Hi, how you doing? Nice to meet you.
I’ve been living in Japan for a few years now. It’s a strange and wonderful place here in The Land of the Rising Sun. On one hand, old Japan is everywhere. Kimono, tea ceremony, shrines, castles, etc. At the same time, there is a very vibrant pop culture that combines modern ideas and practices from the West and makes them into something truly unique. It’s an interesting mix. On the same street you may pass high tech skyscrapers, teens with futuristic cell phones and hand held video game systems and then — suddenly — an old woman in a kimono spreading water with a ladle in front of a 500 year old shrine.
Looking through the temple gates onto the garden. Seems like another world, doesn't it?
About JapanDave.com
I take photos and that’s what you will find at this website. I edit together and post at least one HDR photo every single day.
What is HDR photography? It’s a relatively new technique (but based on really old ones) to try to push more visible light into a photo. What do I mean by that? I mean an HDR photo attempts to show you a more realistic picture than a normal photo can. I explain this in more detail at my About My Photography page.
Some Japanese maples and a traditional bridge in the background. These trees are the best part of autumn.
Now… one photo a day. That’s not a promise — I will be the first to admit I may miss a day here and there. I haven’t yet, but it could happen. One photo a day isn’t a promise, but rather a statement of intention. I intend to do an HDR photo a day, not just for this site, but for myself. I work a few days ahead, so I really try my hardest to hit this self-imposed deadline.
Editing these HDR photos isn’t easy. Some people just run them through a program and call the result a finished product. I don’t. That’s just the first step for me. It takes several hours to edit a good photo. I’m something of a perfectionist, so the challenge for me is actually knowing when to stop! I talk more about my workflow and process over in this tutorials article.
Very old farmhouses with thick, steep roofs to prevent snow from piling up. Wonderful place.
Creative commons and copyright
All of my photos are copyright © David LaSpina. They are not all rights reserved, however. I license all photos under the Creative Commons license. This means that you are absolutely free and legally safe to use my photos for whatever you want as long as it is not for commercial uses.
If you want to use them for commercial uses, contact me.
So I encourage you to please save my photos. I don’t use any watermarks or other overlays on them and I link to full resolution versions. Use them for your computer wallpaper, send them to friends, crop them and use them on your website. The only thing I require is you give me credit and link back to this website.
More Japanese maples! You'd think I like these or something.
So… why “JapanDave”
Well…why not? You know, the internet is a strange place. I grew up being one of the few LaSpina’s around — the only one, actually, not counting my siblings and parents. I get on the internet, though, and suddenly not only are there lots of LaSpina’s, but several David LaSpina’s.
Whoa. Weird feeling.
To top it off, one of them is a successful photographer. So to make myself unique I picked the aliases JapanDave. It describes my biggest interest and is simple so people can easily remember it. Now hopefully none of those other David LaSpina’s start calling themselves JapanDave….
Anything else?
Send me comments or questions on the contact page. Please also consider subscribing to the RSS feed and suggesting this site to your friends. Thanks for visiting!
Now, some photos for your enjoyment….
A Japanese castle poking its head out of the forest.
The sky looks like this a lot during typhoon season in Japan.
A stone lantern from a temple
