Children's Day (May 5)

[Norm in Fujino]

May 5th is "Children's Day" in Japan, a holiday also known as "Boys' Day" since a corresponding "Girls' Day" is celebrated with dolls on March 3. My wife and I drove inland a few minutes to a valley hamlet called Wada, where hundreds of huge carp streamers (symbolizing wishes for vigorous growth, based on the idea that carp swim upstream) are strung across the valley. Each streamer is between 2 and 3 meters long. I also caught a little girl eating a snow cone, and she was kind enough to hold still for the photo, though I think she considered it unwelcome attention.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c197/Peregrinor/P5057327_w1.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c197/Peregrinor/P5057308_1w1.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c197/Peregrinor/P5057310_aw1.jpg

(All photos: Olympus E-300 + 14-54mm, ISO 100, Silkypix and PS)

[Esoterra]

Norm... wow... the kites really jump out at you... nice crisp and sharp....and the greens really pop out too. I look at your pictures and ask myself if my D70s is capable of creating as good a shot if I were in the exact same position... and I leave myself wondering. What post processing did you do?? I would be curious to see the original photo as well :-)

[Norm in Fujino]

Norm... wow... the kites really jump out at you... nice crisp and sharp....and the greens really pop out too. I look at your pictures and ask myself if my D70s is capable of creating as good a shot if I were in the exact same position... and I leave myself wondering. What post processing did you do?? I would be curious to see the original photo as well :-)

Thanks Esoterra.

I've got to admit, I have no experience with a Nikon dSLR, so I can't comment directly, but I've very pleased with Olympus color handling. Naturally, YMMV.

This photo was a bit of serendipity; we were originally driving on the main road on the opposite side of the valley (visible at the bottom of the frame), but I was shooting into the sun there and there were all sorts of power lines in the way, so I had to drive back onto this single-lane mountain road to find a place I could get the kites in with the sky, and even so I had to use PS to clone out some obnoxious branches poking into the frame.

Unfortunately, there is no "original" photo to compare this with, since I shoot only RAW and adjust "to the right" of the histogram for that purpose; simply running the file through a generic developer at default values wouldn't mean much. I do almost all my raw developing in Silkypix--I have RSP and Olympus Master, too, but don't like the colors RSP produces with the Oly ORF files, and Master is simply a freebee thrown in with the camera, and too slow and featureless for serious use (I use it as an occasional "control" on otherwise "normal" exposures, but that's about all). Silkypix has an incredible feature set, IMO, and for me is quite intuitive (it'd better be, too, since its English interface leaves something to be desired).

Since we're talkijg PP here, I should note that I've used an ancient version of PSP (5.0) for the past 6 (?) years, and I've gotten very familiar with its basic structure, but it's really long in the tooth, so I'm now on a program of self-study trying to wean myself away from it and over to PS (7.0). I got a couple of books and am going through them, and am quite pleased with some of the things I can do now. For example, the little girl was facing away from the sun in the last two shots, so her face was in shadow; I used an adjustment layer to brighten it, then overlaid the original darker layer and "painted away" the shadowy part. Neat trick, tip 'o the hat to The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers. A similar thing is probably possible with PSP, especially more recent versions, but whereever it comes from, it's nice to have.