Eighth

Let the fireworks begin to celebrate the 8th blogsary of totomai.net formerly known as Distilling Thoughts. Yes, for 8 years, I had at least one post per month and I hope to continue it for the coming years.

Distilling Thoughts

a frozen stylus
webbed camera on the desk
an artist’s winter

illumination

a duet of clicks and quills

ideas of spring

summer memories

echoes of thousand shutters

autumn’s masterpiece

/totomai
for Poetry Panty 242

To celebrate this milestone, I joined a photo tour sponsored by Club Tourism held at Niigata Prefecture for the Ojiya Balloon Festival. This is one of the less popular festivals in Japan but it has its own following.

It is an air-balloon competition. Some participants came from other Japanese prefectures. Most of these balloons are colourful, a perfect contrast to the blue skies. Too bad that at some point it was very cloudy.

This event is usually held during winter. The snow, as well as the blue skies, pops-out the colors of the balloons. Photographers, enthusiasts and participants should be more careful while enjoying the activities in a snowy landscape.

Funny but almost everyone, especially the photographers, did not care about the cold temperature. For us, taking photos are more important than our health. I am kidding of course, but we are the crazy kind of hobbyists. Everyone wants to be in a good location to have a good view of the firework display. Not a fan of night photography, but thanks to Triggertrap for making it easier. 

By the way, I made a short video of the event. In case you are interested, click here to watch the video.

As the artificial lights painted the skies, some of last year’s highlights started flashing in front of me. All of them, but limit it to seven only, deserved to be mentioned once again.  

• Abu Dhabi - my first trip to the Middle East
• Angola - my first to Angola
• Selfie - my selfie photo won as runner-up in a photo contest here in Japan
• Poetry - featured in Poets United
• Book - published my first poetry book via blurb
• Photos - my photos were used as a poetry prompt at DVerse
• Hitachi Seaside Park - one of the most surreal places to visit  

Sorry for a lengthy post. To all who visited my site, you are all my inspirations for the past year -

Thank you very much!

Maraming Salamat!

Doumo Arigatou!

/totomai 
2015/03/08


Photos taken with Nikon D7000 
lenses used : 
     Nikkor 18-200mm 3.5f 
     Tamron 11-16mm 2.8f 
     Nikkor fish-eye 10.5 2.8f  
     Nikkor 105mm 2.8f