Zōkyō

New Hokkaido series up at brianscottpeterson.com

Since late last year, right around the time of our dear savior’s birth, I have been working literally non-stop on a new project called Magnesium Photos (.com), The world’s most respected photo agency™ with a few photographer friends. It intends to be a new kind of photo agency and despite having started it just 3 weeks ago, I am very impressed and proud of what we have put together so far. The idea has been incubating for over 3 years and is finally coming to fruition in a whirlwind frenzy. We are still working out the kinks but looking forward to a good year. Keep your eyes on it…

Here’s a little excerpt from a piece I am working on for it:

For more about it, check out magnesiumphotos.com.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

We waited in line for literally hours to get to the top. It was of course very cool but the waiting was buzzkill. I think I may have take more photos, in fact, I’m quite sure I took more photos of this place but they are not developed yet. After we visited the castle, we visited the adjacent gardens.

FYI: Himeji-jo

Under the roof of a king…

We made it up to Himeji Castle and took the classic tourist shot. It was one of those, “Excuse me, would you please take our photo.” I always hand pick these folks, I won’t just ask anybody, but it just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover because despite handing this guy a simply point and shoot camera, with all the settings right, he still managed to completely botch it. I cropped the hell outta this to get the frame I wanted in the first place, hence the super lo-fi. More Himeji photos to come…

The next morning we started off at Ikuta Shrine. The Shinto shrine is located in the Chūō Ward of Kobe, Japan, and is possibly among the oldest shrines in the country.

According to Nihon Shoki, it was founded by the Empress Jingū at the beginning of the 3rd century AD to enshrine the Kami Wakahirume, and was used as the base for a festival welcoming warriors back from the latest attempt to invade Korea. It now apparently carries a reputation of being a place at which NOT to marry as many famous Japanese couples who have been married here have since divorced.

We had a long day wondering walking up and down Kobe’s hills. Heading back to our hotel, we stopped for a glass of red wine at a really cool place called “Diente Diente” before we did. Red walls, a great big bar, and friendly staff, with “Coffee and Cigarettes” playing on the screen. Perfect little hole in the wall in a really cool neighborhood. Well worth stopping by for a cafe and some window shopping on a trip to Kobe.

We still had two more days ahead of us, so we went home to make a little place for the next day then crashed.

Meandering around.