About My Photography

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Very Briefly, about me

I love taking photos. I always have, but I never really took it seriously until I came to Japan. Nor did I even pay attention to and notice how much I did enjoy it. Once here in Japan, my interest in photography kept growing and growing and growing until I had to buy a dSLR and a few lenses. Maybe it is the newness of my surrounds, maybe something else. There is a nice mix of the old and the new here. You might be walking in the middle of high-tech, futuristic Tokyo and suddenly stumble upon a 300 year old temple. Whatever it is, it awoke my interest in photography.

A few shots and then more about photography below.

Ghost lady at a shrine @Shirakawa Village

Rough weather at a temple @Okazaki City

Licensing, Business, and other Deals

I freely share my photos with everyone. I use the Creative Commons license, so people are free to use this stuff on their own, as long as it is not for commercial purposes. Copy and download any photo you like and use it as your desktop, crop it and use it for a banner on your website, e-mail it to a friend, whatever. All I require in return is that you 1) give me credit, and 2) link here to JapanDave.com or to my flickr page.

If you do have commercial uses in mind and want to talk license rights to use a photo in that way, email me here.

I think I disturbed his sleep

Sunset over Okazaki

About HDR

Most of the photos I post here are HDR. I sometimes throw up some unprocessed shots and also some iPhone shots, but my hdr photos are the most popular so I usually stick with that.

So what is HDR? Tough question because it’s so big. To make it as simple as possible, HDR is a process by which we adjust the light levels in a photograph so that both the darkest areas and the lightest areas are visible. This is something that isn’t possible with normal photography, at least not yet. Our eyes can take in an incredibly range of light. You go outside and you can easily see everything, from the dark area under the tree to the very bright area the sun is shining on. Take a photo of this and one of these two extremes will be lost: either the area under the tree will come out completely black, or the bright area will come out completely white. Cameras simply can’t capture the same range our eyes can. HDR can.

Normally this is done by combining multiple exposures. Take one photo that exposes for the dark areas, take one exposing for the light areas, and combine them. It is possible with only one exposure, but much trickier. There is more to it than this, but you get the basic idea.

An HDR photo may look a little strange at first. This is because we aren’t used to seeing photos that capture all the light instead of just some of it. We grow up only seeing a certain limited level of light in photos, so our brains start believing that is normal. I think this is similar to how baby boomers dream in black and white because they grew up watching black and white TV and so in many ways their brains are trained to see the world in monochrome (according to this study). Personally I believe HDR photography is much closer to what we actually see with our eyes. I think you’ll agree.

Weary Travelers along the Tokaido Highway

Travelers on the ancient Tokaido Road

Dragon guarding the shrine water supply

Equipment

One thing every pro photographer I’ve talked to has told me is that the camera doesn’t matter. There are famous photos taken on holgas and other similar cheap plastic cameras. I’ve read and seen enough to believe this. Having said that, I know the internet is obsessed with this kind of thing, so here’s what I use.

My camera is a Canon Kiss X2. Europeans call this model the EOS 450d and Americans call is the Rebel XSi. I don’t know why the different names — it would sure make things simpler if they used the same one. This camera definitely has its flaws, but overall it’s pretty solid.

I use two lenses: The EF-S IS 18-55mm and the EF-S IS 55-250mm. The 55-250 is a much better lens, but I prefer shooting wide, so I use the 18-55 most of the time. There is a lot of distortion at either end of this lens, and it’s not very fast, but it gets the job done. The next lens I buy will probably be the EF 50mm f/1.8 II. This one is relatively cheap and is generally regarded as an excellent lens for the price. Also, I need some fast glass.