The Artful Engineer

As I mentioned in the previous post, Aomori Prefecture is the northernmost prefecture on Japan’s main island of Honshu. The city of Aomori itself averages 26 feet of snow annually, more than any city in the world. I visited in November, and December–February turned out to be one of the snowiest in decades. It would be spectacularly beautiful, but hard to get around.

The first three images are from Asamushi, a small town a couple miles up the coast from Aomori. This is where we stayed during our visit. The muted fall colors on the island above are a result of the rain. I resisted the temptations to boost the colors and contrast because it would have undermined the quiet, peaceful feeling.

The edge of the same small island is poking into the right hand side of the frame in this next image. I love the light in this image, and the black silhouettes against the complementary orange-and-blue colors work very well. The lamp is a nice bonus, although if I had better appreciated its presence at the time, I could have crafted a composition that featured it more prominently.

I do love silhouettes of trees, and these two made an unusually dynamic duo.

The final three images in this post are more urban, made on a visit into the city of Aomori itself. This next image, featuring reflections of support cables of an otherwise out-of-view bridge, would go well with some of the Tokyo urban abstracts that I posted a few weeks ago.

Dark storm-clouds behind buildings—or anything else—lit by direct sun always make a nice foundation for an image, a general motif that I enjoyed more often while living in Arizona. Here the light is combined with a graphic composition. The three areas of the image each have very different textures.

I made a variety of compositions of this striking building. The stark gray building against the ominous sky works really well. The color palette is very subdued, essentially a faintly-blue gray building against faintly-purple gray clouds. The result is dystopian.

Like everywhere I visited in Japan, Aomori is worth more time than I had to give it.