Tag: Photo Club

Photo Club – I’m Number One*

In April, my photo club saw the end of its “fiscal year,” which means we had a shuffling of the leadership AND we tallied up the points earned throughout the year to choose an overall winner and two runner-ups. And, after months of fretting over whether I should even stay in the club, I came out number one! Kind of. Because, actually, it was a three-way tie between me, the old club chair (who takes beautiful bird pictures) and the new club chair (who takes beautiful train pictures). The two of them then decided arbitrarily to make the final ranking based on age, youngest to oldest. And, well, I’m by far the youngest member of the club.

So. I’m number one*!

In all honesty, that was my third year in the club (I think? It’s all blurring in my old age) and it marked a big turning point in my approach to taking pictures for the monthly meetings. I went from trying to guess what would please the teacher/judge and just being more mindful of taking the pictures I wanted to take.

And, apparently, it worked. Everyone in the club has commented on how recognizable my “style” is (even though I don’t see it) and I’m generally just happier with the whole thing.

Anyway.

Here are some of my favorites of the pictures I took in FY2025.

Tokyo tower at night. Lines of light at the bottom are cars driving past during the long Exposure
Dots and lines and stars and shadows
A small stone Jizo-sama statue on a city street corner. It is wrapped up in a child's coat, red knitted scarf, and pink knitted hat.
Nice and toasty
A kingfisher flying against the background of a lattice-patterned concrete wall
Flyby
The sillhouette of a raptor against a cloudy sky. It is highlighted against a lighter break in the dark clouds.
Turbulence

2026 Photo Club Exhibition

I’m a member of a photo club, the Hikari Shayukai, and we have a public exhibition at a local park every spring.

This year’s just finished, so it’s time for a bit of reflection.

Unlike past years, the exhibition this time was held the week after the annual ume blossom festival, so we knew from the start that attendance would be lower than usual. Oh top of that, we had heavy rain three days out of five. The Saturday and Sunday were sunny, luckily, but still we had less than half the 1,000 or so we usually get.

Still, people did show up, and I had some very interesting interactions with guests over my pictures.

Here are the pictures I showed, and stuffed of the thoughts I have on them now.

Haniwa

This picture was taken atop a local kofun, or ancient burial mound. I like the colors of the clay haniwa against the blue sky. The biggest reaction to this one was surprise at the location. Even people who live in the town where it was taken didn’t seem to know the mound was there.

Fire Dragon

This is a bit of a miracle picture. I had my son hold a lit sparkler-type firework and move it while I took a long exposure, and this is the shape it took.

Reactions to this were mostly bafflement. What is it? How did you take it? But there was a lot of wonder about it, which is mostly what I wanted.

Sundown

This seemed to have a lot of impact. The vibrance of the colors and the banding of the sky, along with the sunstar, really caught people’s eyes. But what got me was how many people wanted to know exactly where I took it, down to the name of the little island at the right edge of the photo.

I don’t know the name. I’m not sure if it matters?

Traffic

I’m not even sure how to explain this. I took it through the window of a double decker sightseeing bus rolling through Roppongi, Tokyo. I wanted to catch the chaos of the night lights and the feeling of the big city at night. I mostly just wanted to play around with light.

Most people just ignored it, but some seemed almost entranced by it. I got a lot of guys with cameras asking how I took it, and why. They got up close and seemed to try to decipher each pixel.

I’m ok with that reaction.

It’s always great to get the reactions of non-photographers to my pictures. It gets clarify my successes and failures.

And it just feels more meaningful to show prints like that