bessa r4m

One thousand black and White Tori Gates

October 6, 2015 — Leave a comment

Fushimi-inari taisha is truly is a great place to visit. I am sure anyone who goes to Kyoto in Japan has been here or read that it was in the top 3 places to visit for a tourist. Tourist groups go here with guides. the best time to go is as early as you can go. It is a shrine and their for is open all the time, you can go in the middle of the night if you want, also it is free. You can spend an entire morning hiking all the way to the top to see the entire shrine. The tori gates make a different atmosphere. It feels like it is providing me a tunnel the travel through these woods up the mountain. I have taken photographs here early in the morning with no one around and have gotten great colors. this time I was shooting with some black and white film and still enjoyed getting these results.

Taken with a Voigtlander R4M at 50mm f1.4 with Canon 50mm f1.4 lens, Ilford FP5 img030

Kaisando Hall at Tofuku-ji Temple

September 30, 2015 — Leave a comment

Kyoto has a wonderful temple complex with some amazing gardens, some old and some modern. Tofuku-ji Temple is a great stop. People come in groves to Fushimi-inari taisha with it’s 1,000 orange tori gates going up Fushimi mountain. You should stop right before or after that visit to Tofuku-ji which is only one stop away from the tori gates. This has a few buildings and great gardens as mentioned and this is Kaisando Hall where one side of the walk way has a stream and more wet garden before it slopes up to the forest. This side has a great area of gravel that is raked in a checkered pattern. It is quite great to look at and I needed a 21mm lens to take this picture and probably done better if I had the 15mm lens. We sat here for a while enjoying the serene seen.

Taken with Voigtlander Bessa R4M with 21mm f4 lens on Ilford FP5img048

Kanteibyo Temple in Yokohama Chinatown

September 27, 2015

Chinatown in Yokohama in Japan is the largest China town in the country. The largest Chinatown I was in before that was in Philadelphia. Lots of great Chinese food restaurants in Chinatown there. It was all delicious. There is a bright and colorful temple there that you can visit which is pictured here. Named Kanteibyo I decided to take this picture with Ilford FP5 and got a lot of detail out of it, but no color.

Taken with Voigtlander Bessa R4M with Ilford FP5

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Amida Buddha at Kotoku-in, Kamakura

September 18, 2015

The Amida Buddha at Kamakura is a really large bronze statue at Kotoku-in temple. It was great to see and by far the highlight at this specific temple. It has been washed away and damaged a few times over a long period of time by natural disasters. If I had seen this on my first trip to Japan like my original plane then this would have seem more amazing, but my trip 2 years ago I went to Nara to see the large on at Todai-ji which was incredible because it was housed in this massive wooden building. I sure loved the small beach town and the smell of the sea and the distant sound of waves.

Taken with Voigtlander Bessa R4M with 21mm lens using Ilford FP5

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Girlfriend and Blossoms

May 30, 2015

I am pretty certain that I took a lot of pictures of the cherry blossoms this year. They were great and the weather was nice to view them. I took my girlfriend down to the paddle boat pond that is in Byrd park. Paddle boats were still put up probably from winter. Nice cloudy day. I used my Bessa R4M with Ilford FP5 film using the 50mm.

There is my sweet girlfriend enjoying our walk.

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The blossoms are lined all the way around this pond. It is pretty nice and should walk around a lot more.

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You can always go out there and feed the ducks and geese.

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Cheers