Japanese Obon お盆
Just shy of a year after I had picked up my first camera and started to learn photography, I was invited to the Japanese Obon お盆 at Como Park in Saint Paul by some friends. I had no idea what the festival would be like, but it was right next to the Como Park Conservatory that is full of flowers. So I brought my camera camera along and showed up a little early to get some time to shoot some flower photos. Little did I know that what I really needed my camera for was the lantern lighting at dusk.
Luckily I had a portable tripod with me as the light began to fall I could use longer exposures on the tripod to get some beautiful photos of the lanterns floating on the pond in the park. This is one of the best ones I got that evening.
Photo by Kelly Anderson taken with the Nikon D5100
Cheers, @kellyjanderson
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Somewhere in Texas the sun set one day
peaceful and relaxing picture :)
Thank you. It was a wonderful event.
So solemn!
It was both a solemn and beautiful event.
Really impressive lights and vibrant colors. Great photo!
Thanks, I always worry that I take the colors too far, the line between well processed and over processed can be thin some times.
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STOPgreat shot , wonder if a higher iso and faster shutter speed would have made a big change, but for showing up unprepared you did more then just fine.
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Thanks @stresskiller! I have a, perhaps unhealthy, hatred of sensor noise, and will only raise the ISO as a last resort. Having said that, there is a bit more details in the darks that I could pull out. This was shot at 165mm - ƒ/5 - 2.5s - ISO 100, with that long exposure I picked up more detail in the raw file than your average shot. For reference this is my first edit of the image I did years ago when I had less experience editing.
compared to now:
In both cases I really wanted the lanterns to be bright against the dark water. In this edit I mostly focused in bringing the reflections in the water up and that wonderful rocky bank up.
After your comment I started looking at the image, trying to decide what would be better with more light. My eye landed on the light from the lanterns on that rocky bank; to night when I get home I am going to try and enhance that spill of light.
Out of curiosity what things would you like come out of having a higher ISO?
Cheers,
@kellyjanderson
it's always a triangle iso / aperture / shutter speed if you can raise the iso you might be able to use faster shutter speed and actually freeze the picture when things are moving ,some of the lanterns seem to move not a bad thing , on the other hand what if the shutter speed would have been longer would it be possible to freeze the water and get some light trails ? i can't judge the speed of the lanterns to see if that would be possible or not .
The lanterns were fairly still, the ones in the middle of the frame vertically are in the center of the focal plane. There are few lanterns in the foreground that are moving where you can see the motion blur, those are also starting to fall out of the focal plane.
I could have gotten zero motion blur even at 30 fps or maybe even 15, only the ones that had just been released were really moving much at all. I have a different shot that was at ISO 800 and much higher shutter speed. If I remember it after work I will post a version of that here for comparison.
I generally go for heavily crushed blacks to get a bit of a chiaroscuro effect with the light. I think though I need to pull up the darks a bit more; someone I work with saw the image over my shoulder and could not quite understand what the rocky wall of the pond was.
Cheers,
@kellyjanderson
I second @stresskiller 's comment minus the camera speak.
I live part time in Japan. Obon is one of the best times of year to be there because of all of the festivals & celebrations.
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😁 thanks @rt395! I really enjoyed the Obon festival and now that I live in Seattle I decided to see if there was one here. It turns out that the big one here is Shichigatsu Bon, so I missed it. The one in Saint Paul is Hachigatsu Bon so I just thought they were all in August. I am going to do some more searching to see if I can find a local Hachigatsu Bon so I can still get to one here this year still.
Cheers,
@kellyjanderson
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Have a great Obon to you...followed