Year of the Sheep

Happy New Year and Happy Year of the Sheep or Kung Hei Fat Choy or Mǎnián dàjí.

Just like last year, I spotted this year's large sheep themed ema near the entrance to Nogi Jinja.

Nikon D600 with Nikon 16-35mm f/4G ED VR II AF-S IF SWM @ 16 mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 1/20 sec.

Year of the Horse

For those who follow these sorts of things, Happy New Year and Happy Year of the Horse or Kung Hei Fat Choy or Mǎnián dàjí.

Here's a horse spotted on what looks like a very large ema near the entrance to Nogi Jinja.

Nikon D600 with Nikon 24mm f/2.0 Nikkor AI @ f5.6, ISO 100, 1/100 sec.

Nogi Shrine Sakura at Night

I braved the evening spring showers and walked to Nogi Shrine located just a short distance from Nogizaka station. The cherry tree is in full bloom and is beautifully lit at night. The dramatic lighting resulted in an attempt (hopefully you may think it is successful) to use HDR. High Dynamic Range or HDR is used to capture a greater dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than can usually be taken with one exposure. For my attempt, I bracketed from 7-exposures in 1/3 stop increments. Photoshop CS5 was used to assemble the HDR final HDR image. Be sure to click on the individual photos because the Blogger reduced images don't look half as good without the extra pixels.

Nikon D700 with Nikon 16-35mm f/4G ED VR II AF-S IF SWM @ 16 mm, f5.6, ISO 200

Nikon D700 with Nikon 16-35mm f/4G ED VR II AF-S IF SWM @ 16 mm, f5.6, ISO 200

Nikon D700 with Nikon 16-35mm f/4G ED VR II AF-S IF SWM @ 16 mm, f8.0, ISO 200