daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
I love the light at this time of year. 🍂
By the way, I am sharing my snapshots on another site. Just pictures, no words. Please take a look!
Weekly photo challenge – Shine
こんばんは！How’s it going?
Today’s photo is of my son Koa’s pajama bottoms that he has been wearing. My oldest brother brought back these very light and comfortable bottoms from his travels in Southeast Asia last year for the kids and Mariko as Christmas gifts. The pajamas have a great elephant 🐘 design pattern on them… aren’t they great? Bay (15) and Mariko wore them right away, but Koa just started wearing his. I think he’s learning the value of wearing comfy pajamas! (He usually just wears sports shorts and a t-shirt to bed)
As for myself, I usually wear a large, soft t-shirt and then a pair of light pajama bottoms that my wife bought for me in Japan. They kind of look like jinbei bottoms and are really comfy – perfect for the summer. And I also have some similar bottoms that my brother gave me as a gift that has a honu (sea turtle) embroidered on it. They are really great as well.
But soon we’ll have to start wearing our warmer pajamas since the seasons are changing. 😞
I hope you had a nice Friday, and let’s enjoy the weekend!
おやすみなさい！
– B 
こんばんは！How was your Saturday?
Today’s photo is of our breakfast table, and the afternoon light coming in. I thought it looked nice the way the margarita was illuminated.
I like taking photos like this “still life” because it captures a moment in time… but more than a regular photo does. Of course photographs freeze a single moment, but what I mean is that there are things in this photo that tell more about the way we lived. For instance, if someone looked at this photo 100 years from now, they would see an antique camera, ancient computing device, and some kind of liquid in a fragile container. And that table… is that natural wood?
The photo is a glimpse into a bygone era.
Or, more personally, I like to think that a distant relative would be wondering what their ancestor’s lives were like. Maybe this photo could be something that would shed light on that mystery.
Or, it’s more likely that Mariko and I see this photo in 20 years, and it brings back some memories of our house, and how we used to enjoy our homemade margaritas.
I don’t know if any of this will come to pass, but I like to think that still life photos like this one would hold some value…
Take care!
おやすみなさい
– B
こんばんは！Hi, how’s it going?
At my work, we have a weekly food and/or drink social hour, where the company brings in food and we all eat and hang out. Today there were desserts including giant cookies, brownies, fruit tarts, lemon bars, etc. 🍪 I had to try one of the peanut butter cookies, but I kind of regret it. You see, I don’t eat sweets often, and so my body is ultra-sensitive to sugar, and I’ve also grown accustomed to less-sweet Japanese desserts. 🍡 I don’t know if those are less sweet, or if American desserts are just ultra-sugary, but at any rate I wasn’t feeling so great after eating that cookie. It didn’t help that the cookie was enormous!
Back at home, Mariko was baking a beautiful loaf of bread, and you can see it in the photo above. Pretty, isn’t it? To me, the fresh bread is like a dessert to me! I can eat good bread and butter all day. ❤️🍞
While thinking about my daily photo 📸, I looked around the kitchen to see if there was anything interesting, or something I’d like to capture so that years from now, when we are living far away, we can look back and see part of our everyday lives.
We have many “kitcheny” things in the house, so I took a photo of one of the shelves where we keep some oils and vinegars. In Lightroom I used the same preset that I applied to the bread photo. I really like the “look” of the photos from that preset. That’s one thing I love about Lightroom – the ability to adjust the settings and them save them to custom presets. I think it’s a nice way to develop a photographic style.
I hope you had a nice Thursday!
おやすみなさい！
– B
My camera of choice, the Fujifilm X100T, has recently been discontinued, which means the new model is on the horizon. The things I love about my X100T are that it is small, simple, lightweight, and the file-sizes are reasonable. It’s perfect for my style of shooting. That being said, there are some things that I wish my camera had… hopefully the next iteration of the X100 series will address these shortcomings:
These improvements are relatively minor, and the X100T is still an excellent camera. 📷 Just a few more tweaks, and it would be perfect!
こんばんは！How’s it going?
Today I made nine prints using my Fujifilm Instax SP-1 printer, from the photos that I took during the month of September. I quickly scanned through the month’s 406 photos in Lightroom, cropping the photos to the proportion of Instax prints (approximately 62mm x 46mm), then saving them to Dropbox. Next I accessed them on my smartphone, connected to the Instax printer, and printed them using the Instax Share app,
I love how the instant film prints look. Although I also have a photo printer and enjoy making prints from that, the instant film has a special look and charm that can’t be replicated in other mediums. And I can’t wait for the new square Fujifilm Instax format to come out… it should be close to the original Polaroid look.
I think it’s a good thing to make prints, as it gives the images an extra dimension (literally) and seeing a picture that reflects light is a lot different than seeing a backlit image like on a cellphone or monitor. That physicality gives the image a real place in the world, and not just limited to a bunch of data stored on a hard drive or in the cloud.
Anyways, I hope you all make prints of your photos!
おやすみなさい！
– B
