As I prepare to post my review, I thought I would share a couple photos. I love how my original TCL-x100 Teleconverter looks on my new x100F. I had originally purchased it with my black x100S, but I think I actually like this look better. I’ve now owned every x100 and the love affair just keeps growing with this camera.
This past July my daughter and I decided on a whim to take a trip to Tokyo for a few days. She was out of school for the summer and it was perfect for some quality father daughter time. It’s been two years since our last trip. Scary how fast time goes by. On my last trip to Tokyo I had just bought the x100T and was testing it out.
Hey everyone. Hope your all doing well today. I took this photo last year while testing my x100T that I had just upgraded to. The photo is part of a blog post I did on shop keepers in Naha. Click here to view that story. I love how he's surrounded with so much merchandise and yet everything looks in place.
Kouri Island is a small tranquil getaway north of Nago in Okinawa. The island is a popular location for beach, kayaking, snorkeling and diving activities, and is famous for sea urchins. Driving over the bridge to Kouri Island, one of the longest toll-free bridges in Japan you are greeted with beautiful blue-green waters that change in color depending on the time of day.
Cape Maeda in one of the most popular diving and snorkeling locations on Okinawa. Countless people have made the walk, and not too long ago before the stairs were put in, the climb down to the blue-green, crystal clear waters to dive and/or snorkel.
I travel to Tokyo far less than I wish I could, but in the past couple years my family and I have been visiting once or twice per year. I've taken so many street photos that I've only recently started to sort through them. I don't want to post dozens of images in one or two post, so I decided to break them up into an ongoing series called Streets of Tokyo where I can share one or two at a time. I have also created a folder on my Flickr page for the series as well.
One of the many photography lessons we learn as we age, is the importance of simply documenting your surroundings. Documenting everything enables us to better appreciate the immense changes in our world that are subtle, and seemingly unimportant as we live them, yet can be profound when viewed ten, twenty, or more years later. In the 80's and 90's, during my first stay in Japan, I took many casual environment photos that later seemed unimportant to me. Sadly, I threw most of them out. Now however, I appreciate the value of even the most mundane. What once was trivial and uninteresting, is now fascinating. Your life is a journey, document it.
My final full day in Tokyo combined Ginza, the Tokyo Dome area, and Taylor Swift fans. Ginza is one of those parts of Tokyo that I always feel out of place in, but I wanted to visit the Leica store there as I heard it's really nice and a must visit. Now that I can say that I've been there, looked at and held several Leicas, All I can say is, maybe one day. Enough said. 😊
Day two in Tokyo took me to Ebisu, for a short pit stop at a store in the station, Omotesando, where I was finally able to check out and try on the new Apple Watch, a walk in Yoyogi Park to see Meiji Shrine, and a short visit in Shibuya for my daughter to get in a little more shopping, because she was so deprived in Omotesando. 😀 All of the below images were shot in Aperture priority and Provia color settings.
I'm back in Tokyo with my family for a mini vacation, and for my daughter to see Taylor Swift in concert this Wednesday. Yeah I'm a great dad like that. 😊 Lucky for me I also just upgraded my Fuji x100s to the new x100T, and I've been dying to break it in. Fuji cameras are famous for great color, and I can't think of a more colorful city to show off those colors than Tokyo. My daughter wanted to visit Dean & Deluca in Yurokucho. While my wife and daughter enjoyed tea and pastries I took the opportunity to walk around a little outside the station.
In the summer of 1982 I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, as a U.S. Marine. My unit trained in mainland a couple times per year, giving me the opportunity to visit Tokyo. It was this point in my life that I discovered photography, and purchased my first 35mm SLR camera, a Yashica if I remember right. The city was a never ending playground for photography, and I went through many rolls of film, learning to use my new toy. Looking back now I wish that I had taken more photos.
