photo below is without polarizing filter, a candid shoot of me in the act by a friend. Notice that the colour of the cloud isn't 'pop' as there is polarization effect (If you are a tech geek, you might want to find out more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization); you can't solve this issue in photoshop - polarizing filter is the only way to go!
Btw, the B+W is a brand name - in the world of lens filter, it is a Ferrari.
The focusing speed of my Canon EF16-35mm f2.8 L lens is so fast that shooting bee in action is of no problem!
After the second trip, I revisited Furano joining a trip organized by e3 group (e3 is Hokkaido University's English Engineering Education Program - students joining this program will do their Master or Phd in English. See here http://www.eng.hokudai.ac.jp/e3/ - the scholarship section might open your door to Japan!). The photo below is my 1st trial using HDR technique (HDR = High Dynamic Range). I will explore this technique more... In the previous post I've mentioned about the habit of a landscape photographer of revisiting the same spot until the right lighting is obtained for taking good photo; that I didn't mean revisit like what I did here (joining family trip of friends or school program). My revisit mean to stay in the town or location where photo is to be made, then from there the 'revisit' take place. Something like the National Geographic's photographers do when out for an expedition.
However, it is too late now to stay in at Furano, the Lavender season has gone, plus I don't have driving license yet, so will probably do it next year...