This post is going to be a living document for a few weeks, depending on how much time, energy and connectivity I have. I’ve come up to Hokkaido, where I run my winter tours, for a 12 day trip with the first half being a reconnaissance trip for a possible new Landscape workshop that I want to put together for 2012. Then I will meet up with a friend that was to be on the whirlwind wildlife tour before I canceled it for lack of interest. There was no obligation for me to do this, but I also wanted to photograph the Eagles and Cranes here without the group that I’ll be coming back with in a few weeks time. As much as I love doing my Hokkaido Winter Wildlife Tours, and as much as I allow myself to shoot, I’m never photographing fully for myself on the tour. I’m always conscious of my group, as I should be, but this means that it’s actually been five years since I was in Hokkaido in the winter just for me, so here I am.

My plan is to pretty much circumnavigate Hokkaido over the next 12 days, as you can see in the below map. If you don’t know where Hokkaido is by the way, it’s the big island at the top of Japan, above Honshu. If you don’t know where Japan is, it’s the banana shaped island next to Korea and China!

On January 26, 2011, I left my Tokyo home at 2PM, for a ferry from the port of Ooarai, in the Ibaraki Prefecture.This is basically Day zero, as the map above starts at Day 1, after the 19 hour ferry journey.

The roads were clear so the drive took just under two hours. I stopped at the convenience store just outside the port and bought dinner and breakfast, and a few tinnies, in case I needed some help getting to sleep in my bunk. I was in a Casual Room, which could have been inhabited by 12 other snoring blokes. Luckily there were only two others in the room, and I’m sure I snored louder than both of them.

There was no Internet connectivity, either wireless or by my Pocket Wifi, and for some reason, I felt really tired, so I just crashed out pretty much as soon as we set sail at 18:30. It was a weird night’s sleep. The rocking of the boat obviously encroaching into my dreams, as I kept dreaming that I was in the basket of a hot air balloon, weaving my way through streets, under the power cables etc.

Day 1

I slept on and off, then got up at 6AM to see if the sun rise would give me any nice shots. The speed of the ferry combined with the already cold northern Japan winter air made me pleased that there wasn’t really anything on the boat to include with a sunrise in back, so I gladly went back to bed for three more hours.

After a while there was an announcement that the tallest brick Lighthouse in Japan could be seen to the left of the ferry, so I went back outside and took a few shots. Unfortunately the warmth of the sea water hitting the cold air meant that the air along the horizon towards the tip of Honshu were shimmering and so it wasn’t really much of a scene to capture.

Before I headed back into my room, I noticed a patch of sunlight pouring through a gap in some heavy cloud behind us, and having tried a few different compositions, quite liked this one.

I cut most of the light coming through the clouds off, but I thought I’d share my thought process here.

My car was filthy before I got started so I stopped at a gas station, filled up, and then had them wash my car while I was there. This can be a time consuming activity in Japan, especially when they also sell you $150 worth of Winter style windscreen wipers, that don’t freeze up as easily as my native Tokyo ones. I arrived at my hotel in Jousankei, marked Day 1 on the above map, just as the sun went down. I went out as it got dark, feverish to make some images, and got the following two by the river behind the hotel.

The warm light isn’t a sunset, it’s the lights from the hotel on the other side of the river, but what the hey! The below photograph is the larger scene. This is a typical hot springs hotel town here in Japan, but you gotta love those snow pillows! 🙂

I wasn’t actually expecting to get anything worth sharing today, so I’m happy enough. It’s off to bed now, and up at 6AM for a sunrise. My trusty iPhone tells me that the sun will rise pretty much down this river, so I might get some naturally warm light around my snow pillows tomorrow. If not, it’ll be back in for an early breakfast then hitting the road. I have a long drive tomorrow, and the roads are icy and scary for us non-initiated.

Day 2

OK, I didn’t have any Internet on Day 2, but I do on Day 3. The problem is, I’m making more photos now, so just going through them all and doing black and whites of the ones I want to do so with is taking a lot of time. I’ll see if I can give at least a quick update though.

It was overcast when I got up on Day 2, and with the mountains at the end of the valley, it became obvious that there would be nothing to reflect in the water in the river, so I switched the plan B, had breakfast as soon as they opened and hit the road.

When I got out to my car the thermometer told me it was -7 Celcius, which explains why my rubber floor mats had become almost as hard as plastic and pushed back against my foot as I pushed down on the accelerator. It was even more worrying as it pushed back when I hit the break for the first few times, but then it started to soften up as the car warmed up.

The main objective today was to get up to a place called Haboro, where I would spend the second night, and I estimated that I’d be able to stop for up to two hours of photography, if the roads remained clear. I wanted to get close enough to Haboro to make sure that I could actually get there though, without getting snowed in somewhere, so I fought the temptation to stop at a number of promising looking spots.

The first spot I did stop at looked promising, but didn’t turn into much. Then, as I drove through a small town that I believe is called Boro, I saw a lighthouse on a promontory. Lighthouses always add a nice feature in a shot, in my opinion, so I started to see if there was anywhere to shoot it from, and just as I was about to leave town, I found it.

Had there been no where to park, I’d have missed this, but luckily there was a small lane that led down into the harbor in the village, and it was wide enough to park and still allow people to get past.

I ended up stacking two ND8 and an NDX400 neutral density filter, almost 15 stops worth, for a 30 second exposure here (right). That and a little bit of Silver Efex Pro gave me a relatively nice shot, I thought.

After that, just past a town called Rumoi, I spotted some cormorants on some wave-breakers, and swung the car around again for this shot.

I love it when the sun is shimmering on the water like this, especially when there is heavy cloud near the horizon. A lot of the time if there isn’t heavy cloud, but it is cloudy, I’ll drop a neutral density grad over the top of the sky in Lightroom, but this one is natural.

I stopped a few more times, but then arrived at Haboro. I had a drive through the back roads, around the farms, and found some nice spots, but with no fresh snow and relatively clear skies, it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Then as it got down, I headed into the harbor and did a few more long exposures, like the one below.

Day 3

I didn’t expect this trip to be so easy when it came to early starts, but because I hadn’t noticed anything that would warrant a dawn shoot, I decided to east breakfast at 7AM again and then headed out.

It had snowed about 15cm overnight, and was still snowing as I left the hotel. Having spent most of the last 10 years in Tokyo, I’m always a little dubious about driving in snow, but I had my $150 Winter windscreen wipers from the first day, so I felt confident! 😉

It was actually easier driving on fresh snow than on the nasty ice that get’s left around later, and it was well below freezing again, so there wasn’t much risk of the fresh snow being on wet ice, which is extremely scary.

The fresh snow changed everything though. I had around 130km to cover today up to Wakkanai, at the northern tip of Hokkaido, and again, with the snow, I intended to get a good way there before I started to photograph. Famous last words! I couldn’t get out of town. There were beautiful little snow covered things everywhere. I haven’t been able to get through all of my pics yet, so I won’t show you all of them but here’s one of my favorites from just outside of Haboro (right).

This sky is half real, and half Lightroom by the way. It was a heavy snow filled sky, but not heavy enough, so I helped it a little.

The drive up from Haboro to Wakkanai was amazing. This is a beautiful area. Unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the snow gave way to clear skies as I drove further north, until it was positively balmy towards the northern most tip of Japan. I stopped and made a few long exposures of Rishiri Island, but I’m not fully happy with them. The skies weren’t cooperating. Then, as I pulled into a small habor on the edge of town, I found this prehistoric frozen camel-horse, cow, thingy…

You gotta love driftwood!

I got the angle finder out and a 16-35mm, and aligned the sun with this guys back and grabbed a few shots. I had to make sure I had a catchlight in his eye too, or this wouldn’t have worked. 🙂

I then took a good drive around, looking for some of the other things I wanted to photograph, and did some more long exposures before heading for the hotel. I can’t decide which one to post though, so I’ll leave it for today. It’s already an hour later than I wanted it to be, so good night!

Day 4

By the end of Day 3, I had a bunch of locations that I wanted to visit on day 4, but weather conditions would dictate which one’s I aimed for at dawn. As there was cloud cover, I decided to use the dawn light for a moody photo of some wooden frames that they use to hang and dry fish from near one of the harbors.

Now, for you Michael Kenna fans out there, before you come screaming to me that I’m copying his work, I know. I am specifically searching out some of the locations that he has shot on this trip, because I want the tour that I’m developing to appeal to people that like this sort of work.

I personally love these shots, and I am trying to bring my own feel to the images I’m creating. In fact, sometimes when I have some of the subjects or scenes framed and ready to shoot, I pass it over, because it’s too similar to something I have seen of Michael Kenna’s work. But, I’m not Michael Kenna, and I have no intention of trying to emulate his work. The subjects are the same, but they are represented how I want to.

So why the long winded explanation? Because the back of the frame to the left here, is the right of two frames that Michael Kenna shot in a very similar way. I know that some people will jump on me for this, but don’t bother. I know! 🙂

After I’d photographed these fish hanging frames, I drove around the harbor, and then around the Wakkanai harbor, and noticed a sea mist, so I broke out the 600mm and did a vertical pano for this shot.

The wind electricity generators in the background are on the other side of the Souya Harbor, which is where I headed after this, and found these eight boats perfectly lined up in the Souya Port.

This is one of my favorite shots of the trip so far. I shot about four or five frames here, each over two minutes long, and I got the clouds just how I wanted them in this one. Again, I was stacking lots of ND filters.

I ended up at the northern-most tip of Japan, a few kilometers up the road from this Souya Port, and had to set the 10 second timer for this tourist memory shot.

That white streak on the sea is drift ice. This stuff is essential for shooting Steller’s Sea Eagles and White Tailed Eagles, as they need somewhere to perch to eat, and we need somewhere to throw the fish on to, to lure them. I was pleased to see that the Okhotsk Sea was full of drift ice for over 100 kilometers as I drove down to Oumu, where I’d spend the night and get up for a sunrise shot on…

Day 5

So, having spent way too long going through my pictures in the hotel at Oumu, I was really not up for getting up at 6AM for a sunrise shoot. I even said to myself that the world doesn’t need another sunrise shot, trying to talk myself into going back to sleep. But, the cold air and drift ice does funny things to the sun in this part of the world, so I headed down to a point where I would be able to photograph the sunrise at about 6:30AM.

Well, for the first time in my life, I witnessed the fabled “Square Sun”.

Then, I almost got the legendary “Wine Glass”.

Then it became clear where Apple got the iTunes Logo from.

Then, just as I thought it was all over, someone decided to pour a ginormous blob of molten metal through the clouds.

After the dawn drama, I took a steady drive down to the Saroma Lake, where I spend the hold day driving the entire circumference of this huge lake, looking for interest locations. I found surprising few, but enough to keep me happy.

Boy did I wish that was an eagle in the tree not a crow…

And, that took me to the end of Day 5. Tomorrow I hook up with a friend flying in from the States, and we’ll be shooting Eagles and Fish Owls in Rausu for three days, then over to Kushiro for the Red-Crowned Cranes for the three days after that.

The volume of shots is going to increase from tomorrow, and I know that I don’t have Internet Connectivity in the first hotel, but if I get a chance to throw up a few quick selects in the coming days I will.

I’m very pleased with this first five days, and believe there’s a tour here for 2012. If by the way, you are interested in shooting in the locations we’ve looked at in the post, please do drop me a line, and I’ll keep you up to date on my plans. In fact, even if you aren’t a definite starter, please let me know if you “might” be interested, because that will help me to gauge interest, and fuel me to get things planned ahead of other priority tasks. You can drop me a line via our contact form here.

Thanks for keeping track of this trip too. I really appreciate all of your interest and support!

See you when I get a signal again…