Before and After Photos of an Onstage Dancer

Kajimaya Celebration

 

 

When someone in Okinawa reaches the age of 97 a big party takes place.

Kajimaya ( カジマヤー) is the word for pinwheel.

Pinwheels and, other gifts are given to the elders on this memorable occasion.

At 97, you can start acting like a kid again; you're on the way to becoming 100 !

 In the morning, some events were held and, two senior women were honored.

There were speeches, presentations and a parade around town in a decorated vehicle.

Flowers and brightly colored pinwheels, decorated the automobile and village streets.

Then everyone went home to feast and rest up for the evening activities.

A wedding hall, inside Moon Beach Resort, is where this photo was taken.

It was fairly crowded with friends and family of those being honored.

Using an external strobe, mounted on the camera, I wasn't impressed with the results.

Using Adobe Elements the 6 million pixel image was cleaned up a bit.

Harsh shadows were lightened or, removed, to make the girl stand out as the subject.

And, some of the white background got moved around to clean up the wall behind her.

before posting the photo online, resolution gets lowered and it is shrunken.

That's to keep the enemy from borrowing and printing my images, for free.

Internet image thieves get a surprise from me, whenever they decide to swipe a photo.

Something as simple as Adobe elements, installs an invisible watermark, for me.

And, my tracking service, catches them when they post any of my photos online.

A nice legal-like notification, asks them if, they'd like to go to court.

Too busy, to catch that girl and ask her name yesterday, I'll see if, I can find her.

She has a humongous, high quality print, coming if, she feels like signing a model release !

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Here's Proof -- This Stuff Wasn't Just a Dream

It all started with an invitation to see this live band from Tokyo.

Most people, don't go out on Monday night but, yesterday was special.

It was Umi no Hi, a national holiday, in Japan.

 

The weekend, had me busy with photography, past midnight the last few days.

A gal named, Aki would be performing on stage.

If she wasn't such a darling, I would have stayed home last night.

She keeps flying to Tokyo, to sing and, we hardly get to see her anymore.

When she told me the door would be open at 7:30, I showed up at 7PM.

That gave me a chance to check the place out, before the crowds arrived.

The bar only seats about 65 people.

But, Aki is so popular 90-100 guests usually show up to see her.

And, when some fans, start dancing in front of the stage, she cracks up.

She is one heck of a talented young lady.

Trying to catch her eyes, while peeking through a camera view finder is hard work.

So, plenty of extra shots are taken, to make sure, I get it right.

Aki, gets hopping around on the keyboard, too.

It would probably be a good idea, to take 100 shots just to capture a dozen good ones.

While she was up there wiggling around, I noticed something.

The poor girl is running around with holes in her jeans.

But, she has a diamond, stuck on her nose so, I guess she's doing alright !