“Today, tour boats full of sightseers pass where river barges once groaned beneath the weight of rice and cotton.”

Client: Setouchi Reflection Trip, the official travel guide to the Setouchi Region of Japan.

Project Description: Write a travel advertorial with photographs.

A Quote

“Today, tour boats full of sightseers pass where river barges once groaned beneath the weight of rice and cotton.”

The Inside Scoop

Kurashiki’s Bikan Street offers no shortage of stunning photo ops. With a beautifully preserved East-meets-West vibe, it’s the architectural West Side Story of Japan.

Between the interview and museum schedule, my photo time was a tad short, so I was literally doing a Roadrunner routine around the canal with my camera as the sun sank. But it’s hard to get a bad photo in a place like Bikan. So, of course it was fine in the end.

A few of the shots involved blending — including some I took handheld. This technique is great for maximizing detail in light and dark areas. It’s also great for controlling the number of people you have crowding a scene. (Basically you just blend people in or out from various exposures.)

The night exposures were long tripod ordeals.

As is sometimes the case, the sources I was set up with didn’t have a lot of the info I wanted. So I had to dig a little deeper on my own. In the end, I was able to learn enough of Bikan’s rich history to give it a reasonable rendition.

And it’s such a lovely spot that I’ve made it a point to return on more than one occasion.

My Favorite Part

Researching the rich history of Bikan Street.

See the results:
Kurashiki’s Bikan District – Timeslip into the Storehouse of the nation