Kamakura Photowalk

Two great photowalks last week in Kamakura produced some amazing shots.

Last Thursday I went down today with my son and two students, Lu and Mike, to do a recon of the Kamakura walk we then did on Saturday. We had a superb time on both days, had a beautiful walk and enjoyed the tranquility of some really great spots away from the tourist hordes. A huge thanks also to Yim, for providing an excellent barbecue at her place in Zushi after our walk.

I was thrilled that everyone had such a nice day and that the experience conjured such wonderful shots from everyone. I love going out just to wander on my own and shoot, when I want to truly get absorbed in what I am doing. But going out in a group has amazing benefits for people, the main one being that everyone is in the same physical space as each other and then subsequently gets to see how each person in the group saw through the camera the things everyone walked past. Teaching people how to ‘see’ is pretty hard. You can coach the eye but can’t really teach people ‘the eye’. See how a group of people experience and capture the experience of a walk is one way of turning people in the group on to how each other person sees the world.

On both days we went out walking, I was trying out the latest couple of camera controls I’ve devised for the Nikon; a super high-contrast colour one and a nice contrasty sepia control. All the shots in the gallery below are straight out of the camera. The colour ones have come out vaguely solarized due to the really high contrast and slightly depressed tone curve. Together with the intense bokeh of the 50mm wide-open at f/1.2, it’s made for some interesting results. There all shot in RAW as well, so I’ll have a little play with some in a more conventional colour space and post them up.

There’s a gallery below of shots I got on Thursday and am gradually getting up shots from people who came on the Thursday and Saturday walks.

Alfie’s gallery from Thursday

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Lu came along on Thursday too. She’s just started taking lessons and calls herself ‘ a real beginner’. But she has a good eye and is really beginning to get the hang of her camera, catching some nice scenes on our walk. Here’s her Flickr slideshow….

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Mike Ross’s shots from the Thursday walk are in a slideshow below. Click here to visit Mike’s whole ZenFolio site: he has some awesome shots there.



Mike Kulyk”s slideshow from the Saturday walk is on a Flickr slideshow, which I’ve embedded below.



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These few shots were made by me with the Mamiya 645AFD II on Thursday, with either the Hasselblad 110mm f/2 lens or the Mamiya 80mm f/1.9.

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