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GeoffreyGriggsPhotography

An American photographer in Japan.

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From Sakura to Red Trains 桜から赤い電車

When I decided to start doing portrait photography seriously a couple years back, I didn't have a clear idea of what portrait photography was, so I went on-line to read tutorials and watch videos about posing, lighting, editing techniques, and the best lenses to use. There was an overload of information with titles like, Five Important Camera Settings for Portrait Photos, 10 Portrait Styles with One Light, and 15 Portrait Photography Techniques that All Pros Use. I have since learned to avoid articles that include lists in their titles, but at the time, I avidly took down notes on poses, camera settings, and various do's and don'ts. I looked for models on Instagram who live in the Nagoya Area, and offered to do sessions TFP (time for print) to get experience and build up my website. After about a year of practicing, with several different models, I discovered Nina on Instagram last Spring. Nina is a half Japanese/half Filippino mother of two boys with big, alluring eyes and a dramatic look. We decided to meet at Heiwa Park for a shoot with the cherry blossoms. By that time, I had gotten used to working with various lighting scenarios. We met in the afternoon, when the sun was still bright, so I used backlighting and looked for open shade. Nina is a natural in front of the camera who doesn't require posing instruction, and I think her charm came through in the photos.

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Since that spring shoot, I have had the opportunity to do three more photo shoots with Nina, and as noted in my last blog post about photographing Mitsuki and her family over time, it has given me a chance to see if and how my style has evolved. Technically, I think I'm not doing much different. I still like to shoot with natural light (as carrying around lighting equipment is a hassle) and I like to use a wide aperture (to add background blur.) I have made minor tweaks to my editing style, but nothing too dramatic. So, perhaps the biggest change is that I put more effort into choosing locations now. My goal is no longer to simply show the subject in an attractive light, but to create a scene around them, like a frame taken from a movie. I want the viewer to imagine a scenario, and to wonder what happens next. So, for my most recent portrait session with Nina, I knew ahead of time where I wanted to shoot. I've always had a thing about trains and train platforms, and wanted to create a scenario where a woman is standing on a platform with a train waiting behind her, preferably red. I'd seen this cool, older model red train in circulation around the Nagoya area, so I looked for it on-line and discovered it was the Meitetsu 6000. Then, I looked up train lines where 6000 series trains are in service. There were some train lines where the 6000 series trains came occasionally, but trying to figure out the train schedules in Japanese, and then working a photo shoot around those times was too daunting, so I was happy to find a station where ALL the trains were of the 6000 series type. It was the Mikawa Line that runs through Toyota City, starting at Sanage Station. So, that's where we went.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitetsu_Mikawa_Line

We started at Umetsubo Station, as there is a big parking area near the station. The trains on the Mikawa line leave roughly every 15 minutes, so while waiting for the next departure, we started off with some shots on the platform, with the red trains in the background.

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Then, we got on the train and rode it three stops to Sanage Station. I was surprised to discover that, on the inside, the 6000 trains looked pretty much like any other trains, and didn't have the old, classy look I was expecting. So, I tried for angles that made it clear that we were on a train, without focusing on the train itself.


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For a variation, I experimented with including the standing passenger handles in the photo in different ways.

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As Sanage is the terminal station, the trains stop, the passengers get off, and then they head back in the opposite direction after a ten minute wait. This gave us time to try some scenarios, like getting on and off the train.

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We also tried taking photos through windows and incorporating reflections.

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We ended up making the fourteen minute roundtrip between Sanage and Umetsubo Station twice, and on our last ride back to Umetsubo, I had Nina sit facing out the window to catch the soft, flattering light from the overcast day.

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Nina was wearing interesting rings, including "N" for Nina, so I took a few photos of her hands.

 

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Back at Umetsubo Station, I took some tighter headshots, walking around Nina with my camera to take in different backgrounds. Because it was an overcast day, the ambient light was soft and unidirectional, which made lighting really easy.

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Just as we were packing up to go, I saw the next train approaching and decided to try using a slow shutter, with Nina holding still so the train would look like a blur in the background, but she would remain sharp. I didn't have time to dial in my settings, and my shutter was a bit too slow, so four out of the five shots I managed to fire off were blurry, but this one photo made it worth the effort.

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Portrait shoots come in many shapes and sizes, from studio portraits using multiple light sources and a neutral backdrop to "natural light" portraits on the beach. The importance of location depends on the purpose of the shoot. For business and professional shoots, the background is largely irrelevant. The focus is the subject, and showing them in an attractive light, ideally with a “real” expression. For this sort of portrait, I don't feel like I have anything unique to bring to the table. I don't have the best equipment, I'm not a lighting expert, and I know nothing about makeup and styling. So, little by little I have gravitated towards portrait sessions that make use of a location. I want to capture real expressions in my subjects, but also to add something of my own vision to the process. I'm not sure whether these sorts of portraits have much real-world application, but hopefully they say something to the viewer, and make them want to see the rest of the movie.

To see more of Nina’s photos, check out her Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/21117mama/

tags: portrait photography, travel photography, geoffreygriggsphotography, mikawa line, nagoya..photographer, meitetsu6000, 三河線, 名鉄6000, ポートレート撮影, 猿投駅
categories: portrait photography, Japan Life
Thursday 02.14.19
Posted by Geoffrey Griggs
 

Heiwa Koen (Again and Again)

I follow about 600 people on Instagram now, the majority of whom are photographers. I do this to make connections, get content and location ideas, and to spur myself to keep striving for improvement. Sometimes, though, it feels masochistic. I see photos taken in exotic locations that get hundreds of likes (I average 50 or 60) and think, a tad bitterly perhaps, "I could take a great photo too, if I were in that location at that time of day." For example, someone might post a portrait of a woman in a red dress sitting on rocks at the beach at sunset, or a hiker topping a mountain summit at daybreak, or dancers at a Tokyo club in the middle of the night. Of course, time and location alone don't guarantee a good photo, but they can definitely provide a good start. I suppose I could rearrange my lifestyle, change my sleeping hours, and spend less time with my family at home in order to do more shoots in exotic locations, but I am a creature of habit, and I like my routines, so instead, I mostly just shoot what's around me, including whatever I can find in the park next to the school I teach at, Heiwa Koen. If I leave my house at 5:20 in the morning, instead of 5:50, I can get in 30 minutes before school, which is about as efficient as shoots go. One advantage to spending a lot of time in the SAME location is you get to know the location. You know where to go at what time to get certain shots, so you can check the weather and plan accordingly. There is one area in the park with flower beds that contain blooming flowers, no matter the season, whether tulips in early spring, or sunflowers in the summer. I don't know who plants them, but I often stop by there on my bike to see what is in bloom. Usually, I use my 35mm for its close-focusing ability. These tiny flowers, which look like little suns to me, are about the size of M&Ms.

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Heiwa Koen is also home to many crows, and if I know it's going to be a cloudy day, I'll often grab my 70-200 telephoto lens instead of my 35 to catch their antics. There's something about crows on a cloudy day that speaks to me, and again, having spent a lot of time in the park, I usually know where to find them.

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The Jizo statues scattered throughout the park are another favorite subject. They are guardians of travelers and people with ailments, and every one has a distinct face. There are thousands of them throughout the park, and if I go searching, I can find new ones every visit. Even as they become covered in lichens and moss over time, their peaceful unchanging expressions are a comfort to me.

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Since getting my 35mm lens with close-focusing abilities last year, I've felt my photographic focus shift. I pay more attention now to the world of the very small. I've realized that changing the scale you use to view the world is another form of travel, and one that doesn't involve trains and massive expenditures of time and money. This ladybug was in a small, unremarkable field with a few scattered wildflowers in the park. Previously, the field would never have caught my attention. At first glance, there's nothing there. But if you sit down, get close to the ground, look around and wait... you start to notice that the field is actually full of bugs, ants, tiny flowers, and little dramas playing out all around you.

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Of course, Heiwa Park also attracts humans. I tend to be a bit shy about taking candid shots of people, but these fisherman didn't seem concerned with my presence, so I indulged myself. By chance, I'd brought my telephoto lens that day (probably intending to shoot crows) so I was able to sit at a distance and wait for something to happen. It didn't take too long for one guy to hook a funa, which my dictionary says is a type of carp, though they are not colorful like their famous koi cousins.

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None of these photos are particularly dramatic, nor likely to garner the type of response on Instagram that photos taken in more dramatic locations do. But, hopefully my "local" perspective will appeal to some viewers, and I can reveal aspects of the park that a one time visitor would likely miss. I'll probably continue to feel the occasional twang of envy as I view dramatic images in my Instagram feed, but I realize that it's also possible people will look at these photos and envy my time spent in this comfortable and familiar little neighborhood park.

tags: photoblog, nagoya, nagoya_photographer, Heiwa_Park, geoffreygriggsphotography, macro, crows, jizo, 名古屋, フォトブログ, 名古屋カメラマン, 平和公園
categories: Japan Life
Tuesday 07.10.18
Posted by Geoffrey Griggs
Comments: 4
 

Lightning Storm in Nagakute 長久手市での稲妻

Last Friday, after hours spent editing photos from a portrait session with two dance instructors, I was in bed by about 9:30, ready to catch up on some sleep, when I heard the far-off sound of thunder. The soft, distant rumbling was soothing at first, a sound of summer, like cicadas and the pop of fireworks. But, gradually the thunder grew louder and more frequent, and I noticed the room starting to light up, even with the curtains closed. I considered closing the sliding glass door and turning on the AC to cut out the sound, but something told me this was going to be a big storm, and the shutterbug in me started to get excited. So instead, I got up and started getting my camera gear ready. By the time I had my camera and tripod set up in the stairwell of our condo, the strikes in the distance were coming pretty regularly.  I used the intervalometer on my 7D so that I could take continuous 6 second shots, with a one second gap between them. Generally, when trying to photograph lightning in Japan, I might capture one strike for every 20 or 30 dark frames, IF I happened to have my camera facing in the right direction. Even with my wide lens (24mm), I can only observe a smallish cut of sky at a given time, and trying to guess where the next strike will come is a challenge, but on this day there were so many strikes coming that my hit rate (as well as my miss rate) was much higher. At first the strikes were fairly far off, and mostly hidden behind the clouds.

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But, as they continued to get closer and more frequent, I realized this was a rare sort of storm, and decided to get my other camera going as well, so I could cover more of the sky. My 6D doesn't have an intervalometer, so I set it to 8 seconds, pushing the shutter manually every time an exposure finished. When processing, I tried both color and black and white, and liked both. I liked the cool of the sky against the warm lights of the city in the color photos, but I thought the black and white had more drama and emphasized the lightning bolts better.

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Finally, the locus of the strikes passed right over us. I dropped the exposure settings on both cameras by another stop to compensate for the increased intensity of the light from the bolts, but even with that the strikes were so bright that I had to underexpose even more in post production. Our whole building shook as the bolts dropped around us. This was by far the best session I've had shooting lightning, and despite getting so many shots, there were many more that I missed. Still, it was a very satisfying night, and I ended up being so excited that I didn't get to bed until after midnight. So much for catching up on sleep.

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tags: lightning, geoffreygriggsphotography.com, geoffreygriggsphotography, extreme_weather, thunderstorm, japan, 稲妻, 雷, 日本天気, 嵐, lightning_strike, lightningbolt, nagoya, 名古屋
categories: Japan Life
Tuesday 08.22.17
Posted by Geoffrey Griggs
 

The Jizo of Heiwa Koen 平和公園の地蔵

If you spend any time in Japan, it doesn't take long to notice the little stone statues tucked away here and there in the woods, and at shrines and in cemeteries. These are Jizo, statues of Buddhist divinity. They are benevolent deities who can be guardians for travelers, guides for lost souls, or protectors of children. I love their calm, quiet presence, and am always happy to find them.

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Heiwa Park, with its massive cemetery, has many Jizo scattered among the gravestones. There must be thousands throughout the park, enough that I find new ones every time I visit. Often, the Jizo are adorned with hats and bibs (usually red). They are adorned in memory of children who have passed at too young an age, or in thanks for children who have been saved. The hats and bibs protect the Jizo from the elements, and also serve as a way for parents to mourn the passing of their loved ones.

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There are other sections of the cemetery that are less visited, and the Jizo in these areas, having been less attended to, often take on a more organic look.

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I love how the moss and lichen add color to their faces, and help them to blend into their natural environment.

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Looking at their benevolent faces, their expressions impervious to the ravages of weather and time, always makes me happy.

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Update: I went again to Heiwa Koen and discovered more Jizo.

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tags: Jizo, 地蔵, Heiwa_Park, 平和公園, geoffreygriggsphotography.com, geoffreygriggsphotography, photoblog, nagoya, 名古屋
categories: Japan Life
Saturday 07.01.17
Posted by Geoffrey Griggs
 
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