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| チューリップ連写1 |
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| チューリップ連写2 |
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| チューリップ連写3 |
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| チューリップ全景 |
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| 蓮華草 |
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| ジャスミンの灯台 |
I hear BTS’s (hereinafter referred to as “BTS”) Japan concert went off without a hitch.
I’m glad the long-awaited reunion between the Japanese ARMY and BTS, as well as their celebration, went smoothly.
(I’m a fan.)
The three tulip seedlings I bought at the entrance of a supermarket on a white spring afternoon and planted have finally bloomed.
Tulip bulbs are usually available for purchase online around September of the previous year, so if you’re interested, please consider getting some once summer starts to wind down.
Tulips are famous as the flower of the Netherlands, but apparently, the original species grew in rugged, savanna-like landscapes in much hotter regions.
That might explain why they’re delicate yet somehow powerful.
Seeing fully bloomed tulips on the street usually makes me a little sad, but these are filled with an elegance reminiscent of the opera diva Carmen.
This was a delightful discovery.
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| Tulip Photo Series 2 |
I heard it was just delivered to the door of my room. I checked via Yamato’s LINE app.
If you register for a free account on the official websites of Yamato Transport or Sagawa Express, you can specify the delivery date and time before your package arrives. It’s really convenient because you can even change your scheduled delivery time right up until the last minute. (With Sagawa Express, you can make changes up to two times.)
I rely on these services a lot.
Don’t you think vases are often too small?
When I think about arranging flowers, I picture a scene like the one in the entrance hall of an art museum, where a large, tall vase is filled with a profusion of blooms.
Or perhaps arranging just one or a few flowers, arranged delicately and modestly like wildflowers.
I’m actually quite the vase collector, and before I knew it, I’d bought a whole bunch of small, atmospheric ones.
Whenever I’d try to arrange the garden roses and jasmine with their lovely names, or the potted flowers I encounter each season, the vases were so small that I’d often have to trim the branches and stems.
But the other day, when I tried to cut and arrange some Euphorbia ‘Blackbird’ flowers, the only container with the right height was a large stainless steel pot—the kind called a “zundou”—so I’ve temporarily arranged them there for now.
I’m looking forward to transferring them to the tall, large vase I bought on Mercari.
I’m sure I’ll post a photo here this afternoon.
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| Tulip Photo Series 3 |
While today’s series of tulip photos only required minor color correction, for the past three years or so, I’ve had to apply color and brightness corrections that are completely different from what I used to do.
Even under the same weather conditions and in the same season, I found myself needing correction values different from those used over the past few decades—values based on techniques I’ve mastered through training, distinct from the standard YMC, BGR, and saturation values.
Color consists of invisible lines with waveforms called wavelengths. These bend the light from the sun or electric lamps to deliver images and colors to our eyes, and our eye nerves and functions correct them further (We do this unconsciously, without even realizing it.
It’s complicated! My lunch today is a sandwich with ham, cucumber, processed cheese, and mustard butter. Don’t worry about it.
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| Panoramic view of the tulips |
Since around the time of the post-COVID era, it seems that some new factor has been added to the weather conditions of the past few decades; for about three years now, I’ve had to constantly adjust the green (the “G” in the BGR values) throughout the entire year.
I’m currently working on a theory that some major change in weather conditions may have occurred on a regional oceanic scale.
There is a type of beauty in photographs that cannot be recognized unless captured on film—beyond the colors visible only in the images imprinted through the lens functions I briefly explained earlier.
There’s something you often realize when you take a photo: smartphone lenses have a tendency to make people’s faces look completely different from how they appear in a mirror—a phenomenon familiar to young people and digital natives who are skilled at taking selfies.
People say that photographs lie, but the claim that the unedited image is the true, natural form is a complete falsehood.
By understanding the characteristics of the lens and the nature of film or digital data, the form and shape you see when looking through the lens is the true, natural form of the subject or person.
What the eye naturally corrects is merely adjustments for distance and the frame’s angle of view—it does this to capture as much information as possible—not because it is seeing a distorted image.
To get as close as possible to what the eye sees, we use specialized software to adjust color and brightness in digital data.
Since the photos I produce fall under the category of “art,” I intentionally skew colors and use compositions that break the rules of commercial or advertising photography.
So even when I’m adjusting colors, my personal preferences and mood are still reflected in the final image.
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| Lotus Grass |
According to Wikipedia, the flower that many of us Japanese people call “Renge” is actually called “Renge-so.”
Apparently, the term “Renge” also includes water lilies.
Wikipedia states that the original pronunciation is “genge,” but the pronunciation “renge” has apparently existed since the Edo period.
I haven’t looked into it yet, but I suspect that when a voiced consonant (“” ) is added, the Japanese pronunciation takes on a humble tone—a way of saying to family or oneself, “I’m not really that great,” even though one is actually proud of it, but chooses to be modest in front of others.
The sound of “renge” comes from the “ge” in the character for “linked flowers” (連なる花). Perhaps people in one of the regions near the source of the lotus humbly referred to it as “genge”?
The scent of the lotus—even when referring to the lotus plant itself—brings to mind a gentle, wide, clear stream flowing through water-rich lands.
Though water itself seems to have no scent, the gentle yet resolute fragrance that flows through communities of all sizes—all called “water”—will surely continue to be passed down and nurtured, just like the lotus plant.
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| Jasmine's LightHouse |








