CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Sunrise over Hiroshima Bay GFX50R + GF100-200mm f5.6 - 1/250s @ f5.6 ISO100 One of the joys of my job is the bonus of travelling to some fantastic destinations.  Of all the countries I visit Japan is by far and away my favourite and I have been lucky to have visited the Land of Rising Sun nine times since 2012. I usually fly to Tokyo and spend a few personal days travelling around the city or in the area to the north or south of Tokyo, but in 2019 I decided to fly to Osaka and spend some time in the south of the country.  I also decided to take the medium format Fujifilm GFX50R, along with the GF32-64mm f4 and the GF100-200mm f5.6 zooms, to see if this was going to be my ultimate travel camera outfit. TWO DAYS IN HIROSHIMA I flew into Kansai International Airport and, after collecting a hire car, I drove 230 miles west to Hiroshima for the first stop on my itinerary.  As a student of history I have always wanted to visit the Peace Park and museum in Hirosh...

When I am out shooting I sometimes see in my mind's eye a panoramic crop when taking images in standard 3:2 format.  Panorama's are very striking and for me can add a dynamic element to landscapes and cityscapes. It is very easy to visualise a panoramic crop.  When shooting I check to see if the important elements of an image are all concentrated into one third of the image area.  I then shoot the image with the dead area of the image either to the top or bottom of the picture.  I then crop 12:5 in post production to give me the final panorama. Japan was a perfect canvas for the 12:5 crop (or even wider) both when shooting landscapes at Lake Ashi (top picture), Enoshima (second picture) and in Tokyo (two images below). All of the images were shot on the Fujifilm X-T2 with either the 16mm f1.4, 50-140mm f2.8 and 100-400mm f4.5/5.6 lenses. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

On our travels in Hakone we went along the coast south of Tokyo to visit the island of Enoshima.  As it was a holiday in Japan the island was jam packed with visitors so we decided to stay on the mainland and sit on the beach at Kamakura to watch the Black-Eared Kites ( Milvus lineatus). These medium sized raptors are fairly common along the coast of Japan and they are opportunists, having worked out that snatching food from an unsuspecting human is far easier than catching rodents or small birds.  They are to Japan what seagulls are to us in the UK, just far more interesting to watch. While we sat on the beach about a dozen 'Tobi' as they are known in Japan were soaring above us watching for an unsuspecting human to swoop down on and snatch their lunch.  This happened several times we are there but the kites were so quick I wasn't able to catch an image. We sat shooting the birds using the X-T2 with the 100-400mm and 50-140mm zooms For more on the Blac...