A walk down the Tama River
I’m not sure why, but I always love to see paths, walls, and other man-made features “disrupted” by nature. The irony is that it is the man-made structures which are disrupting nature, not the other way around. I’ve noticed this kind of thing many times in Japan, but there’s not always consistency. I don’t know why this amazing tree (which looks more like a set of fingers emerging from the crust of the earth) was spared, but I am glad all the same.
These days, it’s rare that I take more than the RX1 out on a walk. When you own a pocketable full-frame camera with a super-sharp, fast, versatile 35mm lens, it’s hard to use anything else. It’s very easy to get all swept up in the new shiny shiny, but my trusty year-old NEX-7 is still pleasing to use and has fantastic output. Don’t get me wrong, new cameras and technology are a passion of mine – but I’m not going to let the NEX-7 gather dust in the meantime. Anyway, I decided to bring a camera bag and use the NEX-7 for close ups and telephoto shots. Upon return to the house, after looking through the photos, Charlotte was praising the great colours of the RX1, when I pointed out that the photo was actually from the NEX-7…
These days I use my cameras in full manual mode. That is to say, I manually set aperture, shutter speed, focus, and ISO. I find the procedure of image capture very satisfying that way. However, operating in such a manner certainly highlights the relative simplicity of taking a photo of a tree, compared to the taking the above photo of a butterfly, a butterfly in flight, or a pond-skater.
These photos were all taken near the Tama River, which is for the most part, less than an hour by train from central Tokyo. I recommend a visit here if you’d like to escape the skyscrapers for at least a few hours.