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predawn photography

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Every year end, when visiting with Mari's family in Miyazaki, I've taken a pre-dawn excursion for photography.

This year I have a bike at my disposal. It's my bike, which we had shipped down from Tokyo rather than pay Y50,000 to have it shipped to Toronto and then promptly stolen. I hate to make decisions based on fear but the reality is that in Toronto a $60 bike is a target for thieves (a friend of mine once lost such a bike in a matter of days) and my Y130,000 cromally Panasonic machine would likely vanish within days of parking it in the city center, where I work. Rather it stay here in the sticks and get used once in a while than be lost entirely. It's paid for itself many times over in transit savings in the 3.5 years that I've owned it, so I don't mind retiring it and buying something new and less conspicuous in Toronto.

All of that aside, I'd taken the bike around the local auto garages yesterday looking for someone who could refill the flat front tire, and upon accomplishing that took it for a spin to the sea side where I found not only an interesting series of rocky little islands I'd not seen before but also a fascinating shrine set deep within a cave. So today's journey was a re-enactment of that journey but using the early morning twilight to get some effective photos.

Even here in southern Japan it gets a bit chilly in the Winter, with the temperature down around 0C and frost. But with the ideal road conditions (the frost isn't bad enough to damage the pavement, and there's virtually no traffic) it was good fun to drift silently through the Monday morning quiet and get the sort of light I wanted. Woohoo!