Category Archives: Travel

Mt Fuji

These pictures will never be anywhere other than my blog. However, as we rode the train from Tokyo to Toyohashi, we went along the coastline that takes you south around Mt Fuji. Possibly Japan’s most famous landmark, it really is a bit mountain. Even from the train, I was quite taken with how big it was. It was a hazy day so not the best for taking pictures and taking them from a moving train (a very fast moving train) didn’t help. Neither did the various poles and cables alongside the tracks but I still had to get a shot or two as mementos. This is it!

Tokyo Views

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I have talked about the Skytree in Tokyo so now it is time to show a little of what it looks like from up there. It was a very nice day when we visited but there was a certain amount of haze in the air. Seeing Mt Fuji was out of the question but there were still great views of the city itself. We restricted ourselves to the 350m viewing area. You can see an awful lot from that high. If this had been the only thing we were doing that day, I would have paid the extra to go as high as possible but it wasn’t a good plan to use up all of our time on one thing. Besides, when you are trying to get an experience of a city, looking down on it only tells you so much!

There are actually several levels as you walk around the 350m area. The glass is leaning out so you can get quite a view downwards. Combine this with the structure gradually getting wider lower down and you can get an interesting perspective on where you are. Tokyo is a busy city with a combination of old and new buildings to be seen. You can see the parks including the Imperial Palace grounds as well as the many rail lines crossing the city.

There is a lot of water. The big port area is easy to see as are the rivers that cut through everything. I didn’t know much about Tokyo when I got there (still don’t of course but I am slightly more aware) so this was very interesting to me. As with all high places these days, they have provided a place with a glass floor. We had to check this out. It was actually tower glass panels separated by a few feet so it felt a little more detached than some of these places but still pretty cool. After checking out the gift shop which had more Skytree themed items than would seem possible (but not the one I wanted), it was time to head off and see more of Tokyo.

Shinkansen

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One thing that Japan is famous for is their high speed rail network. The Shinkansen has been in service since the 1960s and has expanded to cover far more of the country while also becoming more popular and faster. I was heading from Tokyo to Toyohashi which meant taking a ride on the original line that runs to Osaka. This is the busiest line both from the perspective of passengers and frequency of service. The trains are very modern and comfortable running at speeds of close to 200mph. The speed is not the most interesting thing for me. Plenty of countries have fast trains these days. What is impressive is just how many of them are running.

There are fast and stopping services along the line. My first trip was on one of the stopping services. We would get to a station and stop for several minutes and would have one of two trains blast past us. Then we would be on our way again. One of my colleagues checked out the timetable and noted in one hour that 21 trains passed through Toyohashi. Our return leg was on one of the minimal stopping trains and it made the journey back in about one hour less than our outbound trip. Timing is everything it seems. The volume of trains traveling that fast was something else.

I did manage to get a few pictures of the trains while I was there. These were mainly as they pulled in to our station as we were traveling but I did get to see some of them come through at full speed. They really are motoring. They crest the hill and come into view quite a way off but that doesn’t give you much time. They are upon you in a heartbeat. I was stuck between wanted to get a picture and wanting to have an image that conveyed the speed. Unfortunately, with little time to experiment, I was pushed into making sure I got something.

I did also try to get passing shots of other trains while we were traveling. This was a crap shoot since they appear and disappear very fast. I was aiming to get a blurred nose on the view but, even at a high frame rate, this didn’t work out much. All of that said, here are a few Shinkansen shots.

I also got to see one of the original Series 0 cab cars while visiting the company we were seeing. They built it and have it as part of their collection. I was aiming to get a shot of it the day we left but the schedule got busy so that one will have to be a memory only.

Tokyo Skytree

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One of my current projects recently took me to Japan for a few days. As with many work trips, the chances to take a look around were a little limited. However, I did get a bit of spare time to play with on the day I was flying back to the US. A colleague of mine showed me a little of what Tokyo has to offer before we headed back to Narita to fly home.

We headed out to explore the Tokyo Skytree. This is a huge tower that has just been built and, while it is a popular attraction, we timed our visit well and were able to head straight in. First, a few stats about the tower itself. It opened in 2012 after a four year construction period. It has a main viewing area about 350m up. (That is about 1,100’ for those of you not working in metric.) There is a secondary viewing area at about 450m if you weren’t high enough before. The top of the tower is 634m. This thing is not small.

As an engineer, it is an interesting structure. It is a tubular framework which transitions from something close to circular near the top to something more triangular near the base. The transition is very subtle and it took a while to even see it as I looked from the ground. The elevator to the first viewing level was both fast and smooth. You were hardly aware you were moving apart from the occasional ear popping! It really is something very impressive and I shall post more about my visit there shortly.

Bryce Canyon

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Continuing the theme of looking back through photos of trips I have taken in the past and that have never made their way on to the blog, we find ourselves in Utah. Our trip to the Grand Canyon was the first leg of a journey that also included some time at Bryce Canyon. This was a location that I was really struck by. The beauty of it combined with the relative peace at the time of year we were there meant it was something very special. Walking down into the canyon was a very inspiring experience.

We spent some time there and walked along the rim of the canyon (and back again courtesy of missing the shuttle as a result of someone spending too much time taking pictures) as well as into the canyon itself. The weather was great while we were there which certainly helped to appreciate what it had to offer. These shots are a few of the many I took while there. Now I want to go back!

Grand Canyon

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My friend Jo Hunter recently blogged about her trip from Texas to Las Vegas and back. She saw and did many interesting things en route so I would suggest you check it out at Futurshox. Part of her trip took her to the Grand Canyon. Nancy and I made a trip to the North Rim of the canyon quite a few years ago. I decided to take another look at some of the pictures from that time. One point of having pictures is so that you can go back and take another look to remember what you did in days gone by.

Another thing if you are a photographer is to go back and see what you did with those pictures and whether anything you have learned since might give them a new lease on life. One thing is the different processing tools that are available. Another is your approach to using those tools. Consequently, I had a look through a few of the shots and decided to give them a go.

It is a little sad to see how many cameras I have been through since that trip. These were taken with my first DSLR at a time when it was still relevant to use the term DSLR. Nowadays, there are hardly any SLRs around that aren’t digital so perhaps we should just call them SLRs again. Anyway, I digress. Despite the lower resolution, the image quality from that old body is really not too shabby. I had full page magazine images from that camera and they looked great. It might have been a bit restricted in how far you could push it but it still worked well.

Enough blathering, here are the shots. It has got me excited about that part of the world again. I suppose a trip down there may be another thing to add to the list. Of course, the list never gets shorter. Always so many things to be done!

The Strip at Night

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A project recently took me to Las Vegas. Vegas is not one of my favorite cities. I am not a gambler so, after you have seen it once, you are pretty much done. However, aside from the Strip, there are some other interesting things in the vicinity so the trip was worthwhile. We came in from the west and overflew the airport before turning back to land. All of my main gear was in the overhead but I did have my phone to hand. No problems with using it all the way to landing now so I tried grabbing a few shots of the city as we flew overhead. See what you think of the iPhone’s night capabilities. Of course, at the size for being online, some of the issues are disguised. However, the shot below gives you a full size view so you can see how the detail holds up – and my night panning in a moving airliner. Not so good I guess!

Monterey Bay Aquarium

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My nephew was interested in a visit to the aquarium at Monterey while they were staying so he and I decided to head down there for a day. I last went over ten years ago so did not remember a great deal about it. I also didn’t know whether a lot had changed in that time anyway so not remembering was not a major problem!

First things first. This place is great. We spent plenty of time there and could probably have spent more but we were thinking about some food before heading home. The collection is very interesting and really nicely laid out. Not only does it cover the wildlife of the Monterey Bay well, it also has some very nice terraces outside so you can go and see some of the real thing while you are there.

There are two huge tanks cover deep water and the kelp beds of the bay. These can be viewed from upper and lower levels and there is so much going on, it is easy to just stand and stare for long periods of time.

There is a great jellyfish exhibit. Nancy and I saw a similar exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium a while back as I reported here but this is a permanent feature and it is well worth a visit. There are other attractions that get a lot of visitors including the octopus exhibit. While we were there, this fella was very active. He (or she, I can’t tell which) would retreat into a dark corner for a while and then suddenly make a trip across the tank covering the glass with tentacles as he went. This was amazing to watch. Why he did it so often I don’t know. Maybe they do something to prod him into action every once in a while. (It was also quite fun to hear people berating those people using flash on their cameras which seemed to be happening every couple of minutes. Signs are hard to read I guess.)

We spent some time outside watching the wildlife. We had brought binoculars but there were some healthy telescopes available to use to. Sam quickly spotted the spray from a grey whale out in the bay and there were plenty of sea lions and sea otters to see although usually a bit far out. The bird life was teeming closer in.

I will be back before too long. I suspect any other visitors will want to check it out too but I can handle repeat visits I think.

Muir Woods

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Having visitors is always a good excuse to go to places that you haven’ been to for a while. Muir Woods National Monument was one such destination. If only we had known just how many other people had the same idea, we might have aimed to get there a lot earlier in the day. As it was, we got there a bit alter in the afternoon. A short while later and it might have been a lot easier to park. Of course, late in the day in winter means fading light and being in a heavily wooded area means even less light!

Muir Woods is a great place to wander. Having a lot of other visitors means it is a little less tranquil. My previous visits have obviously been off peak and usually involved colder and damper weather. This time it was dry and warm(ish). The trees are majestic and often interestingly shaped. However, being so close to such large trees as coastal redwoods does make it hard to get the images that you have in your mind.

The light is tricky and the angles wide. Some playing with HDR and panoramas certainly helped out. Sometimes it was just fun to look straight up. The shapes there are exactly as you imagine them. The dynamic range is so large that even HDR doesn’t always cover it (at least the way I was bracketing the shots) but it still worked out okay.

Bodega Bay

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Our run down the coast brought us to Bodega Bay. Neither of us had been there before but we had heard it was pretty and also knew about its appearances in The Birds! No attacking avians on this day but we initially passed straight through the town without being terribly impressed. However, we had seen a turning off towards Bodega Bay head so a backtrack took us along a different road around the bay. We were also hungry at this point!

Fortunately, we soon came to an area where the fishing boats tied up and there were two places selling crab sandwiches. One was a small hut which only had a couple of items on the menu and the other was a bigger looking place with a wider menu but a lot less people. We figured the simple option of doing one thing and doing it well might be the case in the hut and went for their crab sandwiches. They were excellent. No wonder the place had a line outside it.

Suitably reinvigorated, we headed up to the headland. Here you had a view back to the bay but a more interesting view of the cliffs and the shoreline. A stroll up the cliff path was in order (that crab sandwich needed to be burned off) and the appeal of more crashing waves on rocks was too much for us to resist. The sun was shining and the wind was not too strong so it was a really nice place to be and, while we weren’t alone in thinking this, with so much space, it never felt like you were in a busy place. What a great end to the trip.