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1000 Gates



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A gloomy day in Kyoto did little to stop thousands of tourists – myself included – from flocking to the famous orange gates of Fushimi Inari Shrine. Stubbor...
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A gloomy day in Kyoto did little to stop thousands of tourists – myself included – from flocking to the famous orange gates of Fushimi Inari Shrine. Stubbornly determined to get a shot without the flood of fellow admirers in frame, I waited until a break in traffic granted me precious few seconds to snap this composition of my travelling companion.
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Behind The Lens

Location

This photo was taken deep within the seemingly-endless gated walkways of the stunning Fushimi Inari-Taisha shrine in Kyoto, Japan.

Time

We ventured up the shrine around noon, just as the clouds that had been threatening all morning to break their truce decided now was their time to strike.

Lighting

The sun was nowhere to be seen, so overcast, heavily-diffused light was the order of the day -- a shame, I recall thinking, as the slats of the gates would have created some striking shadows. Despite being taken wide-open at f/1.8, the resulting shot was still about a stop underexposed in the dim light, so I relied on the dynamic range and ISO invariance of the Sony A7II's sensor in post to enliven the final shot.

Equipment

This was taken hand-held with a Sony A7II and one of my all-time favorite lenses, the Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8. The two make for a perfect travel and street combo; the body is not only light and low-profile despite containing a stabilized full-frame sensor, it yields impressively sharp and malleable RAW images with the aid of the 55mm. To put it in perspective, the combined weight of the camera and lens is less than just the body of a Canon 5Dm3!

Inspiration

Within the shrine, this particular location is perhaps the most strikingly beautiful due to how densely packed the gates become, creating a narrow, weaving tunnel of orange. As such, it's a real challenge to get a moment without fellow tourists in the frame, but I wasn't interested in creating a shot without some kind of unique element present, as I would then be taking a picture that plenty had taken before me. So while we waited for a break, I asked my friend to trial a few positions and poses. The umbrella was actually more of a practical necessity at this point, but once I saw how well the black carried the striking contrast with the orange through to the top half of the frame, it became a critical prop to the composition. After 15 minutes or so, a window of about 3 seconds opened up without anyone else in the shot, and this was the only usable shot from that moment!

Editing

In Lightroom, the image required over a stop of exposure compensation to account for the dim light, and also some aggressive dodging on my friend's face to bring her out of the shadows. Furthermore, increasing the saturation of the orange and strengthening the blacks helped the image to pop. I also took the photo into Photoshop to lessen the visual dominance of the left-most lantern. In the unedited exposure, it was close to the foreground of the shot, and therefore quite large and out of focus, detracting from the composition. So, using a photo taken earlier during the test shots where the lantern was smaller and closer to the focal plane, I actually clone-removed the foreground lantern and composited in a smaller, slightly-sharper lantern closer to my subject, creating a more pleasingly balanced frame.

In my camera bag

I was shooting with an Sony A7II for this trip to Japan, but I have since upgraded to the Sony A7RII to take advantage of 42 megapixels and a silent shutter, which further enables my fly-on-the-wall street photography style. It may not be the fastest-focusing or most robustly-built camera on the market, but my goodness is it capable of taking breathtaking pictures in a neat, travel-friendly package. As for glass, if I'm traveling on foot and I'm not entirely sure what I'll be shooting, my satchel will contain 2-3 lenses. Firstly, the ever-reliable Sony Zeiss 16-35mm f/4 for any architecture or landscape moments that almost always arise. Next, the Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 for any portrait or low-light situations. Lastly, and depending on the subjects I expect to encounter, it's either an adapted Voigtlander 35mm f/1.2 II for its unique rendering and unmatched brightness, or if I'm expecting wildlife, the large-but-still-quite-light Sony FE 70-200 f/4.

Feedback

If you're traveling to a popular tourist destination that has been photographed more times than the sun, sometimes it's useful to look up images online before you go -- not just for inspiration on what shots to take, but also to gauge what shots to avoid if you want to create something that stands out from the crowd. As beautiful as they may be, I knew I didn't want just another empty shot of the shrine; so I made an effort to get something more personal, and having a willing friend to stand in as a model certainly helped me achieve that! It's also important to embrace the conditions that the day has dealt, be it rain or hail, as it can ultimately make for a more interesting shot by encouraging you to get creative in the absence of ideal light. Lastly, if your schedule permits, take time to explore your destinations through your lens, rather than taking the classic tourist photo and moving on to the next. What this photo helped me to learn as a shy, hobbyist photographer is that travel photography isn't just about observing and capturing moments as the pass by, it can also be about creating and participating in them.

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