Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Goodbye Lake Toya, Hokkaido, Japan

Got on the hotel coach leaving Lake Toya. The bus took a half way round the lake to the hilltop on the other side of where the hotel is. This journey took more than 40 minutes already; so you would know how big this lake is and how big scale of the volcano eruption happened 110,000 years ago. This lake is really something.

On this section of the journey, I tried every way to take some better shots but failed 99% since the trees blocked the way while the bus was moving pretty fast (I found out the roads here aren't steep and the Gov't did a lot of work in stretching the roads flatter; so the heavier vehicles can move pretty fast on the road.).

Again, I took my D-lux 3 to use the sport mode to take the photos. Supposed the 550D should have done a better job, but somehow the shutter sound of 550D is a bit too loud. Yes, a camera sound is loud in a quiet coach. The Japanese culture is that you should be considerate to the others by switching your cell. phone to silent mode on many public transportation. So we need to follow the local customs if it's not difficult. The difficult part of taking these photos is to keep my eyes wide open and be aware of any shorter trees ahead of the bus and what the bending road is. Besides, the coach's glass is also a problem. I couldn't stick too close to the glass as it would cause some sound. Anyway, it's very rewarding to see such a picturesque lake scenery photo, especially on the 2nd photo below.

3 comments:

pixmation said...

The #2 has a clear view of the island while the #1 has better contrast.

pixmation said...

Are you traveling with local Japanese tour?

in the sea said...

In Japan there is no need to join the local tour. Public transportation is very convenient. I took these 2 photos on the coach journey from the hotel of Lake Toya to Sapporo hotel. Actually the scene is really like an oil painting. I think I used some zooming on the #2 photo. That made the contrast a bit less.