I have been talking about Tadami for a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything else. This article is just a brief glimpse of what I have been up to.
One day in October, I thought it was a nice sunny day and had some free time in the evening, so I finally went out to Yanaka, one of the photogenic old towns in Tokyo. I went there to catch the sunset of “Yuyake Dandan(Sunset stairs)”, however, long story to short, failed.
This is what it looked like an hour before sunset. At this point, I had a bad feeling that the sky might not look like it would burn at sunset.
Unfortunately, the great sunset didn’t come on the day. I tried to force a red sky at sunset using RAW development, but the color turned out to be very strange, so it was rejected. There were other people besides me who expected a sunset in vain on top of the “Dandan”.
The color of the sky in this photo is also quite iffy, but I guess that’s just my share of feeling like a failure.
I think I may have fundamentally misunderstood the location of the “Yuyake Dandan(Sunset stairs)”.
I did a little research and found out that some of the following conditions must be met in order to see a beautiful sunset.
Sun position near the horizon
Moderate clouds that do not block the sun’s rays
High humidity
Moderate atmospheric dust and dirt
The humidity and dust may have been NG at this time, and the sun was still too high to burn in the photo above. There is a reason for this. I wanted to take a picture of the “last sunset shines in stairs” so I just couldn’t wait any longer for the sun to set and the area to be completely in the shade.
In other words, as an afterthought, my understanding of the shooting location and aim of picture were both quite far from correct. If I actually have to wait until the sunset beneath horizon to get a great sunset, “Dandan” in front of the tall streets of Yanaka is not “a place where the last sunset shines through the burnt sky,” but “a place where the sunset sky can be seen beautifully.” Therefore, I should have stayed until another 30 minutes later in the day and, for example, lowered the camera from the standing position shown above to capture the silhouettes of people watching the sunset on “Dandan”. That would have been too dark, so I might have used the lighter lens….
That’s all for now… I repent and reflect on my ignorance.
And speaking of reflection, I had no idea that the SIGMA 17-70mm I took with the K-3III that day was so weak against backlighting. I will have to think about how to use it and carry it with me in the future.
Weii, I’ll put up some other photos taken in Yanaka.
It was a weekday evening, and Yanaka Ginza was not so crowded. I guess it is now more of a tourist area than a local shopping street. Oh dear, the color of this photo is a bit odd.
A group of what appears to be foreign tourists stop by an traditional Sembei(rice cracker )shop. The drooping willow is cleverly nice.
It’s not easy to capture the wiggles of the “Snake trail” here in a photo, but this is one of the more successful ones out there.
And the clouds in the sky were completely autumnal!
Except for the fact that I missed the sunset, it was an enjoyable photo walk:-)
That’s all for this article about my walk around the old town Yanaka.
Equipment used: K-3III, SIGMA 17-70 contemporary
