I'm Kate!!??

In our city, a children's costume parade has been held every year over 17 years on Children's Day, May 5th. This year about 200 children dressed in fancy costumes marched on the main street. The girl in this photo who was impersonating Kate Middleton posed with smile to my camera while her husband was talking with a masked clown. A man with a red cap on behind her is a mayor who joined the parade. It looked as if the street was drastically changed into a fairyland that day.

Japanese Wisteria

Japanese wisterias are full in bloom in our area. These two phots were taken in a little park in our city. When I was preparing for photographing, they started to swing in a breeze. I used the slow shutter to capture gently rustling wisterias which smelt sweet in the warm spring breeze.

Framed Photos of Flowers

Today I learned how to frame a photo by using Adobe Photoshop in my photography class which I attend every other week. The flowers are Japanese peony flowers which are said to be one of the most gorgeous flowers in Japan. I photographed them in a little park in our city. They look more gorgeous in the frame.

Catching Crusian Carp Ritual

These are photos of a spring Shinto ritual which is held annually at Inyaku-Shine in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture. It is called Funatori Shinji or Catching Crusian-carp Ritual in which young men wearing only a red or white loin-cloth jump into a pond at the shrine, catch crusian carps, and throw them toward people who gather to watch the ritual. It is said that mud flung with carps at people will protect them from illness throughout the year. The boy shown here may live to one hundred. I enjoyed taking snap shots of the ritual together with many shutterbugs like me, while trying not to get muddy.

Model Photo Session

Last Sunday I attended a spring session for photographing a model which was hosted by a local newspaper photography circle in Kumamoto Prefecture. It was held in Kumamoto Castle where the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Arriving at the castle, I was surprised to find out that there were about 300 photographers!! At first I felt uncomfortable shooting a model with so many experienced-looking photographers but I took about 300 photos of this model against the background of cherry blossoms, the castle and its stone walls, and so on.

Yellow Flowers

This photo is part of the vine coverd fence at my house. Now yellow flowers are blooming. I think that they are the same kind of yellow flowers growing in the backyard of my friend's house in California. I don't know their name.

High Schoolers on The River

On my way to the spot where I sometimes go to take a snap shot of kingfishers, I noticed a high school girls practicing rowing on the Kuma River. I pulled over my car and photographed them with my 500mm tele-photo lens in order to make bokeh of yellow flowers blooming on a bank in the foreground. It looked like that they were enjoying their bloom of youth in the warm spring morning.