Star Caster

Star Caster, a photo by Shenanigans in Japan on Flickr.

I was just over on Ishigaki Island between Okinawa main island and Taiwan for 4 days shooting weddings at the ANA resort. I didn't get much time to explore the island but some friends took me out at night to see the stars from a lookout on the north part of the island. It was an amazing clear night with more stars than I've ever seen before.
Played around with a little light painting from the flash on my iPhone and my work camera the Nikon D3 was set to 30 second exposure at iso 1600.
The image was finished in Lightroom with some clarity increase and white balance brushing on my self as I was overly bright and blue from the iPhones strong light.

I'll post some more photos from the island and the chapel where I was shooting afterwards.

Teaching Rappelling on Torii Station

I will be instructing rappelling classes at Torii Station gym starting next month. It's great to get back on a wall again after a few years away from any climbing and rappelling activity. Info for the classes will be posted shortly on the Torii MWR webpage.

Here's a few photos from a quick play with some of the near gear and some willing participants from Torii gym staff who hadn't done any rappelling for a long time.

Big thanks to Joseph for the photography and all the help getting this together!  Come check out more of Joseph's great photography on his site http://www.josephkumzak.com/ 

The best camera

They say the best camera is the one that's with you. A lot of the time that's probably just the one in your phone as it was here on my way home from work.

It's the rainy season here on Okinawa right now but the last few days have been magic! This shot of my Kawasaki Ninja was taken using HDRpro for my new iPhone 4s which I just upgraded to.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Behind the scenes on a fun fight shoot

Love this kind of stuff!

New Lowepro bag and other gear

Recently picked up some new photography related gear to play with when not shooting weddings. First off I got myself a new Lowepro camera backpack. The Flipside 300 is a nice and compact pack for day outings with just one body and up to say 2 or 3 lenses. The cool thing about this pack is that it can not be opened from the outer side of the pack so there's no need to worry about thieves getting into it while in crowded areas. Another cool point is the fact that you can have the bag open so that you can get to lenses etc.. hands free while still wearing it!

That simply works by using the belt strap and sliding the pack around to your front and it sits nicely in balance even with heaver lenses like a 70-200 f2.8 making it great for lens changing in wet conditions like I had this day, or just any unstable ground where you couldn't put a bag down.

It has extra pockets and pouches for spare batteries, cables etc.. and a handy little flip out tripod pouch that tucks into the bottom of the bag.

The bag is very comfortable to wear and if you tighten down the straps you can even run with it as it doesn't shift around like bigger packs would. It also holds up very good in the rain as I found out riding home in a heavy downpour. I was drenched but not a spot of water inside the bag.

A couple of other bits I got also were the Westcott Apollo Orb softbox along with a Manfrotto light stands, umbrella mounts and some new cold shoe mounts to try as I'm tired of using really cheap ones only to have  flashes fall out of them and crash to the ground. 

Finally some "good" brand stand flash mounting gear.

Until I got these I was mostly just using cheap lighting gear from China as it is super cheap and gets the job done for the most part. But the cheap gear can get super annoying while on a shoot and your trying to concentrate on shooting but at the same time worrying about if my $600 flash is going to fall over any second.

The Orb set up for for a test run.

The Orb is very quick and easy to set up thanks to it's umbrella style folding method. It also does not need any kind of speed ring like most others need to mount the flash. The Orb just attaches through the regular hole in the umbrella mount.

The only downsides I see so far are that you can't adjust the angle of the Orb up or down too much as the light stand goes through the bottom of the box. But if you want to get some serious angles it's light enough for an assistant to hold it out using the stand as a boom no problem. Working alone with it would be tricky outdoors in windy conditions. Even with a weight attached to the stand I think this would be falling over pretty quickly.




Here's a little preview from a recent couples shoot I did in American Village. My good assistant David Orr was holding the Orb high to the right for this shot. Very pleased with the soft light it puts out and the nice round natural looking catch lights it produces.
(More on this couples shoot in a coming blog post)

The Frio flash mount.

I had never heard of these until a fellow photographer here on the island was using one on a shoot we did together. They seemed like such a great but simple idea. The big problem with some other flash mounts is that if you don't tighten them down onto your flash trigger or strobe well enough they can easily allow your flash to slide out during shooting when getting moved about. With the Frio though once you slide your flash trigger into the slot it locks into place and can not come out unless your squeeze the release plate blocking the trigger. I found this works quite well although longer triggers like these Yongnuo's below must be mounted with the long section pointing away from the release plate to avoid covering it. It would be pretty annoying I bet trying to get it off again if you accidentally put it on the wrong way.

I wouldn't have minded at all shedding out the $14US for this little piece of plastic if it solved my flash mounting problems, which it almost does except part of the cold shoe mount that already broke off during a beach shoot I was doing on Miyako island. The Nikon SB800 that was mounted to it went crashing to the concrete path and batteries went flying all over. I thought it was the other cheap triggers I was using at the time but on closer inspection found the Frio had snapped under the pressure of the flash head. Luckily the SB unit still worked fine once it put all the batteries back in and reattached the battery cover panel. 

It still works pretty fine but I'm not too confident to use it now. Well back to the metal screw types for now I guess. 

Jet`s grade 1 first day & playin at the beach

Jet started his first grade today at Yomitan elementry school so we went to the beach afterwards hoping to get some shots of him still in his little suit. The weather was nice and sunny so he wasn't too keen to wear it but here's one of him doing a little first day victory dance by himself lol

When the sun comes out it really brings out the beautiful colours in the ocean here at our local beach. Also used a polarizer filter to help cut down on the reflections and saturate the colours. 

And some more..

 Jenna being cute as always in her dress from Nanna.
Lit using a silver reflector as is the next shot of Chibi Mama doing her thing. 

Our beautiful backyard Morima beach, just a couple of minutes walk from home. 

Working on my levitating powers. Tried a bunch of times to get into some weird positions slamming pretty hard into the ground on most attempts. Here's a couple that came out pretty funny I think. 

Trying to get a better view

All images shot on Canon 5DmkII and 7D, last two of me being silly are lit with the Canon 580exII and triggered with Yongnuo radio triggers. 

Sparks Fly

During a recent camping trip on a beach a couple of hours drive north of here we decided to try out shooting some long exposures with steel wool on fire. I used to do this years ago as a kid but had never thought about capturing images of it.

A shot of the set up used to make the sparks.

I tried a few shots in the late afternoon with the 9 stop ND filter when there was still a lot of light, but the sparks did not show up on the image as I was stopped down to f16 as well as using the ND filter. But once the twilight came it was pretty easy to get a good exposure. Here's a couple of my first attempts. 

Its a little tricky to get the steel wool to burn in windy conditions but there's a cool tip for that in the video below. It's also pretty dangerous obviously as there's hot sparks flying around all around you, not to mention anyone within a 15 meter or so radius. The sparks burn straight though tarps and tents really well also! 

Here's a good tutorial video on shooting these kinds of shots. 

Here are a couple of other shots from the beach while waiting for the light to fade.

Happy Shisa

Happy Shisa, a photo by Shenanigans in Japan on Flickr.

Hey everyone! Its getting busy now as the weather starts to warm up a bit here in Okinawa. Went camping a couple of times recently and will be traveling to neighboring islands Ishigaki and Miyako island this month and next to shoot weddings. Always happy to try shooting in new locations.

I found this cute roof of a bar up at Manza near a couple of our wedding chapels based at the ANA resort. These little characters are called Shisa. They are the guardians of Okinawa.

Mr Goat in Chinese photography magazine

Mr Goat in Chinese photography magazine, a photo by Shenanigans in Japan on Flickr.

Some Chinese photography magazine wanted to use one of my goat shots in their magazine to demonstrate the use of fisheye with animals I guess, can't read it except for the part that says Pete Leong yuk... lol.

I shot this image a few years ago back up in Fukushima with the original Canon 5D mkI and Sigma EX 15mm fisheye. Below is my fav shot from that day of Mr Goat.


We've been spotted by a giant goat!!

Our new wedding photographer select site

In the past our couples wanted the ability to select a photographer of their liking for their special day but unfortunately were not able to. It was pretty much a random chance that you would get a photographer you could bond with and that shot the kind of style you were looking for. Well that's all been fixed now and Watabe Wedding is proud to present the Miyabi photographer select webpage.

Couples can now browse through our photographers sample image galleries and find a photographer with a style that suits their needs. Right now the photographers listed on the page are available to shoot weddings and location shoots on Okinawa. But starting shortly couples wishing to have a destination wedding and or location shoot in a different country can also request us to travel along with them to other parts of the world to capture their special memories in a particular style that suits them.

The web page is still a work in progress but come drop by and check out what myself and other photographers at Watabe Wedding Okinawa have to offer by clicking on the image below.