The lizard

The first place I wanted to check out in Osaka was Dotonbori. On the Ebisubashi bridge I found a guy hanging out with a dog and some kind of a lizard. I asked him, "Is that a crocodile?" and he said, "It's a monitor lizard from Indonesia", and confirmed that he was "taking it for a walk". Inevitably I asked if he minded me taking a picture and he consented, here's what I got. About a week later I saw him again at Ebisubashi, without the dog and lizard, so I guess he may be a local.

Osaka Castle

We're back from our trip to Japan, so here is a very Japanese-looking photo, a little later than promised. I took this at Osaka Castle; not shown is the crowd of other photographers who were also taking photos around this spot. At that time of day this was the best place to take a photo to get back-lighting on the cherry blossoms, but that left the castle itself partly in the shade. If I was really dedicated I would have come earlier and stayed longer to get a better shot, but there was plenty of interesting stuff to do!

While I was taking photographs near this spot a fellow cameraman came up to me and asked to see the photo I had just taken. He said, not bad, but if you frame less tightly you get more of a 3-D feeling in the photo, and showed me his. I felt a sense of accomplishment that my knowledge of Japanese photography jargon is just good enough to understand the phrase "3-D feeling".

Martial arts

Over the weekend I went down to Columbus Park in Chinatown and took this shot of three guys doing martial arts practice. Getting a good action shot took a while.

I'm going on holiday for the next few weeks so there won't be any updates until mid-April, but I plan to take a lot of photos while I'm away!

Accidental meeting

This guy was selling CDs to passing tourists on a street corner in Soho, and while I was waiting for the lights to change I decided to take a photo of him, unexpectedly he looked right at me at the moment when I pressed the shutter. Instant portrait.

Beach with flag