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posted: September 30th, 2013 |
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This page begins with September 7th and a trip to Katsunuma Budoukyo, in Yamanashi Prefecture. Katsunuma is famous for grapes and we went there to find some good buys on grapes. We found some too! Then I'll show you an old piece of wood which I have been working on for a while. That's all for Page 1. Click on any thumbnail to begin.
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| Begin September 7th |
On September 7th Kazuya and I got up kind of early (4:35 AM), got ready and left for our local train station. From there we went to Katsunuma-Budoukyo, which is a famous place for growing grapes. In fact, a good deal of grapes which we see in the supermarkets around here state that they are from Katsunuma-Budoukyo. So, we wanted to eat some grapes and also find some good prices and buy some. The 3 photos in this row show one of the first grape farms which we encountered as we walked from the Katsunuma-Budoukyo station in search of farms which would allow us to sample grapes and also purchase some. You should note what an intensive business this grape farming is - each bunch of grapes is wrapped in paper, probably to protect them from insects and birds.
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Here is a different type of grapes. The ones in the previous row were all black ones, while these are brownish, or wine colored ones.
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And, here is what appears to be another type of grapes.
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As we hiked along, we came across several places where we were allowed to sample the different types - to the extent that they sat us down at a table and brought us a bowl of grapes of several types to taste. Two farms even gave us a cup of tea to drink while we were eating the grapes. The photos in this row were taken at the 2nd to the last farm which we visited. This was where we bought most of the grapes which we brought home with us. In the center photo, note Kazuya standing beside that huge grape vine! It's practically a tree. You can also see the tables where the customers sat to sample the bowl of grapes which they gave out.
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This first photo is a portion of the previous photo. I used Photoshop's magnetic lasso to lasso that bunch of grapes you see in photo Sep07 24D. I copied and pasted that into a new image, filled the background with black and created this image. Then, I had too much time on my hands and also applied some effects to that photo. The 2nd image is texturized with a canvas texture and also blurred a tiny bit. The 3rd image is an inverted version of the 1st image.
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As I said, I had too much time on my hands - these 2 images have had an HDR (High Dynamic Range) effect applied to the first image in Row 5. I could have made 50 or 60 different images just with the HDR effect, the available settings are innumerable!
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The images in this row are from that same image from Row 5 again. The first one has had the exposure adjusted, so it's a bit brighter than the original. The 2nd image has had a sheet metal effect applied to it. Out of the 6 images with effects applied, is there any particular one which really excites you?
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Here is another photo showing one of the farms. The 2nd image is the selection of different types of grapes which were available at one of the farms, in fact this was the farm where we bought most of the grapes which we brought home with us. Note the prices - that is the price per kilogram (2.2 pounds).
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And, these 2 photos show what we brought home with us. Note that we also got some golden peaches. The total price of all of these grapes was only ¥1,900, or about US$19.00. We considered this quite cheap as the price for just one bunch at the supermarket is from ¥800 - ¥1,200.
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Kazuya did not get his photos downloaded and labeled until a couple of days after I created this page, so here are his best photos from this date. The first and third photos show 2 different types of grapes growing in the farms and the center photo shows a portion of a large farm on a hillside. It is unfortunate that neither of us took any photos which looked down on this whole area - the train station would have been a great place to take such a photo. Virtually the entire area was one huge grape farm. Of course this huge valley of a grape farm was composed of probably hundreds of ownerships, but regardless, it was an impressive sight.
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The 1st photo shows me beside that same grape vine shown above in center position in Row 4. As we walked along looking for the best farm to make a large purchase we passed this one farm that just had an unattended table with different types of grapes for sale and a little container to drop your coins into. The price of this bunch was ¥300, so cheap compared to local supermarkets! Notice how huge the individual grapes are by using Kazuya's thumb for scale. So delicious. We ate an incredible amount of grapes on this trip, but not enough to make us sick. We ate the grapes which we brought home with us for the following 6 days and we only had to throw away one grape which was soft and half rotten, only one!
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Well, today is September 16th. It's a National Holiday - Respect for the Aged Day - and a typhoon is passing by and giving us LOTS of rain and strong winds. Too much time on my hands again! So, here are some special effects done on the previous photo. The first one is simple - I just magnetic lassoed the bunch of grapes with Photoshop, copied it and pasted it into a new image. Then I rotated it a bit and filled the background with a nice contrasting color - that's the first image. Then I created an image using my Andrea Mosaic Software. This software takes a bunch of images which you, the user, select and uses them to fill in all of a particular photo with near color matching photos from that list of photos. This mosaic began as a 1,750 x 1,750 pixel image and ended as a 1 meter square image with about 13,635 tiles used in it to fill the spaces. Each tile is 1 centimeter in height x 1.6 cm in width. That's the 2nd image, which you can view full-size in a new tab or window by clicking the text below the image. If you truly want to inspect it then I recommend that you right click the text below the image and select the "save link as..." option. Then it will be on your computer and you can use your own photo software to view is at various magnifications. Note that it is 83.8 MB in size. The 3rd image shows the photos which were used to fill a small portion of the original image. By the way, there is a page, available from the "Special Items Page" and also available from the "Site Map", which shows some more images created with the Andrea Mosaic Software. That page is HERE (new window or tab).
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The first image in this row has had the "Plastic Wrap" Effect added to it in Photoshop - nearly makes the grapes look squashed. The final image has had a Weave effect added to it, an ACDSee Special Effect.
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| End September 7th, Begin September 16th |
Here is an old piece of wood which I found some months back - actually I found it on our Mt. Mitsutouge climb back on June 9th. I brought it home and then bought a really stiff and narrow wire brush. I would have liked to have sand-blasted it and then finished it, but not having access to a sand-blaster I decided to try the wire brush. I wire-brushed it for an hour or so, until all of the soft wood was removed. Then I sanded it a tiny bit, at least in the spots where it was flat enough so that I could do so. Then I sprayed it with a clear lacquer spray. Both sides of it are interesting to look at - one photo was taken from one side and the other photo was taken from the other side. I finally finished playing with it and wanted to show it to you.
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| End September 16th, End Page 1 |
| Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this page. Now, please go on to Page 2 for the continuation of this month's adventures. |
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