Darren Holloway

Photos from my November 2009 trip to Japan to photograph the fall colours are now up on Flickr.

I am too lazy to make 110 individual links.

Tomorrow I fly home. Which means today, I took the train from Kyoto to Tokyo, dumped my bag in a locker at Tokyo Station, then headed over to Akihabara to buy stuff and visit the cat cafe.

Yes, the cat cafe – A place where you can have a coffee and play with cats.

After 3 days of trying, I finally found Eikan-do!

Fall colours at Eikan-do, Kyoto, Japan.

I’m in Kyoto and my feet are sore. I’ve been looking for a certain temple for two days now and haven’t been able to find it. Fortunately, I’m finding lots of other nice stuff.

Fall Maple Tree Leaves in Kyoto, Japan

Here in Tokyo, it is (a) cool and (b) raining. It started getting dark around 4:00.

But at least I found my first maple tree in Koishikawa Koraku Park…

Anurag, Rika, and I went to Hakone gardens in Saratoga today for an afternoon of Japanese Tea Ceremonies.

I got tea, sore knees, and a good photo. Overall, this is better than yesterday when I broke a golf club.

In real life, this is about a square centimeter…

Ants actually farm aphids, like cows, for the 'honeydew' they produce; in reality, the honeydew is nothing more than high-sugar aphid poop.

I like California. We have nice vegetables. This will be part of my dinner tonight.

Pepper Family Portrait

Update! Pepper family missing and presumed eaten!

Last known photo of pepper family.

The little red pepper and the light yellow Hungarian pepper next to it were so sweet, they would have been overpowered in the stir fry, so I made tsukemono (Japanese quick pickles) out of them. That’s what’s on the plate to the right.

The camera built into the IPhone is pretty crappy. But then again, sometimes the best camera is the one you have with you at the time…

Demonstrating the highest level of commitment to workplace safety.

When I was in Japan and would eat at a restraunt, this is typical of the meal. 800 yen ~ $8

People learn that certain things are a certain way, like the brake is on the left. Eventually, they develop subconscious affordances such as brake instead of push left foot.
The gas station nearest to me obviously understands the affordance of cheapest button is on the left.

When people don't eat enough shrimp, they grow into these monsters. I think I saw one of them fighting Godzilla.

This is apparently how brussel sprouts grows in the wild - In the form of a club for striking people.

Aphids at work. No, they’re not working; I took this at my office.

A pair of pictures from Japan that I’m slooooowwwwlllllyyyy getting through…

The Sakura are just coming into full bloom now…

Sakura Flowers

Having a great time, glad I’m here.

Darren with cute girls in Tokyo

There’s still no update to the Cherry Blossom forecast for Japan…

However, the Sakura here in Northern California are in full bloom.

This morning I got a much better shot… Click for fullsize.

Everything’s a learning experience. Last night, I learnt a pillow is not an accurate distance reference. This morning, I learnt that a light stand is also not an accurate distance reference, but it’s a whole lot more accurate than a pillow ;)

This is the full setup…

Click on this self portrait for larger view via Flickr. Click on “Original Size” for 10 megapixel file and look deeeepppply into my eyeeeessss….

The story of the picture:

1. Discover that my Canon 5D Mark 2 can output to my television set.
2. Put macro lens on camera. Set for manual focus.
3. Put pillow on chair. Put chin on pillow.
4. Focus camera while looking at television.
5. Take off glasses without moving
6. Click shutter to take picture

This was the best of the approximately 50 times I tried. It is hard to keep your head perfectly still. And my eyeball is still out of focus – the photo appears focussed about 4-5 millimeters in front of my eyeball.

Of course, what’s really creepy is how much the human pupil resembles a sea anemone…

You know what really sucks? Long weekends where it rains on and off the whole time.

That is, unless you have a macro lens… Click on any for a bigger version.

Photos from the 2009 Shiny Stockings Ball are up.

A few weeks ago, my Dad said “Hey, you’re this big shot photographer – why are there no new photos of you?”

Well, because I’m not big on self portraits. Fortunately, my friend Larry is turning into an even bigger photo geek than me, and he occasionally catches me at dances… Granted, he was probably taking a picture of the cute girl, and I just happened to be dancing with her ;)

Freda, a co-worker of mine, forwarded me an email that this weekend would be a negative tide at Half Moon Bay. This refers to the day every year where the tide is at its lowest level, and there are lots of tidal pools to look at.

So, on Saturday, I packed up my camera, my new tripod, and my macro lens, and drove out to Half Moon Bay.

After about a 2 km walk, I rounded the corner of a cliff, and saw the tide pools. The water was about 500 metres from the beach, which was good, given the gazillion people who were there.

This seagull seems to be saying “what’s with all the stupid humans today?

For the first 200 metres or so, I walked on rocks. After that, it was pretty much all walking on mussels. Several people had brought buckets and screwdrivers, and were busy collecting mussels for dinner.

Of course, the really interesting stuff was the finds in the tidal pools… Like this Sea Urchin.

Some kind of Sea Sponge…

Anemone!

This is a close-up of a pair of starfish. They were hard as a rock.

And, of course, seaweed.