A Photographer - Mount Fuji 1

Spring Lakeside

In past several years, more than 300 thousands people climbed Mount Fuji per year. There may be various reasons for this sudden Fuji boom, but the most notable one is that Moust Fuji got listed on Japan's tentative list for World Heritage Sites. What caught my attention is it's not listed as a 'natural heritage' but as a 'cultural heritage'. As Natume Soseki once wrote with a little irony "(Fuji ha)wareware ga koshiraetamonzyanai. - Fuji is not something we created.", we want to ask a simple question why the object which was not created by human being is listed as cultural heritage. To understand it, we should take a little time to learn and re-discover the long history of Mountain faith and culture of Fuji.

Since this is a broad topic, I write several posts on different topics of Mountain faith and culture of Fuji. Make sure to check out articles come later ;)

In this post I introduce you to the photographer who had been obsessed with Fuji for his whole life. His name is Okada Kohyo.

Okada Kohyo

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This photo "Yamanami - Mountain Wave" was exhibited at British Museum in 2006, as an image of Japan

Kohyo - Koh yoh - Red Sunlight

If you look at the first photo and 1000yen note blow, you may find something interesting. It is not known to many of Japanese that the famous illustration of Fuji on Banknotes of Japan is based on the photo taken by Okada Kohyo (1895 ~1972).

Kohyo, who started photographing Fuji while he was a university student had been a contracted photographer for Tokyo metropolitan government. At the request from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he held a number of exhibitions abroad, letting world know the word Fujiyama.

It is said that Kohyo took 380thousands (gasp!) of original photos of Mount Fuji. But among these none could reach the goal set by himself. He boasted, 'None of my pictures are what I can call Masterpiece', and called Mount Fuji 'My Girl'.

Mount Fuji is printed on current 1000 yen notes and previous 5000 yen notes.

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Photography goes Magical, No need to wait until crowds gone away - Scalado

Smartphone, where magic happens.
Don't say I'm being totally facetious before knowing this photo retouching app.

There are already nice photo retouching apps for iOS such as this or this, which let you easily remove objects from your photos or naturally put extra objects into your photos.

But what you see is this was merely a beginning of the magical world of smartphone's photo editing after Scalado released this app.

With this app called "Scalnado Remove" you you don't need to move your finger all over to cover the area you want to erase. Because Remove captures several images in a row, analyses them and automatically creates a composite photo devoid of unwanted details. Better yet, it highlights potential objects and lets you eliminate them manually.

The actual process of editing is introduced in this video.

The Press Release from Scalado.

Scalado, a world-leading provider of high-performance imaging technologies, applications and services for the mobile industry, have today announced the release of a new revolutionizing product named Remove. Remove is a technology that automatically highlights and removes any unwanted object from a captured photo. It is the world’s first Object removal software to be released on a mobile device.
Remove solves common photographic problems with unwanted objects in captured images, such as people getting in the way of our camera shot. Remove detects and selects the unwanted objects which simply can be removed automatically or by touching the selections on the screen or after capturing the image.

"After Zero Shutter Lag, Burst, and Rewind Scalado continue leading and changing the capturing landscape by bringing in new unique and needed capturing innovations”, says Fadi Abbas, CMO/VP BizDev and Co-founder of Scalado, -"What differentiate us is the combination of customers who believe in our superiority, leading industry partners and continuous innovations”
Last year Scalado released several innovations, e.g. the Rewind technology which allows the users to capture perfect group shots by automatically selecting the best shots in a burst and merging them into one perfect image. Rewind is already shipping in millions of mobile phones.

"Our team has been working hard to maintain its leading innovation position in the camera capturing field”, says Sami Niemi, CTO and Co-founder of Scalado, -"Remove shows that our technologies are setting the guidelines for the whole market”.
Scalado will premiere showcase Remove, the first of many new innovations planned this year, at the 2012 Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, February 27th to March 1st.

 If you read above sentences carefully, you'll understand why I used the word smartphone instead of iPhone or iOS. It says this app'll be released on a MOBILE DEVICES, and of all the review I saw so far, there are no images of this app running on iOS devices but on Androids.

Maybe the reason is because of interval length of continuous shooting of iPhone?
Anyway the engadget's hands-on review was done on Sansong' crappy galaxy phones but why don't you try it on Xperia S, that would be the best smartphone photography experience.

But I just hope they don't tease iPhone users and will release the iOS version.

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Decorative Minimal - Xperia S

Although I enjoy my life with iPhone 4S (and it's unimaginable to live without it..), Sony's new Xperia design has drawn my attention.

Sony used to be a leader of cool gadget design. Their design had a futuristic geeky flavor but at the same time minimal, and well-organized. On top of that they had a leading technology.

But Sony in recent years seems to be loosing it's orientation, and their design once sophisticated has become boring and once geeky has become pointless.

The design of this phone is kind of reminiscent of old Sony design. Especially that transparent line reminds me the joy of decorative minimal design.

This transparent part called Floating Prism illuminates when you're operating the phone. It also glows to notify incoming calls, means you can recognize it even when you put your phone face side down.

The body of Xperia S has a nice matte finish coating, which make fingerprints less noticeable.

Back side of the phone is gently rounded.

Hardware side buttons are made of metal which is a kind like iPhone, but have slimmer shape.

Audio-wise Sony never fails. If you are not satisfied with iPod's limited audio function and quality, this one fills your heart.
You can create and edit your own equalizer setting on your phone, clear base sound, clear stereo, virtual surrounded technology, sound emphasizer xLOUD... these are what Sony says  I don't know what they exactly mean, but IT JUST SOUNDS NICER THAN iPHONE and iPOD.

In the lockscreen you can switch Clock to a music player by a single swipe.

12M pixels camera (and 30 fps HD 1080p video) is the highest resolution of all smartphones, but there are a lot more practical features in this camera.

Continuous auto-focus, face-recognition and
shake correction unleash the capacity of full HD

F2.4 lens and Back-illuminated CMOS sensor reduce the noise and make it possible to take a fine-grained photography in the dark.

All 5 lens are AR-coated on both sides to prevent the reflection of light. The lens filter also reduce the reflection as well as color unevenness.

1.3M pixels photos and HD 720p videos can be captured by front camera.

You can drag icons to make shortcuts on the side of the display, which is a nice feature if you use particular functions frequently.

"A single key press takes you from sleep to snap in just over a second." It take about 1.5 seconds according to Sony Japan website and shoot interval is about 0.5 second.

Display is significantly improved from Xperia arc, the previous series released a year before Xperia S.

Screen size is increased from 4.2 to 4.3, resolution is from wide VGA (854 x 480) to HD 720p (1280 x 720).

Sony just announced new models at mobile world congress which look almost identical to one another.  It looks like all Sony's next generation models will have single letter names and Floating Prisms.

Xperia P has an all aluminum body and U has exchangeable bottom caps. P has a white magic display, which add extra white stripe to RGB, but has only HD screen. U has a cute gimmick in Prism which illuminates to match the colour of photos viewed in the gallery or the album art of music tracks currently playing, but it has an only 5 pixel camera.

Meanwhile in Japna, waterproof Xperia, acro HD will be released for Docomo, which has almost same spec as Xperia S but looks more (or just) like Nokia Lumina 800.

Xperia acro HD (will be released in Mar, 2012)

looks exactly the same lol

I'm not here trying to say Sony had been a copy dog for the design of this phone. Both of these phones are designed in North Euro, so it is likey the same designers are involved in both products, isn't it.

Xperia S's transparent line reminds me the joy of decorative minimal design, and that has been long forgotten mainly because of Apple. Apple's design is simple and genuine, and never put what we can call decoration except "bitten Apple". It somehow has become dull and bland enough that can be dubbed as a safety choice, not something that buying the one send a message.

But what makes iPhone so successful is the integrated user experience from iOS5 to iTunes to the incredible app store that seaming-lessly work together.
It's good to have two different styles of smartphone design, but with that regard iPhone is one or two steps forward to Sony and a bunch of other Android phones that few people can differentiate.

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The Fastest Way To Launch iPhone Camera

How do you react the moment you want to take a photo with your iPhone Camera. If iPhone is locked, click home button twice and tap camera button.

If you are using an another app, click home button and tap Camera app button. However, either way it takes too long, my iPhone takes 2~3 seconds, to launch Camera app, and you might miss the moment you want to capture.

In a Pre-GM build of upcoming iOS 5.1 update, it is said that the new way to launch Camera app has been added.

Source: Blog do iPhone (Portuguese)

Swiping the Camera button from bottom to top, that's the way. So far there's only a shot of locked screen - Camera button appears to the right of the unlock slider BY DEFAULT, and you can launch the app without fully unlock iPhone - but it is nice to have similar shortcut in home screen or while using other apps.

Another leaked update is Siri will speak Japanese as she herself admits.

But Siri, before learning other languages, you must improve your listening skill to understand some ignored English dialects such as Scottish, Icelander, Singaporean and of course foreign accents, your English need to be global.

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Photo collaging! with "PicFrame"

I found a nice app called PicFrame.

PicFrame - iTunes

You can make a photo collage by combining multiple photos with this app.

As it's name suggests, it is not that you can make a completely free form layout photo collage, but you can only put photos in predetermined rectangular frames.

You can move drag and move borders to resize individual photo areas.

You can change the size, round corners, rotate and mirror photo images.

In "Style" menu you can select color or pattern, and width of frame. But you can't change the color of patterns.

Completed photo collage can be saved in CameraRoll, or shared on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Tumblr.

There's Mac version of this app too, but basic function is same. The only difference, at least I could notice, is Mac version has more choices of frame aspects.

PicFrame - Mac App store

Here I made some examples. Hope you'll enjoy and give it a try, it's fun :)

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