May 30, 2019
Isn’t Kendo interesting?
I think I better explain what I meant with
the problem was to make the photos interesting
in a previous post. I did not mean that Kendo isn’t interesting, just that for me the problem was to make my photos interesting. Let me explain, in Jutsu there is a lot of movement like when a person is being thrown
or when someone tries to kick someone
But there are also “slower” parts where it’s possible to concentrate on faces and details.
Add to this the fact that I know some jutsu, which makes it possible for me to guess what is going to happen right before it happens, which of course makes it easier for me to capture a photo at the right moment.
So what is it the makes Kendo more difficult? First problem is that I know nothing about Kendo, making it difficult to predict what is going to happen. Another problem is the protective gear Kendo practitioners wear, the helmet makes it much more difficult to catch facial expressions, the gloves makes it difficult to catch hand/finger movements, etc. My third problem has to do with Kendo itself.
This first attempt told me that Kendo is pretty much two-dimensional. With this I mean that much of the action is along a straight line. This makes things easy in the sense that I could position myself closer and use a different point of view. But I didn’t know that so I didn’t, I didn’t even consider it because if I would move closer in jutsu the risk of getting a body part slamming into me or the camera would be high. So in jutsu I want to keep some distance to the people I’m photographing, in Kendo I could be much closer … but I would of course have to check that it was OK before doing that.
BTW - sorry about no example photos from the Kendo shoot but they didn’t want any images online so I’m going to respect that.
Another thing that differs from jutsu is that the focus of the action seem to be when the Shinai (the bamboo sword) hits the opponent, in jutsu a number of things could happen. This means that I that if I want an action photo I know what to concentrate on, but this happens very fast so it’s more difficult to catch the right moment … and I’m not convinced that it makes for a good photo.
To just see the Shinai hitting the opponents helmet doesn’t make for a good photo … at least not more that a couple of good photos before it gets repetitive.
So the photos I liked best were photos taken at the start of an attack, they showed the fast movements, the energy and other things that seem to be what Kendo is all about. I also liked the more “portrait” like photos I took, which in my opinion shows the other side of Kendo - calmness and concentration.
Well, it was my first attempt so I can easily have missed the important parts of shooting Kendo just because I don’t understand.
martial arts
kendo
jutsu
photography
May 22, 2019
I’m currently trying out the TextExpander demo to se if it’s worth my money. I used to be a TextExpander user but when they switched to a subscription model I switched to Typinator and have been a quite happy user. The only problem is that there is no iOS counterpart. And since I’m trying to move more writing to my iPad I decided to try TextExpander again.
The other reason is that everybody is raving about TextExpander and how it is so fantastic. Well, after a few days of trying TextExpander on macOS I personally think that Typinator is a better way of spending your money (if you only work on one Mac and have no need for synchronization). To me Typinator feels faster and more stable, in TextExpander I find small glitches and it seem to be a little bit slower.
However, I really want something that I can use on iOS also, so that’s what my test is all about - is the iOS good enough to make me start paying the monthly fee?
Well, the iOS version does what it’s supposed to do … almost all of the time. If TextExpander support is a part of the app then everything works perfectly, but since the majority of iOS apps, including Apples, does not. So to make TextExpander useful everywhere it includes custom keyboards. And this is where TE fails a bit
The design of the keyboards are too distracting, the developers have chosen to make some of the key a very distinct blue … a very distracting blue in my opinion.
Also, compare the screenshot below with the one above. Note that the keys are larger - and in my opinion uglier - and that the characters are smaller which makes them harder to read.
The keyboards doesn’t give me the feedback I get on standard keyboards, i.e. I get no word suggestions, which makes me want to avoid these keyboards as much as possible.
But the most irritating thing is that sometimes the keys becomes dark to indicate that they don’t have “full access” … they have full access but for some reason TE think they don’t. Unfortunately the keys becomes difficult to read since I get black on dark gray. The easy way to fix this is to turn “full access” on/off and things are back to normal (for a while).
So what is my verdict? Well, I’m pretty neutral about the macOS version - as I mentioned above I think that Typinator is a better use of my money. The iOS version works but contains one bug that keeps popping up. I haven’t completely decided yet but I’ll probably start subscribing since I want the iOS version and I have no alternative … not because it’s better.
May 11, 2019
Two days ago I, for the first time, tried taking photos of Kendo. This after having been challenged by another photographer who said that Kendo was waaay more difficult to photograph than Ju-jutsu (which is what I usually take photos of). And yes, it’s more difficult … but not in the way I thought. After watching a few videos on YouTube I expected that the speed in the attacks would be the difficult part, but after a first look at my photos it turned out that the problem was to make the photos interesting.
I looked at some Kendo photos on Flickr and my photos are not much different than what I can find there. So, my guess is that I either don’t know enough about Kendo to make the photos interesting or that I need to find another angle (literally), probably a combination.
Anyway, it was my first attempt so I didn’t really expect to get any good photos but there are a few that suggests that I should take a different approach than I do with jutsu. More specifically, I think I should use a wide angle lens instead of a tele (depending on what happens in jutsu using a wide angle could be bad for the health of you, the camera and the practitioners … but it could work in Kendo … perhaps). I need to try again.
May 4, 2019
Fler bilder från Påsklägret i Linköping finns på mfoto.se 
May 2, 2019
The most useless, stupid, irritating marketing term must be “award winning” …
April 13, 2019
What I want from the next version of iOS? The ability to import photos from a memory card directly into app like Lightroom mobile 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻