Shirakawa, Japan

A small, traditional village situated in a valley along the Sho River. Shirakawa-go is best known for it’s gasshō houses but has so much more to offer. We spent about five hours here and it still wasn’t enough time to visit everything. So much to see.

We went to where all tourists and photographers go to capture an image of this beautiful village, the observatories. There are two, the Ogimachi Castle Observation Deck and the Tenshukaku Observatory. Though the latter you are not permitted to use a tripod. I got told off by the local photographer. I didn’t argue.

I took panoramas at both observatories. Both images are good but I chose to share this image because I prefer the view of the village from this point. It was taken from the Ogimachi Castle Observation Deck. I stitched the eight images in Lightroom which did a very good job. Well, as long as you do the necessary out in the field. Meaning, levelling your tripod and overlapping your exposures by, at least, a third of the image, LR will usually do a good job. I converted the panorama to black and white and used my split-tone preset than added grain to it. The reason being, I think it would look great printed on rough or corse paper, giving another dimension and adding to the mood of the image. Wanting to somewhat recreate that, I added grain. I like it. I like it a lot. And yes, I think this is one of my favourite images of Japan.

panorama from 8 images | 28 mm, 1/50th second @ ƒ/11, ISO 100