Hello!

Here is Izumi and yes again I have been to the ancestors' resting place but for a different artistic purpose so I hope you don't think I am just having repeats of my actions and being lazy in my offerings to you.

Because I have been to the ancestors many times now (and you are maybe thinking that M Cartier-Bresson would not be going as many times himself - and I know you are right but please read me for my reason) and I have been there as a location with interesting morning light and to test the pinhole lenses (which as you know were unhappily not very sharp in most cases to satisfy me), I thought that to have a happy memory of the place I would go there one more time but I had to have a different method in my walking around the resting places.

So I had the thought to look upon the statues as if they had walked into my uncle's studio to have their portraits taken. Sometimes I used to watch when my uncle photographed different people and sometimes also he would let me help a little so it was not so much of a strange land to me.

So as I walked up and down the rows of stone I looked at the faces and if I saw an interesting one I asked if I could make a portrait of it.

The soft and warm early morning light seemed to go into the marble or the sandstone of the carvings and give them a glow that was almost like a life that was living inside them.

My PEN liked this and reacted very happily as you can see from these photographs here. Also he was wearing the long zoom lens so we could get close up to the faces as if they were in a studio and I could have my camera the best distance from them for a naturally happy photograph.

You will notice that the blue of the skies can be quite different in these photographs. This is not because I was playing with the coloured sliders in Photoshop or anything like that. No, it is the way it came out once I had adjusted the lightness and darkness and contrasts to my liking.

I think it was mainly caused by us being there very early in the morning from the sunrise for about an hour, so the angles of the sun's rays kept changing and I was pointing my PEN in all different directions too.

Most of the time I can understand why there are particular statues and figures beside the resting places but sometimes what is being shown to me in the carved stone is very odd.

I have not read very much of the Bible books but I know that there are various versions of them so maybe some of these tableaux are from editions that are not very well known or are very old and the stories in them are not read very much any more.

And of course if you have been coming with me for a while you will know that I also had Man Friday with me and the PEN was mounted on him for almost all of the photographs both to make steadiness and also to let me think about the light and the framing without having to hold him in my hands all the time.

I also found that having the shutter on a two-second delay meant that my fingers did not make the PEN jiggle when I pressed his shutter button.

I know that there are a lot of photographs here but they are all happy ones and sometimes when I go to a place there are not many photographs there to be captured and then I go to other places and it is like Springtime in the Serengeti and wherever I look I see images waiting for my PEN and me.

So I hope you have enjoyed what may be my last visit to the ancestors. Perhaps they knew this and made sure that many happy photographs crossed our pathways.

Now to have a nice cup of tea and look again at the results of our creative works, as if they are on the walls of a gallery (no, I have not forgotten). Please join me.

Your friend,

Izumi.