Friday, October 30, 2009

Myo Sim Kendo Green Belt Rank Exam

Here are some of my digital pictures from the Myo Sim Kendo rank exam last night. I took 20-ish film shots, too, and I'm taking most of them to get developed later today.


Kyle!


One-step 2.


One-step 3.


Kneeling iai 2.


Awaiting instructions.


End of an iai. Probably Standing iai 1.


Standing iai 2.


Listening to Master Shaw.


Standing iai 3.


Standing iai 3, chiburi.


Brown belt Jo Kata fun.


Sword etiquette.


Master Shaw's sword.


More sword etiquette.


And more sword etiquette.


And then right before even a little bit more sword etiquette.


Armoring up for sparring.


More armor.


Pierre vs. Barry.


Some guy watching the test from the track.


Ann vs. Ian.


Sword vs. no sword.


More sword vs. no sword.


Four brown belts, one sword each, vs. a second-dan with two.


The successful candidates in their shiny new belts!


Another success picture.


Everyone (save our intrepid photographers).

Sunday, October 11, 2009

HDR photography - my first attempts

Recently, I tried my hand at making HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs. My first attempts weren't all that good, but after receiving advice on a better program to use to combine the images, I tried again and received acceptable (to my untrained eye) results. Here they are. I'm first having the three or four constituent images, followed by the HDR combination.

Newcomb Plaza:



HDR:

A tree by Brown:



HDR:

Another tree by Brown, this one facing skyward and made up of four initial shots (even though the darker two are quite similar):




HDR: