Kansai International Airport (KIX)

Kansai International Airport with Skygate bridge from Rinku junction, Osaka Bay, Japan
When I visit an airport now I spend very little time in the terminal. We have our arrival time down to a fine art and usually barely pause from check-in to passport to boarding...just enough to buy the obligatory bottle of water that got confiscated on the way. But our journey through Kansai International Airport was not quite so ordinary.

We checked-in at the end of two weeks in Japan, in September and it had been very hot. We took advantage of the airport lounge which was very civilised, there's nothing like having refrigerated beer glasses and free Kirin on tap! And it's lucky we had a lounge...the terminal is pretty sparse once you're through security.

After a couple of hours of our flight being delayed it became clear through muddled english that our plane had been struck by lightning on arriving at Kansai and they were not able to fly us out that day. They eventually, after a couple more hours, asked us to reclaim our baggage and board coaches to local hotels. We were lucky and ended up in the Ana Gate Tower.

The next morning we were greeted with a fabulous view of the airport from the top of the tower and I took these pictures. One of these has recently been bought for a calendar. I'd love to know who bought it, my current hunch is that it was Arup, the company who did the engineering for the island airport.

Seacle Rinku Pleasure Town Outlet Mall with ferris wheel with coloured capsules and Ana Tower Gate Hotel, Osaka, Japan

Rinku General Medical Center, Izumisano Municipal Hospital, Rinku Orai-Kita, Izumisano, Osaka, Japan

Rinku Town looking north from the Rinku Gate Tower, including the Izumisano Gyokyo Aozora Market, and Hanshin Expressway, Japan


Rinku Pleasuretown Beach, Osaka Bay, Japan


Discount license
If you want to license the images directly at a discount, contact the photographer at sales@smyrnoff.com otherwise use the links above to license through Alamy.

Japan Photobook

I've finished the photobook and it has arrived. I am a little dissappointed with the finish but not so much as to complain to Cewe-Photoworld who produced it. Some pages show faint magenta and green banding across the whole page and the amount of sharpening they have used is more than I would have liked (my images are unsharpened for Alamy and Cewe don't give you control over it - rightly, as you can't judge it unless you know the printer they are using)

Before I archived the original files I took screenshots of the book layout in order to show a preview of it to my friends. Here are some highlights (below - or watch the slideshow)...the real thing runs to 84 pages! Most of the full page bleeds are available on Alamy in my portfolio, here.

I chose the XL Picture Hardcover book and so these double-page spreads are 60cm wide, the quality of the D300 images is fabulous, and it especially shines in some of the night shots which were all shot handheld at up to 1600 ISO with the wonderful 16-85 Nikkor VR lens (except for the A-bomb dome which was one of only two occasions that the tripod got used).

P.S. I'm still keywording the Japan images, but as of this afternoon, I will have 500 images live on Alamy, hooray!

It's all over!

Knife salesman behind display of knives at the Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo, Japan
...Japan, that is!!! I've finished editing my Japan pictures and so I shortly will have 250 images of Japan online with Alamy. I reckon 1 in 10 pictures I shot have been made it onto Alamy which means that I shot about 2,500 pictures in 14 days. There's quite a lot of sumo and baseball pictures which aren't of suitable quality for stock but perfectly good for my own album and web use, and a load of similars from things like the Kamakura horseback archery.

Of course, the downside of my collection on Alamy being so Japan-heavy is that my CTR will probably drop further since travel is such a competitive area. But, who cares, the hard work is over..almost. I have got to keyword about 150...

Fresh seafood and fish stall at the Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo, Japan 3/3

Fresh tuna on sale at the Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo, Japan 2/3

Land of Bridges

The wooden Kintai Bridge (Kintai-kyo) spanning the Nishiki river, Iwakuni, Japan 1/5" />
The wooden Kintai Bridge (Kintai-kyo) spanning the Nishiki river, Iwakuni, Japan 1/5
I am slowly coming to the end of editing Japan. I've managed to edit some 1,500 pictures with another 1,000 to go. A lot of the best pictures were taken in low light and so won't make it onto Alamy, particularly there are loads of the sumo and baseball which I took for myself knowing that ISO 1600 was not going to work for stock but we shall see.

This little selection reflects the Japanese tradition of bridge building both in miniature (in the garden below) and on a massive scale at Iwakuni (above). The bridge at Iwakuni is built from wood with no nails of screws. Over the centuries it has been swept away by floods and re-built to the same design and is well worth a visit. Iwakuni was the furthest west that we managed to travel in our two weeks in Japan, most of the next batch of pictures are from Miyajima and then Tokyo and Kamakura. The final 1,000 are from Kyoto including a grey skied Golden Temple which might not be good enough for Alamy.

Once I've finished with Japan I might feel like picking up the camera again. At the moment I have no inclination to bring it with me everywhere I go (like I did in the summer) as the weather is rubbish and it is dark when I commute to and from work. I can see some more table top images over the winter if I find the motivation to do it. In the meantime I am close to the 450 mark on Alamy which whilst a milestone has not resulted in any more sales...boo. Let's hope my premium pseudonym works for me.

Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan, showing bridge and moat 2/2

Bridge over the main pond at Shukkeien japanese circular stroll garden, Hiroshima, Japan

Discount license
If you want to license the images directly at a discount, contact the photographer at sales@smyrnoff.com otherwise use the links above to license through Alamy.

Excessive similars? Too much competition more like

Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan (deleted)
I have started editing the next batch of our Japan trip and so another 50-odd images are Awaiting Processing with Alamy. In the meantime I have come to a difficult decision, I am going to remove some of my images from Alamy. This is based on some consideration of AlamyRank.

The pictures illustrating this post are of Himeji Castle, probably the best castle in Japan as it was not bombed in the war and has not burnt down in recent history, and so is a stunning and almost unique site in Japan. Unfortunately it is not a unique sight for Alamy contributors as a search for Himeji castle shows 523 images. There are pictures of it in the autumn, pictures of it in the snow, pictures of it with cherry blossom and pictures of it at sunset, or at night...and so my 30 images of the place, albeit taken on a blue sky day, need to be significantly different to the others otherwise I will get lots of views (probably more than 10 views every time someone searches) and no zooms and sales. The effect on my AlamyRank would be significant.

I already put these pictures in my lesser ranked pseudonym but this morning I took the decision to remove 14 of the 30 pictures. The pictures on this post are now residing in my Alamy recycle bin awaiting deletion. I have also done a scan of some other recent pictures in my portfolio and deleted a couple of others - for example, a picture of the Lutheran Cathedral in Helsinki on a overcast day, there's 382 pictures of it on Alamy, none of which have a grey sky like mine.

The temptation to leave similars on Alamy is very strong. Once the images have passed QC they don't cost me anything to store, however the cost to my Rank - and hence my sales in the future - could be very significant. Whether I will ever learn to edit the pictures before uploading remains to be seen!

Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan (deleted)