Video on YouTube – Japan: Heartbeats of Time

A little tweety birdy told me that smooth operator Frederick Van mentioned this video on This Week in Photography. So, I thought I would use the YouTube occasion to bump it back to the top!

If you want to know how I did this, visit the Stuck In Motion page.

So, I have a dumb question for all you video-smarties out there! I first put this video on Vimeo. By default, it has HD and seems to produce a smooth, HD signal. YouTube, on the other hand, has a more tricky HD Embed option. When I choose it, YouTube tries to force it to 1300 pixels wide, which is wider than this page. I’d be happy with 900 across. Any ideas?

Daily Photo – Traditional Japanese Woman in Tokyo

A few weeks ago I said I was working on some tips and tricks for taking photos of people. I haven’t forgotten about that promise! I’ve just been super-busy. And now I will be in Iceland for about two weeks… but it is still on my to-do list!

Japan is of course a great place to take photos of people… and, if you are like me (I suspect you are, since you are a regular), you like watching people. It’s especially nice to watch people when they look a little different and their mannerisms vary slightly from what we expect. Making that whole experience even more intense is the pure fun of trying to capture a whole person with a single photo.

Tokyo was full of all sorts of pedestrians. Most of them are modern — or, rather, neo-modern. They sport the latest fashions and are as flamboyant as any nation that is comfortable with itself. But, on occasion, you see a traditional Japanese woman gliding through the streets. These sorts of anachronisms are wonderful subjects.

You may also notice her traditional two-toed shoes.  I wore these a lot inside ryokan — the big toe goes into the first slot and the rest of your nonsense toes go into the other part.  They’re a bit like mittens… strange but quite comfy.  How she kept hers dry and clean in the wet streets remains a mystery!