I Won The Awards!

I feel sooooo great today!!
One of my photo won the category award on the photo contest site called Daily Awards.

I've always been a happy snapper but never had much confidence in my own work.
This might be a small step compare to the things some of you guys have achieved, but nonetheless it is pretty huge for me.

I'm gonna give a toast to my happy achievement tonight!

Sail Away

"Sail Away"

Saint Valery sur Somme, France.

Two Little Bears in Acrylics

One of my Two Little Bears series.
I like to use watercolors for an easy sketch, but for a change, I used Acrylics on this one.

The door behind two teddy bears is a door to the restaurant I saw in France. The flowers were beautifully curved in wood, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I cannot recall the name of the town. It might have been Collioure.

By the way, greeting cards with this picture are available here :-)

Do you still use your film cameras?

"A Long Way Home"
This photo was taken in a small town of Desvres in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France.
This railway wasn't in use (I think...), so these bears (and me) were pretty safe.

I wonder how many people still use film cameras rather than digital ones these days. I still have my SLR - Pentax MZ-3 - in my camera box, but I rarely use it now. I would never get rid of it - there are too many memories attached to it - but in reality, would I ever use it as much as I used to? Sadly, I don't think so...

You folks, what happened to your film cameras? Have you still got it? Do you still use it?

Me, Travel and Teddy Bears

"Somewhere Beyond The Sea"
At the beach of Ault, France. At the time I took this photo, we were in very unstable situation. We had left Japan, gone to England and then Spain, left both places with crushed dreams, ended up in France while we were feeling so unsure about our future...

I started taking these Teddy Bear photos in Autumn, 2002.

About the time we decided to leave Japan, I suddenly realized that even though I had taken so many photographs over the years, there weren't many "personal" ones. What I mean is that there were so many photos of scenery, flowers, animals, etc. which could be somebody else's, but there weren't many noticeably "me" kind of photos...

As I always loved Teddy Bears and enjoyed making them, quite naturally I was drawn to take photos of these lovely cuddly toys. First, it was any Teddy Bears, but eventually, it settled down with these two bears in the above photo. I started taking these bears everywhere looking for some photo opportunities.

My travel photos used to be just photos of famous places and pretty sceneries, but since I started taking photos of those places with these Teddy Bears, somehow they became more personal and, to some extent, emotional. So far, these bears traveled to many countries including France, UK, Spain, Middle East, Mediterranean islands and etc., and from a desert to a mountain top.

Am I going to continue taking their photos? Definitely. Am I going to take them to every country I would visit in the future? Certainly. Though these little bears created a little problem. Now they became so important for me that I cannot pack them in my suitcase anymore. What would happen if the suitcase get lost? Now I have to carry cameras and Teddy Bears in my carry-on bag.....