Kishiwada Danjiri

On Sunday we went to Kishiwada Danjiri. It's one of the more popular festivals in Kansai. It goes for two days and gets around a million visitors (not sure if that's true). The main attraction of the festival is the floats that get towed around the streets. The float are handcrafted and as you can see from the picture below the are pretty amazing. Some of them have up to 200 people pulling them by rope. When they get close to the corner they stop and everyone starts chanting and getting into rhythm then they start running trying to get the float to skid around the corner. It was pretty exciting but after seeing a few it was all a bit the same.

can't remember what these were called. some type of sembe. It's like a crispy biscuit with rice bubbles, BBQ sauce, mayo and egg on top. really tasty. love heart shaped egg for the girl and circle for the boys.

one of the floats. click on the image to have a closer look at the woodwork. really amazing.

one of the floats skidding around the corner. the guy on top jumps from side to side screaming out instructions.

a young kid with his grandfather watching the procession dressed in festival get up.

 

Itami airport

A few weeks ago we realised the local airport is only about 15mins by bike from our apartment. So lately i've been having a lot of fun taking photos and testing out my new equipment. It's a great spot and real sensory experience. The planes go straight over your head and the noise is unbelievable. A few times i've had my precious bicycle blown over. I've been lucky Mika's dad has leant me his 300mm f4 that fits so nicely on my D80.

Itami at sunset.

mika and JAL. This was taken using my 17-35mm wide angle lense. Click on the picture to see a bigger view.

this was also taken with the 300mm. It was a really windy day and this was a really rough landing. click on the pic to see it big.

 

new camera :-)

It's been a while since i've updated but i haven't been doing much lately. The weather has been a bit shitty. There has been a few typhoons so we've had a lot of rain the last few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new camera. It's a Nikon D80. All of my photos before this were taken with a point and shoot lumix FZ30. It's a great camera a perfect for what it's designed to do but as with every hobby the more you learn the more money you want to spend. So far i'm really happy with the image quality of the camera and the main reason i wanted to upgrade was the poor high ISO performance of the FZ30. The new camera coupled with a fast 50mm prime lense is a low light machine. anyway here's a few random shots with the new camera.

local yakitori restaurant around the corner from my house. This is a high ISO shot (1250) and using the 50mm f1.8d which is a great fast, sharp lense. This is handheld, no flash. just no way this was possible with my old camera.

Umeda sky building at dusk. this was taken using a 25 second exposure to get the lights in motion. I sat here for about 30 minutes for the light to be right and then the car pulled up right in front of me. i could have moved but i actuall like it in the foreground.

Mika doing hanabi. this was taken using one of the lazy modes on the camera. The flash fire to capture the foregound but the lense stays open to capture the light in the background. The longer exposure also give the fireworks a trail of light.

 

cover and spread

Here's some pics of my photos that are in this months Kansai Time Out magazine. Pretty exciting getting your photos published and the cover looks great. BTW i'm also available for weddings, nudes, birthdays, nudes, advertising and nudes.

www.kto.co.jp