Time for some new pics

It's way too long since I posted some pice. Besides some snapshots with the compact camera I didn't do much serious photographing since last September.

So for now just three pics I took last year October when I went to a concert of the Welsh and American guitar players Gareth Pearson and Craig D'Andrea. Both are on the CandyRat Records label.

 

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For some videos I made from their performance you can check my YouTube Channel. Enjoy the music!

I posted about an earlier performance of Gareth Pearson before on my music weblog. I also did a posting about CandyRat Records. You can check the URL's for the postings. The postings also include some more videos of Gareth and some other recording artists for CandyRat Records.

Happy New Year

A happy, healthy and prosperous 2012 to all my visitors!

One of my New Year's resolutions:

Post more often in 2010, 2011, 2012.

A day at the zoo

Three weeks ago I went to the zoo with my sis and youngest niece. We picked out the right day, because the weather during the rest of the week wasn't very good. But that Saturday it was perfect. Originally we planned to go a week earlier, but because of the bad weather forecast we cancelled.

I manage to take some okay shots. Not as much as I wanted, but with an eight year old you can't hang around at some place for a long time to wait for that perfect shot. They will get bored and they're right. Nothing more boring than observing an uncle walking from side to side to find the right spot and angle. We had a nice day and my niece really enjoyed it.

I planning to visit a zoo soon by myself, so I can take as much time as I please. But so far the weather has been pretty shitty. Hopefully we'll have a few nice days. I would like to do some more photography before autumn kicks in.

Anyway here are a few shots from our day at the zoo.

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Dir En Grey (ディル・アン・グレイ)

I didn't do much photography lately, unfortunately. From today I have a 12 day holiday, so hopefully I can finds some time to make a daytrip or something and take the camera with me.

Two weeks ago on Saturday August 7th we went to a concert of the Japanese band Dir En Grey (ディル・アン・グレイ). Started as a visual kei band, they are now considered as a metal band (more or less).

I manage to take some pictures with the compact camera. The quality is not that good, because of difficult light circumstances, but they will give you a bit of an impression.

For the videos I shot you can check my YouTube-channel.

Enjoy the pics.

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Black & White

I've been playing a bit with Silver Efex Pro (version 1) from Nik Software and made a Black and White version from a pic I took from my good photography friend A. The pic was taken during a photoshoot we did together in September 2009.

 

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Under construction

I'm playing around with my lay-out and template. The next few days and maybe weeks visitors might see differrent background images at the header and some other different page elements, colours etc...

Just a random picture

When I was sorting out some pictures I found this one, taken last year's summer somewhere in July at the garden of friends of us.

Technically it's not the best picture in the world, but just a simple sparrow can even look beautiful, don't you think?

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Soon the lay out of this weblog is about to change. It's going to be, more or less, like my other weblog BrownNoiseMusic, but of course with a different background.

Donation links for relief aid to victims of earthquake/tsunami Japan

This is a repost of the donation URL's from Tokyo Doll Weblog

If you wish to make a donation you can follow one of the URL's below. Thanks!

Red cross England

Red cross America

Red cross Japan

Red cross the Netherlands

International Red cross

Donate for Japan: Important links and information

Lady Gaga : Japan Earthquake Relief Wristband

New Japan pics (preview)

I'm thinking of posting some of my unreleased Japan pics from last year around a theme like people (portraits), landscape, architecture or something. don't know yet how I'm exactly going to do it, but I will give it a thought.

I noticed that my last posting already goes back to 11 November this year, so to keep visitors curious about new pics, I'll post a preview from some uncut and non-edited pics from our last year's trip to Japan that might show up at some of the theme based posting in the New Year.

Hope you like them and hope to see you visitors come back next year.

In the mean time wishing everybody all the best for the New Year and hopefully it's going to be a healthy and smashing 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Japan pics (Hiroshima)

With new pics I mean pics that haven't been published before on this weblog. The pics below were taken a year ago during our visit to Japan. They were taken at the city of Hiroshima. I've posted about Hiroshima before (check: here and here). As most people probably know Hiroshima was the first city in history on which the first atomic bomb was dropped. Besides the Peace Memorial Museum and the monuments in the Peace Memorial Park there is not much that reminds directly to that horrible event on August 6th 1945. Nowadays Hiroshima is a vibrant city with good food places and a nice nightlife.

From my 11 visits to Japan 5 or 6 times I've also visited Hiroshima. For several reasons it's one of my favorite cities in Japan. First there is this fascinating and horrifying history. And I have some friends living there, the good food (Hiroshima is famous for it's okonomiyaki) and my favorite pub in Japan can be found here. If I have the time and chance I always try to make a few day visit to the city. In and around Hiroshima are enough and good sightseeing places. And on the night time I always go to my favorite pub after dinner. The owners Mac and Yuri are very friendly and laid back. The bar has a good mix of locals and foreigners, so there is always someone to talk to. The bar is open all night and another, for me important, plus is Mac's impressive music collection and they're always glad to grant your musical requests and they seldom disappont you.

In my former postings about Hiroshima all the pics were taken during the daytime. For quite some time I wanted to take pictures of the A-bomb Dome or Genbaku Dōmu in Japanese at night. This building is the only left and tangible memory of the nuclear blast that hit Hiroshima in the morning of August 6th 1945. If you see pictures of the A-bomb Dome and it's surroundings short after the blast it's surprising how much of the building survived the blast, also if you know that the detonation was almost direct above the building.

I can't explain the strange and ambivalent attraction I experience at places like this. A very bloody and atrocious part of modern history was written here and no matter how often I visit here (and I visited here every time I went to Hiroshima) it never leaves me untouched and standing at this place always send some shivers up my spine. If you want to read about Hiroshima short before the dropping of the bomb and the effects on the city and it's survivors I can recommend the manga (comic) books about Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa based on his own experiences as a Hiroshima survivor.

Normally I would say enjoy the pics but at a place like this I guess that wouldn't be appropriate.

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Same as previous but now with special B/W settings

 

 

Working on my template

For the regular visitor things might look a bit different. That's correct! I'm transferring my old Blogger template to a new one. The lay-out is not suppose to change that much. It's basically to be able to use all kinds of new functions within the new template, which wasn't possible with the old one.

Between now and the next few days returning visitors might notice some differences. But now you know why.

It's been awhile (Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra)

Dear visitors,

A little bit longer than planned, but I'm back again. Not that I've been away. I didn't left the country. Just took some leave from blogging for an unspecified amount of time. I had enough things/subjects to blog about, it was just a matter of other things on my mind, lack of energy, focus etc...

But little by little I was getting back in the mood again to start blogging. Last weekend my wife N. and I went to two concerts by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (TSPO), last Friday and Korn, last Sunday. At TSPO I made some pictures and shot one video with my newest aquisition, a Panasonic TZ10.

For a more extended report and for the videos I would like to refer to my music weblog BrownNoiseMusic.

The pics from TSPO you can find below. Enjoy!

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