The Shoeless

Just wanted to post a new picture I’ve been working on recently.

Portrait Composite

So, yesterday was the rumored announcement day for the Nikon D800. I was all excited, I was working at squaring away the money needed to purchase this camera and finally make the switch to a full-frame camera. Something that I have been looking forward to for quite sometime. Which leads to my slight disappointment when it wasn’t announced rumored because of the floods in Thailand. With that said, I would like to say how much that sucks for Thailand and I feel for them. I wish them a speedy recovery from this disaster. It has been a little weird with the recent natural disasters. They seem to be a little more plentiful lately or maybe I’m just closer to them so it feels like there is more of them. I don’t really know.

With all that said, I need to figure out what I’m going to do.  I’m really itching to buy a full-frame camera and I kind of want to wait to see really what the D800 has to offer, so we’ll see. Apart from that maybe a new lens is in my near future, maybe that 24mm f/1.4 is in my future. I wonder if that will be a good purchase though. Part of me says YES, it’s a 1.4 who wouldn’t like that, plus on my D300 it’ll be a 36 which would be nice and when I get my full frame it’ll be 24 which that will be nice as well.But then part of me wonders if I should get a zoom lens that will be more versatile in my travels. But I have a 50 and a 85. after the 24 the purchase will probably be a 70-200… can’t wait for that one Hm….we’ll see.

I wanted to add this as I said this in my last post. I called my area the inaka. Inaka is Japanese for country side. I thought what better way to describe the inaka then this picture that I saw early in the morning around 6:30

I say this in more ways than just one. I haven’t touched this blog since I was in Japan last April. My bads. But I say I’m back because well I’m back in Japan, and this is something that I need to follow through with. So hopefully should be getting a way to upload pictures from my phone, which should keep this a little more active as my phone has become my true lifeline out of the inaka. We’ll see what’s next!

So I just started classes yesterday, Monday 12, not too bad. Japanese is pretty fun. However I’m not here to talk about classes, I’m here to talk about what I see.

Last week I went hiking for 3 hours, it was suppose to be a 1 hour hike..oh well. That’s what happens when you don’t read directions right.

We started getting lost in this neighborhood where someone redirected us to go through this graveyard…

Japanese graveyard

After then, this nice grounds keeper got us back on the right track… at least what we thought was our right track. We started trekking up this trail alongside a road.

Walking up the side of a mountain

Now we never did reach our actual destination, which was a wild onsen next to a river. We did find a wild onsen though that was smaller but enjoyable just the same.

Esther and Victoria sticking their feet in the onsen

Apart from that we had a nice view from where we were sitting…

View from the onsen

I still plan on going back to find the bigger nicer onsen though!

So, I’m in Japan and well it’s awesome. I love Japan, this is the view out of my dorm room window

View from my room!

I’ve been here for just about a week now, and I’ve already been to a karaoke bar which was hilarious, draining, and awesome all at the same time. I’ve gone and seen the Jigoku onsen, which are the hell hot springs that are so hot that if you were step in them you would die. I also went to an actual onsen that you get in and just soak in for about half an hour.

海地獄ー Sea Hell: 1 of the Hell onsen in Jigoku

and Because I realized instead of making these long I should make the short and more frequent I’ll will end this post with a few from the plane!

View over Russia

So, a friend of mine, Jonathan, recommended that I started doing Photoshop a week for next little bit. Basically until I leave for Japan. decision…..why not?!

So every Friday for the next 12 weeks or so I’ll be having photoshop week where I’ll work on a photoshop piece during the week and show off the creation at the end of the week.  Some weeks might be kind of pathetic or week and other weeks might be amazing (I hope). But none the less I’m going to do it!

How I think I’m going to do this is I’ll show three pictures, original/Base Photo, a middle photo, and a final picture.

From my last post I showed a portrait I took of Christian, well from the same shoot I created this week’s creation!

Original photo of Christian

About mid way but close to the end

Final version of Christian and fairy

So this was week 1 kind of a last minute decision but let the photoshopping begin!

So this is going to be a 2 part post but I figured I would at least break-up a little bit.

If anyone knows me they know that I take a lot of portraits. They are actually my main form of photography. Now the other day I was reading about how boring and popular portraiture. From doing different kinds of web surfing I noticed that he was completely right, everyone’s portraits look the exact same.  It made me kind of said but it got me thinking on ways that I can get better. If you would like to read the article please take the 5 mins out of your day to… The Portaitist

On that note though, I took some portraits recently that I feel the need to show. No they aren’t amazing but they are getting better… I have room to grow and I know this so I am excited.

So my middle sister recently got married, a week ago, and for her wedding she had me take bridal portraits of her in her wedding dress. I took her to N.C. State’s Arboretum and the rose garden at Raleigh Little Theater. I haven’t been able to show any of these portraits because of the possibility of the groom seeing them.  I printed a nice 16″x20″ for her/the wedding which is where it was shown for the first time.

My sister in her dress at the rose garden

Smelling roses before they died for the winter.

As I have talked about in previous post, I have started (not yet finished) a 7 deadly sins theme. To take a new picture for one of the sins, I did a shoot with one of my friends. Once we finished, we just kind of fooled around taking a variety of different shots. The followed shot is a product of us just messing around.

Kathleen being light by a stray incandescent light

The following meet I met up with a new friend to just kind of mess around and shoot. I was still getting use to my new 35mm f/1.8 lens so I used it to pull off different feels. While I was in Washington D.C. in the portrait gallery at the Smithsonian, I saw a variety of head shots with this low depth of field, grungy feel. I kind of liked it so this one of Christian kind of mimics that sort of photography.

Christian studio shot

With Christmas in between now and my post, I took some pictures of my family.  I took some fun ones of my sister on Christmas eve.

Cheryl having fun on Christmas eve

For Christmas I got a set of pocket wizards and my friend from Maine came down to NC and I got a chance to visit with her. We went over to Duke Gardens and I got a chance to try out my new toy. After some frustration (from wind and the pocket wizards) I got everything set up. While I on one of the bridges I got to take the following photo.

Nyssa at Duke Gardens

I feel like my portraits aren’t great but I’ll soon get to where I want to be. Look for my next post on sporting and other events I’ve shot in the past 2 months.

I bought a new lens last Friday.  I really wasn’t sure about. but I eventually gave in.

I got the Nikon 35mm f/1.8 DX lens.

Courtesy of Nikon USA

Beautiful lens, quiet, small.  The only thing that still bothers me is the fact that it’s a DX lens, I would of much rathered gotten a non-DX lens mainly because I know that I will get a Full Frame camera within the next 3 years, and I would prefer to have all my gear be compatible. However, in thinking this, I Love my 28mm f/2.8 but it just hasn’t been as sharp as I would of liked and the larger depth of field was bothering me.  You might think well it’s a f/2.8 that’s still pretty low. Well, my 2 other lenses are 1.8 and I shot with a 28mm f/1.8 (on my friend’s 5D) and I couldn’t get over how the depth of field works.

All this being said. I keep it on my camera now as my default lens. It does beautiful work and I’m glad that I spent $200. That is right it’s only $200 and it’s well worth it!

Just tonight I was walking to go do some work in the library, when I ran into this kid sitting on a stone playing a guitar under a light post.

Rudy playing guitar outside his building.

So The first few pictures you’ll think my theme is silhouettes but it’s not. I just have been trying to get better and show more emotion attached to them. They are fun though.

The first one is kind of special to me, because I got to go shoot the U2 360 Tour for N.C. State’s paper, The Technician. So that was pretty awesome!!

Bono on a Bridge

I went with one of my friends to get her tattoo, so naturally I took pictures. The point is I was able to borrow my friends 5D. Shooting on full frame open to my eyes to a new side of digital photography, that I have been naive for so long.

Marisa getting her tattoo with her twin sister sitting close to her.

To view more images from that please click on the image or go here: http://kutsuphoto.com/tattoophotos/

To get back into my idea of silhouettes, the newt image is one of my friend Marisa under a beautiful afternoon sky.

The next to be grouped with the silhouettes is my friend smoking from a hookah followed by a nice long exposure of the hookah.

Brent smoking hookah

Long exposure of the hookah

Every year, N.C. State has an event to raise money for Habitat for Humanity, known as Shack-a-thon. Groups of people build small shacks to live in for the week while raising money each day. Students have to also sleep in the shack as well.

Girl studying in her shack at night.

After having a model show up, I got one of my friends, Ryann, to come the Rose Garden at Raleigh Little Theater to take portraits of her. Chris and took turns managing the flash and taking pictures, while Brent used the reflector.

Ryann in the pond.

Brent with the reflector and Chris with the flash.

So a few of my friends discovered some face paint that was left over at my place. They started painting their faces. One of them took on marks that you would think she would belong in an Amazon tribe.

Marisa with her face painted.

We had an article about a pie baking contest at the State fair, due to judging rules we couldn’t get a picture of the pie.  So, a fellow photographer got a pie to photograph for the story with the previous friend, Marisa, to pose with it.  We later consumed that sweet sweet pumpkin pie.

Marisa looking classy with the pie.

Ryann eating the pie.

Just for fun times, Ryann decided she was going to use her hands to make decorations on a freshly baked cake.  To me this was the best plan that could possible happen.

Ryann with frosting.

Bought a new lens this past weekend, look for a post soon on that.