Reflections in Muddy Water - Part 2

September 06, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Well, so much for my promise of uploading part 2 within a few days of the first one. A couple of days after I started this four part series my wife and I got the house we had been trying to buy, so we spent all of August moving and my photography came to a complete stand still. Life goes on though, and last night I found some time to sit down and put together the next edition. If you haven’t read part 1, then you can find it here. So here is part two. Thanks and enjoy!

April Tambo Panorama

As I mentioned before, one of my photography projects this spring was to capture some of the beauty of the flooded rice paddies after they have been ploughed ready for planting. After a few days, the mud sinks to the bottom of the tambo (rice paddies) and the shallow water clears until the farmers stir them up again when the plant the rice. On a still day the tambo look like lakes, with reversed skies mirrored in them, creating reflections in muddy water.

Spring Paddy Reflection

So back in Spring, I spent a few busy weeks, before and after work, and of course on weekends, watching the skies for interesting clouds and good sunsets, and visiting locations that I thought had potential for wide panoramas and sunset photos. Here’s a nice little sunset reflection. This tambo had already been planted and the wild daisies were already starting to grow on the Aze walls, looking incredible in the evening light.

This photo below is my favourite of the bunch, a large panorama taken in a secluded valley that was showing off the spring foliage covered hills reflected in rice fields at the end of a day when a farmer was driving his tractor home. It’s the same shot that I have as the banner on my blog title page. I was able to meet this farmer a few weeks later and give him the photo. That's something I always enjoy doing because the farmers are so friendly and are always happy to see people appreciating their efforts. Traditional Japanese style rice farming is back breaking work, and without the farmers we wouldn’t have these landscapes to enjoy and explore.

Japanese Spring Colours

Here’s another one that I was really pleased with because the light and clouds were amazing and the photo really shows how much tambo are a part of the Japanese countryside and the lifestyle. The rice fields are the centre of the landscape in Japan, and the roads and houses are built around them.

Rice Field Reflection

Here is a photo taken in afternoon light, with beautiful spring clouds mirrored in rice paddies that had already been planted. I take a lot of photos like this in the summer months in the middle of the day when the sun is high, but usually avoid it in the spring because the paddies come out looking really brown. This tambo was particularly reflective though and was looking really blue which was a nice surprise.

The last “reflections in muddy water” photo I’ll leave you with today is a night shot. It was a 30 second exposure of wind blown rice fields, reflecting a large hotel complex taken in a howling wind one night on my way home from work. It took a few shots to get the wind trails sweeping in the right direction, and as I was packing up it started raining. A few minutes down the road it absolutely poured down!

Rice Fields and Resort Hotel