After a great sunny Sunday, dark weekday rain dampened my blogging spirit while providing a little time for 'photomanipulation'. Here is a shot from Sunday's cherry blossom viewing (Ohanami) bike ride:
Today the rain finally cleared with a dawn lightning display, and I went to Tokyo under sunny skies at lunchtime. By the time I arrived, though, the dreaded 'kosa', or yellow dust storm had arrived to blot out the sky. The dust is actually airborne soil from the Gobi desert region in China, and is blamed for everything from asthma to economic recession. Mostly though, it just makes the sun seem depressingly weak... here is a picture of the Shinagawa river I snapped on the way to my meeting:
Both of these images were made by combining shots at differing exposures, either by auto bracketing on the camera (the river) or by exposing a single RAW file at three different points (the shrine), with Photomatix.
Japanese folks can monitor the 'kosa' daily with updated maps displayed here:
http://www.jma.go.jp/jp/kosa/index.html and now you can, too!
1 comment:
Well, I did go to the Kosa site. Hmm, needless to say my nihongo skills were not quite up to the task!
-mom
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