The Big Buddha

On a recent trip to Kamakura, there stands what many consider to the be oldest outdoor statue of buddha in the world. Now this is a bit controversial, because I think every country boasts one of these. And until a few hundred years ago, it was an indoor statue. It would have stayed that way until some pesky typhoon came and knocked the enclosure over, leaving buddha exposed.

Anyway, this is kind of a cool place to come visit. I like this picture as I turned it into a black and white shot and blew out the white and darkened the blacks and grays. It gives it sort of a gritty feel.

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Asakusa Shrine

On one of our outings, we went to Asakusa Shrine here in Tokyo. I found myself having a hard time shooting because there were so many people and ultimately I couldn't get a good shot without people in the way. I sort of gave in and shot anyway.

I turned this shot into black and white and tried to darken the photograph a bit to lessen the prominence of the people. And as I have done a lot, I colorized the middle lantern.

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American Flag

I was on a dinner cruise on the San Francisco Bay and the weather couldn't have been more clear. A bit windy and cold, but I couldn't help but be outside. Everyone else seemed to spend more time inside, but I liked being outside to take in the views.

I was struck at how cool the waving flag was, whipping in the wind behind the boat. After taking the picture I felt like it would be a bit more interesting if I turned it into a black and white shot, darken the overall picture and then colorize the red and white parts of the flag. I think it turned out rather interesting.

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Work Shall Set You Free

This is a picture of the front gate of one of the first concentration camps set up to imprison and eventually murder political prisoners of the Nazy regime, including Jews. It in the city of Dacau, which is a suburb of Munich in the south of Germany.

It's ironic that the inscription says "work shall set you free" because rarely did that happen. This was a sobering place, especially when you consider the conditions in which they were all forced to live...and some die.

I thought this shot looked better in black and white than in color. And something about skewing the composition fit with the mood of the day. I darkened the photo up a bit to make the iron in the bars stand out a bit more.

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Salvaging a Bad Day

I moved to Tokyo, Japan in September of 2000 for a 10 month assignment with work. My previous experience with being in Tokyo was as an intern in 1998 and I lived in the middle of nowhere and had no money to explore. So I was eager to get out of the city this time around.

2 hours by train outside of Tokyo is a place called Nikko, an alpine get-away that used to be a retreate for the Shogun rulers of Japan in the 1600's. It's full of temples and is one of the neatest places in all of Japan.

Well, on my trip up to Nikko, it was raining and it was crowded and it was a miserable experience. I had wanted to visit Lake Chuzenji, pictured below, but all I could see of the lake was this bridge. I couldn't even see a huge waterfall nearby. I could only hear it and feel the mist. The fog was so thick I couldn't even see the stupid waterfall.

I like this picture becuase it's simple and it's bleak...kind of like my day. If the fog were any thicker and the bridge any longer I would half expect the bridge to just vanish like those baseball players when they walked in the corn in the movie "Field of Dreams." The other reason why I like this picture is because it was one of the first few sets of pictures I took with my first digital camera. It was a 1.3 megapixel camera from Olympus. The thing took a few seconds to capture an image and a few more seconds to recover so you could take another image. In hindsight, the image quality wasn't anywhere a film camera, but the "cool" factor was certainly high.

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Within the Temples of Angkor Wat

I never did the backpacking-through-Europe thing before I started my career. And to some extent I always regretted it. So, when I moved with my company to Japan, I used my location as a launching pad for travel to interesting parts of Asia.

This photo was taken in Cambodia seeing what I think is one of the most awesome sights in the world, Angkor Wat. This photo could have been taken anywhere in the world, but trust me on this, it was taken in Cambodia. I liked seeing the sun pouring in on this large wooden support used to prop up the heavy cut-stones that are caving in. In fact Angkor is a city full of temples that are being destroyed by nature. It's an amazing place to see giant trees whose root systems are growing and enveloping walls. It's really a sublime place.

This shot does it for me only because of the natural framing of the darkened walls in the foreground set against a nicely positioned wooden support set at a slight angle.

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