Tag: 花火

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

Tsurezure #8 – Fireworks

I didn’t realize I’d missed so many of these! It was a pretty heavy summer, anyway. But I’m still writing my column for the local Setouchi Times 瀬戸内タイムス newspaper. This might not have been “the next” but it’s in the series.

This was a summer edition, about getting to photograph the city’s fireworks festival. Fireworks are a summer standard in Japan. This year, I got special permission to photograph from atop a local hotel for a view above the crowds. The article ran in mid September, but I seem to have misplaced it, so no scan. Ah well.

Here are some of the pics:

Fireworks bursting in a dark sky.

花火大会で光の夏の満喫

ライオン　ジミー

7月27日に虹ヶ浜で花火大会が開催されました。何万人が集まって夏を満喫できたでしょうか。我が家も虹ヶ浜にありますので花火大会に「行く」よりも「いる」という感じですがライオン一家ももちろん行きました。

今年は格別の猛暑のなか若い人の浴衣・甚平姿を見て屋台の掛け声を傍らに聞き焼き鳥等の匂いを嗅いで「あぁ、夏だ」と肌で感じました。

アメリカの実家カンザス州も夏はものすごく暑く7月4日に大きな花火大会があります。でも日本の祭りと全然違う雰囲気です。季節に合わせて特色のある祭りより「たまたま夏、その日に花火を上げる」日です。でも日本では季節の決まりが強いので花火大会や夏祭りは本当に特別だとおもいます。

なんと言えばいいでしょうか。その日の為に町全体が活気あふれ盛り上がった感じが溢れています。屋台の人が一生懸命仕入して猛暑さの中で料理をします。市の方々で計画を立て道路調整し安全な大会の開催を担っています。そして一般の方々にも準備があります。色々な人が彩り豊かな夏服を買いに行き、着て行きます。満員電車に乗るか、はたまた渋滞の中駐車場を探して止めるか。来るだけでも大変です。

それでも毎年続きます。たくさんの人が来ます。

素晴らしいです。

でも実は僕は暑さも人混みも苦手です。見るのが楽しいですが入り込むのはちょっと遠慮してしまいます。今年は息子と妻が夜店で食べたり浜で花火を見たりと楽しんでいました。僕は運よくて高いところから見下ろして大好きな写真を撮る事が出来ました。個人的には完璧な花火大会でした。夏の雰囲気を遠く感じて涼しいそよ風が通り過ぎリラックス状態でシャッターチャンスを待つのも良い夏の楽しみ方だと思います。

今年はちょっとだけ写真の腕が上がって自分なりに良い花火写真撮れたと思います。まだまだ満足できていませんが、「まぁ、前よりマシだな」と。また来年挑戦してもっといい写真をお見せしますのでご期待下さい。ですので、また来年のために皆さま頑張りましょう。光の夏の満喫、花火大会のために。