HDR imaging is a fascinating sub-branch of photography that I just became aware of. HDR means High Dynamic Range, which basically means you have a photograph with a heck of a lot of information in it, spanning a range of lights through darks impossible to capture in a regular photograph.
Here is my first HDR effort- taken from my 3rd floor balcony.
The gutted shell of the abandoned Keishin Hospital stands blank and ghostly on the rural Kanagawa sky-line. It once housed state-of-the-art radiology and cancer departments, now the only pieces of equipment remaining are the chairs bolted to the floor in the dentist’s office. Up close its walls are a vibrant cacophony of ever-changing grafitti, its forecourt a wash of shattered glass and empty spray-paint cans, its encircling car park overgrown with a thick smog of twisted brown underbrush. All record of its previous life has been erased by decades of vandalism, theft, and neglect.
The Negishi Racecourse Grandstand in Yokohama looms like an ancient 3-headed Titan over the Negishi Plateau. It once drew crowds of thousands to cheer the racing horses from its elaborate bleachers, to wander its long hallways and admire its extravagant architecture, but that was over 80 years ago, before it was surrendered to the US military after World War Two. Now its racecourse is a floodlit naval base, its bleachers are fenced off and overgrown with ivy, its innards rest silent and dark but for the steady drip of rain-water leaking through its rotting concrete skin.
Up in the mountainous north-west corner of snowy Gunma prefecture, at the foot of the once-active volcano Mt. Asama, lies a beautifully weathered abandoned volcano museum. Ruptured by avalanche scree and scoured by the harsh winter winds rushing down the valley, it stands as a lone sentinel guarding the jagged granite slopes leading up to the volcano’s cone. Its paintwork has all flaked away revealing the white bone of plaster and the black of slate-brick, its windows and railings lie in broken shards at its feet, dislodged in the earthquake tremors shot out by the great dormant volcano it rests upon.
The Kappa Pia Theme Park in Saitama prefecture was in the process of being demolished when I went to see it. The grand rusted rollercoasters, creaking tea-cup rides, teddy bear-winning sideshows and themed restaurants I’d hoped to see were all gone, leaving nothing but troughs of rumpled mud and occasionally a bare concrete platform with rust-pocked rivet marks where a ride had once been tied down. Now, any record of the park’s existence at all must be gone. I only wish I’d gone there sooner to see it in all its faded glory.
The other day I took a stroll over to Zoshigaya Cemetary, one stop down the Arakawa street-car line from where I live. I meant to only shoot photos, but soon realized that photos couldn’t do the scale of the place any justice, so I decided to take some footage as well:
Zoshigaya is the area I live in. It’s a residential area which the large city-looping Meiji Dori flanks on the western edge. To the north is Ikebukuro and to the south Takadanobaba. It has a shrine- Kishimojindo, and the very large and famous Zoshigaya Cemetary. Here are some photos:
On my block, in Zoshigaya:
On Monday I got an email from Maiko, one of my students, saying- “Can I call you with my friend tonight?” It seemed a little mysterious- but she’s a friend as well as a student, so of I course I said yes.
That night she called, we had a little chit-chat, then she handed me off to the friend. The friend turned out to be Yaco, a fluent-in-English casting agent who was urgently looking for background extras to take part in an all-night music video shoot on Wednesday with 2 mega famous J-pop starlets.
Well, I was a bit blown away, but figured I could fit it into my schedule.
Yaco told me it was a casino-scene shoot way out in Minami-Machida (South CityField) near where I used to live, from 6pm Wednesday til 4am Thursday morning. The J-pop stars would be Namie Amuro and Double. I’d need to wear a suit and tie, and would be paid.
I confirmed on the spot, she confirmed back, and I got onto Wikipedia immediately to find out who the J-pop girls were.
