I finally managed to get out shooting again, this time at the Toronto Zoo.  Although not my most successful trip there, I did come back with some keepers.  This is one of them.

The original colour version

These are moon jellyfish, lazily swimming/floating in their tank at the Toronto Zoo’s Australian Great Barrier Reef exhibit.  I really love the black background and translucent nature of these fish.  There is so much texture in the fish, yet with subtle tones.

I had a tough time deciding on the monochrome black & white version, or the original colour version.  You can let me know if you agree or not in the comments below.

It’s hard to believe that jellyfish can be so beautiful, yet potentially so deadly (I don’t think moon jellyfish are terribly dangerous, but there are other jellyfish that are much smaller and much more lethal).  The box jellyfish is feared in Australia as it is one of the most painful and deadly jellyfish on the planet.  After being stung, severe agonising pain will ensue, which can be followed by cardiac arrest leading to death.  But they sure are pretty to look at!

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Another abstract shot of some abstract art.  This is the same piece of sculpture from the last post, but looking up this time.  The sculpture is located at the historic Distillery district, where they used to make whiskey.  It’s now a nice venue for artists, events and various boutique shops.  It’s a great place to wander on the weekends, or  just to grab a coffee and sit on the brick-paved roads and take in some culture.

This wire mesh is part of a large sculpture on display at the Distillery District in Toronto.  The sculpture is made of various forms of industrial materials and sort of resembles some distilling equipment you might see in a laboratory, with spirals and cones.  I’m guessing it symbolizes the district’s historic past of being an industrial factory that produced whisky.  At any rate, it is an interesting sculpture.

I have a thing for abstract, yet symmetrical images.  The parallel lines of the mesh play with the shallow depth of field which sort of leads the eye in opposite direction.

Fall colours at the lower gardens of Hase temple in Kamakura, Japan.  The Japanese really have beautiful gardens, and they come to life during the fall/winter seasons when the leaves turn spectacular colours.

The Tsukiji fish market is one of the busiest and chaotic places I’ve ever been.  Not knowing the language, and it not being the most tourist-friendly place (i.e. no signs), I was left to wander the market and try to figure it out on my own. I have to admit, it felt like I was walking through the back door of some large operation, not sure if I was in the right place or not.

The place struck me as less of an actual market and more of a distribution hub where major resellers get their daily fish.  The quantity of fish that moves through this place is simply incredible.  I was there a little late, but you can easily tell how this is the world’s largest fish market.  The market consists of many small cells dedicated to the various stores, restaurants, etc. that have some form of daily business concern here.  Each cell would be essentially their store or hub of buying/selling/processing seafood.  I found the majority of these cells to be more like work spaces than a place one could actually buy their offerings, but perhaps this is due to my lack of fluency in Japanese and not being able to read their signs.  The impression I got, however, was that most of these people were rushing to get fish packed and shipped, than trying to hock it to passers by (which were few).

In the photo above, workers are cutting frozen tuna into more manageable pieces to be sold for sushi, I’m assuming.  I unfortunately missed the tuna auction that occurs daily at 5:30am, but was lucky to find some frozen tuna still in the area.  I think most of the tuna had been processed and shipped to stores hours before I got there (around 10:00am–I got a little lost finding the place).  The tuna are frozen solid, and are essentially large blocks of ice.  The process seems to be to cut the tuna into quarters using the bandsaw, and then the bones are hacked out using an axe (which is what the man in the red shirt is doing).  Fresh tuna (which I couldn’t find anywhere) are cut using long knives (almost like swords).  I would have liked to have seen this, but either I couldn’t find it or I was too late and missed it.

These T shirts were on sale in the Harajuku area of Tokyo.  This area was made famous by Gwen Stefani’s hit song Harajuku Girls, depicting the ultra-trendy and unique J-pop culture.  Bright colours, trendy phrases, coloured hair, tattoos and piercings are just some of the fashion statements common around here.  Although I didn’t spend much time here, I’m sure this is a very dynamic area, with trends coming and going faster than any other part of the world.

Looking at this photo, I notice what looks like a shiny speed skating uniform (bottom right), a couple of confused barnyard cannibals (left), and a shirt perfect for Rupert Murdoch.

Nakamise Dori is a pedestrian lane that leads up to Sonsoji Temple in the neighborhood of Asakusa, Tokyo.  The lane is filled with shops selling souvenirs and traditional trinkets and foods/candies.  On this day, the place was packed as it was such a beautiful fall day.

Interestingly enough, this location had the highest number of non-Asian tourists that I found in my stay in Tokyo.

Rushing through the rain, with heads held low under umbrellas, we sometimes miss the obvious.

Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.

Above is a the Great Buddha of Kamakura, located in Kamakura Japan.  This statue of Buddha was, at a few points in time, enclosed in a wooden temple.  During a few large storms and a tidal wave back in the 14th and 15th centuries, the wooden structure was blown or washed away, each time leaving the large statue intact.  The statue is made of bronze and is over 13m tall.

Inside the Buddha

The children in front of the statue help to give a sense of its size.  They are also the typical example of Japanese pop culture, with their brightly coloured bandanas.  They stand in stark contrast to the conservatively dressed school kids on the right.  The area was filled with children on school trips, and I was lucky to get such a relatively unpopulated shot of the statue.

For a few Yen, you can go inside the statue.  I wasn’t sure what was inside, and thought to myself “how often do you get a chance to go inside a giant statue of Buddha?”  So I paid the fee and went in.  The inside looks pretty much like one would expect the inside of a large bronze statue of Buddha to look like.  That is, it is a large bronze-walled room in the inverse shape of the statue itself.  At the top of the statue is the head area, which has been reinforced recently with some sort of red plastic.  The rest of the statue remains the same as originally constructed way back in 1252.

One thing photos cannot reproduce is sound.  When I was inside, the statue was filled with the echo of a dozen excited Japanese children.  Japanese children, like all other children around the world, have only one volume level–loud.  Needless to say, the inside of this bronze-walled echo chamber was quite loud!  :)

Due to the overcast skies, I boosted the saturation a bit to bring out the colours in the statue’s corroding metal, as well as the bright colours in the children’s clothing.  I’d have preferred a more interesting or dramatic sky for this picture, but mother nature wasn’t on my side that day.

This is one of the guard houses, or lookouts in the Imperial Gardens in Tokyo.  The accessible areas of the Imperial Gardens aren’t really that spectacular in the winter, but this was one view that seemed to be worthy of a snapshot.

Lighting was a bit tricky on this one, as the sun was just out of frame to the right.  A little localized reduction in exposure and a little post-crop vignetting was done to tame the sun and bright sky.

This shot of Mount Fuji and the skyscrapers of Shinjuku is one of my favourites from my trip to Japan.  Before my trip, I had made a list of quintessential photographs to take while in Japan, and Mt. Fuji with the city in front of it was at the top of my list.  After a fair bit of internet research, I managed to find a “top secret” location in a public building to get this shot.  I was surprised when I eventually got there to find a handful of other photographers with the same shot in mind.  Obviously my secret location was well known.  :)

Those familiar with Tokyo will undoubtedly know that such views of Mt. Fuji are quite rare.  In fact, even on a clear sunny day the chances of being able to see the distant mountains and Mt. Fuji are slim to none due to the typical heavy layer of smog covering the city.  I somehow lucked out on this occasion, as a weather system had rolled in over night.  It was quite windy the night before this shot, which I suspect helped clear out the smog.

I will admit, that when I made my way onto the observation gallery and saw this spectacular view I got quite excited.  This was exactly the view I had pictured in my mind.  Unfortunately, in the rush of it all, plus the lack of coffee (I’m a mess without it) I forgot to switch the ISO on the camera back to 100.  I had been shooting night scenes the night before.  Sadly, all of the shots I took of this view were made at ISO 800 on my Canon 20d, which is quite a shame.  This actually ruined my day when I realized my mistake about an hour after I left the gallery (and by then the smog would have hidden the mountains).  I highly doubt I will ever get this shot again, so this is one of life’s hard lessons I learned.

Nighttime in Tokyo is just as busy as any other time in this city.  The city never sleeps, and if anything, it feels even busier at night with all the bright flashing lights from traffic, billboards, and other advertisements.  Like a moth to a flame, your eyes are drawn into the bright lights.

I took this shot while walking back to my hotel after a long day of sightseeing.  Leaving the Shinjuku train station there is a pedestrian overpass that takes you to a plaza filled with Christmas lights (this was taken in December).  This is the view from that overpass.  The towers in the distant background are the Tokyo’s government buildings (aka city hall).  They’re the tallest buildings in the metropolis, though you can barely make them out in the dark night sky.

The shot was taken hand-held, probably resting on a railing, I can’t remember exactly.

The prefecture of Shinjuku is one of Tokyo’s busier places.  Most of Tokyo’s tallest skyscrapers are located here, as well as its biggest and busiest train station.

The photo above shows a few of these skyscrapers nestled in a corner between two major roads. I discovered this while following my Lonely Planet guide book’s walking tour of the area.  I almost missed it completely as I was following a sidewalk/overpass with my nose in the book.  Plus, there’s so much activity to see at ground level, that you almost forget to look up and see these great views.

My hotel was located in Shinjuku, one of Tokyo’s more livelier prefectures, and was about 4 blocks away from this shopping area.  The area consists of about 3 blocks of brightly lit stores that are actually just one store: the Yodobashi camera store.  I can’t remember what happened when I realized this, as my brain had gone into overload thinking about all the camera gear surrounding me.  I was in the Mecca of photographic technology.

The main Yodobashi store (pictured above) consists of about 8 stories of technology ranging from cameras, to laptop computers, to books, to rice cookers and home appliances.  The camera selection at this particular building was the mainstream point and shoot variety.  Down the street was a more professional camera store that carried SLRs, medium format, lighting, developing, etc.  Basically a mini B&H Photo, but in Japan.

As for prices, they were very similar to those of B&H Photo in New York.  I probably could have saved $150 on a Canon 7D bought in Japan, but everything would have been in Japanese, including the warranty so I decided not to bother.

As for this photo, it was shot hand-held in manual mode.  It was difficult finding a good exposure that balanced the neon signs and the ambient light on the street, but I think I got it.  I think the Japanese couple walking in front of me adds a bit of character as well.

Yasukuni Shrine honours soldiers who have died fighting for the Emperor of Japan. It is fairly famous in the far East for various reasons (historic and political), but this photo is not about the shrine as much as the entrance to it. Leading up to the shrine is a long mall bordered with trees. At the time I was there (early December), the trees were pretty much at their peak colours. The clear blue sky and bright sun really made the yellow leaves seem extra bright. An occasional gust of wind would stir up leaves, making it a really beautiful sight to behold.

I really wanted to capture the scene complete with blowing leaves, so I waited around with camera in hand for more than a few minutes. But of course, like a watched pot that does not boil, the wind didn’t blow while I waited. Finally, as I was about to leave, a small gust picked up some leaves which I quickly snapped some shots of.

I used a polarizing filter to help the colours pop and to darken the blue sky a bit. A slight vibrance and saturation boost were added in Lightroom. I think the final image comes pretty close to depicting what I actually experienced there. I only wish the leaves were a little more visible in the shot.

Tokyo is famous for “scramble” intersections, where all directions of traffic stop and allow pedestrians to cross any way they wish. It is quite a sight to see. We have a couple of scramble intersections in Toronto, but they pale in comparison to the sheer volume of people in Tokyo.

Most major intersections in Tokyo are of the scramble variety, which is quite convenient if you’re a pedestrian. The one pictured above was not very busy in comparison to others, such as Shibuya crossing. Only a hundred or so people were crossing at each cycle here. In Shibuya, there are likely thousands crossing at every cycle. Absolutely amazing.

One detail you can’t see from this image is a police stand/lookout on the adjacent corner. Each cycle, a police officer would blow a whistle prior to the signals changing. This is essentially a warning to those still crossing to hurry up before the signals change and the traffic begins. In a city so technologically advanced, with automated machines everywhere, they still rely on officers to blow the whistle every few minutes. Weird.

I shot this photo hand-held, which isn’t too tricky with an ultra-wide angle lens. I probably annoyed a few locals by standing still on the corner when the signals changed, and everyone expected me to start crossing. I think my 6’2″ stature and pale white complexion was a clear indication that I was a tourist. That and my camera strapped around my neck.

Tokyo is a very old and historic city. Scenes like this are not uncommon in this city. Here, one of the Imperial Palace’s guard houses sits in contrast with the modern city’s skyscrapers. Traditional rule by the monarchy versus today’s importance of the economy and capitalization.

Due to the Allied bombing in World War II, much of the city has been rebuilt in the last 50-60 years. This makes Tokyo a fantasticly modern city, but at the expense of its historic roots, even despite the preserved temples and gardens that tourists tend to flock to.

Every Sunday Tokyo shuts down the main street in Ginza (a prefecture of Tokyo) to allow the masses to go shopping in this high-end shopping district.  The streets are lined with designer shops from around the world.  You name it, it’s here.  Consider this the equivalent of New York’s 5th Avenue, or Toronto’s Yorkville, but on a much, much larger scale.

This particular Sunday was warm for December, which I suspect drew a lot of people out to take advantage of the nice weather.  However, Tokyo is so populous that this could be the norm here and just as many would be out on a cloudy winter day too.  But I don’t see too many shopping bags, so maybe it’s the weather…

The Tokyo International Forum is a unique building in Tokyo that houses conference rooms, concert halls and exhibitions. The building’s cavernous atrium is highlighted by the interesting steel structure at the top, a wall of windows on one side, and a wooden wall on the other.

The building is truly huge. Standing at the bottom, one is impressed at the height and size of the place, as well as the open feeling it provides. Standing on the steel and glass catwalk that ramps its way to the very top of the building, it’s hard not to feel a bit (or a lot) of vertigo. Railings are made of glass, and there is nothing between you and the floor. I’ll confess that I didn’t actually make it to the very top. Hanging over the side of the railing to get the perfect shot (coming in a future post) left me feeling a little wishful for terra firma.

Such an ornate structure to hold a bell… The locals sit in the parking lot and sell souvenirs and local produce to the tourists.