Shrine Weekend

I got out into "Japan" this weekend (that is what we call it when we leave base), and went to a couple of shrines and temples to take some pictures. I shot a few pictures with my Kiev 60, and one roll each with my Arcus C3 and my newly acquired Yashica Electro 35 GX. I put about three rolls through my Ricohflex TLR camera, though. For those of you not familiar with a TLR, it is a kind of box camera, like you would expect to see your grandfather using. They are a lot of fun (as long as you are not in any hurry) and can take some really great pictures. Using these old cameras kind of strips away all the superficial parts of photography, and just leaves you with the fundamentals. In the end, all photography boils down to the same thing, and it doesn't matter whether you are using a 100 year old pinhole camera, or the latest 16 megapixel digital SLR, the light is still the same, and the same fundamental process is at work.

The Argus I mentioned above is a camera I just had sent to me from my parents. It was the first camera I owned. We bought it at a Salvation Army store for a few dollars when I was taking a photography class at a local junior college one summer. That must have been about 1984 or 85. It served me well for that class, and based on the pictures I took this weekend, it is still a great little camera.

Anyway, back to this weekend. On Saturday I managed to get out of the house to go to a couple of shrines and temples to get some pictures. All three places I went were almost entirely empty, and completely beautiful, making for great shooting opportunities. The best was the last place I went, a shrine in Fussa. When I got there, they were burning piles of leaves on the grounds as part of a clean up, and the columns of smoke winding around the statues and trees made for a very picturesque scene. I shot a full roll with my TLR, and most of another with my Argus. It was kind of magical...