stratiSphere

I arrived in Hamamatsu on November 2nd, 2011. For the past nine months I have called Shizuoka-ken my home away from home. Some of things I love about Hamamatsu are as follows: The best thing about Hamamatsu is the climate. While I might have been lucky that it has been relatively mild, temperature wise, I feel like by default, the climate in Hama is drier and cooler than most places in Japan that I've had the privilege to visit. That alone makes it a special place.

This really resonates with me, all the wars we fight and all the people that die from violence for example are all a victim of the struggle of geography. Food water all a result of geography. It needs to be more important in education. Good video/message, hope you find a chance to watch it.

Language has always been important to me. I have been listening to Japanese for 12 years. I took a class in Japanese in my second year of high school. But I've had mixed spats of study in the realm of grammar and verb conjugation , ect. I've taken a few university courses and went to Japan while in Art school. Long story short Japan and its language has always been a part of my life in some way. Now I live there and am feverishly trying to improve what little I do know of the language. What I lack most is practice in speaking. But this is also complicated by my weak grasp on taking what I know and adding grammar and new vocabulary to the right situations in a timely manner. So while my speaking confidence is low, my listening confidence is much better and I can generally listen to someone talk in their native speed and manage to provide the right combinations of responses so that they can continue trusting that I understand what they have said. In reality, I maybe under...

Osaka Donjon

Sayonara days of limited quality and control!  A new adventure begins. Check out a review of this camera on  DPreview.com When I first got into photography it was a SLR Pentax that my dad got me for my birthday. I was pretty young, I don't recall the age I was, but it was pretty cool. Later I got to use the family's Sony Mavica on some vacation, I don't recall the details but digital cameras were cool. In the early years of the new millennium I got a Sony Mavica CD1000 which used mini CDs as the medium to record to. It has an amazing zoom! And a whopping (at the time) 5 mega pixels!

Why and how we react to the Earthly events that we cannot control. By Alex Stratis 03/17/2011 image used from HTE When earthquake, flood, fire, etc., occur in an area that is not inhabited by humans, it does not generally get any notice by the media, and therefore is not really a disaster. What I am saying is that disaster is relative to what it affects. Imagine now, if you will, a Japan/Hati/NZ-like island, void of any people. The best way to do this is to go back in time before humans existed. Why do this? Well, for perspective, what was the coast of Japan like back then? For thousands of years landscapes were formed by volcanoes and earthquakes. Why is this relative?

Exploring the Moss This post is an attempt to draw a picture, through words, of my perspective on photography and specifically  it's meant to give a friend, who recently asked me for some advice on getting into photography. I am no expert, in fact my cameras are way below par (as of the date I post this). But I have a serious passion for capturing what I see, vision is a wonderful gift and sharing that gift with others can be a lot of fun.