Off to Tokyo soon, which will probably mean an obscene amount of processing when I get back, which is on New Year's Day. So this will be the last entry of 2014. I'd just like to thank everyone who visits, be it just once or regularly.

With that, here we are. No particular theme this time, everything with the Merrill.

Great morning light

Pharmacy

Things don't break down that often in Japan (and these machines are no exception, which is impressive given how often they are used). So seeing one of them being fixed is rare enough to be worth shooting.

Construction

We had what is for Nagoya a pretty heavy snowfall, and the light in the morning was highly favourable.

On the staircase

Urban bamboo. We need to trademark a name for that. How about "urbamboo"?

Study in figure to ground relationships

These two cats were giving each other very suspicious looks until a car came along and the grey one moved away.

Behind Nagoya station, by the Bic Camera store. Nagoya's biggest, but they only deal in new gear. Always fun to visit to see what's new though.

I still haven't worked out how to nail a high ISO every time with the Sigma, but if you get the exposure right and convert to b/w using the blue channel trick, it is passable at this kind of size. This was ISO 1600, which is absolutely a non starter in colour, but with the technique I just mentioned, it's not too bad.

Ghostly scene. Long exposure at base ISO.

Scale

While most people grow out of shallow DOF shots after a while, nothing wrong with one here and there.

Some urban scenes...

While it would make more sense to end off with a sunset shot for the end of the year, I'm going to be slightly contrary and throw in a sunrise as a nod to the coming new year.

We'll be back in the new year with what will probably be a major series from Tokyo. Until then, best wishes to all for a prosperous 2015.

Thanks for looking!