Operation Fuji

[hevezimj]

Here is a new gallery that contains a lot of photos from an assignment to photograph U.S. Marines training on the lower slopes of Mount Fuji in Japan.

http://www.pbase.com/hevezimj

Hope you enjoy looking as much as I enjoyed shooting this set of photos.

I would appreciate any comments or feedback or critial critique you may have on any of these images. Please leave a note in my guestbook.

[ang1970]

Good camera technique and composition. However...

I'm left wondering what Mt. Fuji had to do with anything? It seems almost all the pictures focus on the soldiers and their exercises. It would have been the same pictorial had the word Fuji been replaced with "One Of 10,000 Places We Go To Train".
You may as well be taking them in Indiana.

I would be interested to see more of the interaction of our military with the land (environmental impact, cleanup, etc.), and with the indigenous people who are kind enough to let us use their land for this stuff. You have one shot that shows something happening with people (reporters doing some type of story?), but it's not clear what it was all about.

One thing I do like is the way you show the grit. You don't tend to over-glamorize. Overall, this pictorial says "Yeah, we get to travel all over the world, but we're just there to work - we don't get to actually enjoy these places."

Gambatte

[hevezimj]

Thank you very much for the critical comment on this gallery. That is what I seek from the pbase community on posts here. It is great to get the "nice photos" comment, but the tough critique is actually the most helpful. I really appreciate your candor.

These photos were shot for a specific publication and there actually was not very much interaction between local hosts and the U.S. Marines.

We previously had a program that took the Marines into local host Japanese homes so that the Marines could get a better understanding of Japanese culture, but during this period (Sept 11, 2001), the program was suspended because of security concerns.

Again, thanks for the comment. Arigato

[ang1970]

Dozo yoroshiku

[hevezimj]

Ang,

Are you based in Japan? And do you have a pbase account?

[ang1970]

No, I'm based in New Jersey. I'm trying to learn Japanese with various free internet resources. There's certainly enough help available to become close to fluent, if only I had the time to study more.

My pbase galleries are located right here. (You should also see the "Photos" icon beneath each post, which links to each poster's gallery.)

[hevezimj]

Oh yeah ... D'oh!

Hey I am taksan benkyo Nihongo. Can you send me some of your favorite study links?

[pstewart]

Wonderful...got my vote right away! If a picture is worth 1000 words, many of yours are worth a million. What a wonderful eye you have for finding just the right picture in a mob of form and color! I have put you in my favorites list to come back and see more. I briefly browsed your other galleries and there's a lot of really fine pics all over your site.

Phyllis

[ang1970]

Nihongo No Bu-kumaruko

<A HREF="http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa112198.htm" ADD_DATE="1042371806" LAST_VISIT="1071205200" LAST_MODIFIED="1042371808">Counting On One's Fingers</A>
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<A HREF="http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html" ADD_DATE="1042376011" LAST_VISIT="1071205200" LAST_MODIFIED="1042376012">Jim Breen's WWWJDIC</A>
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<A HREF="http://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/00INDEX.html" ADD_DATE="1042376110" LAST_VISIT="1071205200" LAST_MODIFIED="1042376112">The Monash Nihongo ftp Archive</A>
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[garrie_rouse]

Matt,

After reading some of the comments in this thread, I expected to see another batch of ho-hum pics of military personnel, arm-in-arm, posing for the camera, with an inordinate amount of replies stating how you are "telling it like it is". But, that is not what I found. Operation Fuji is filled with great shots, both in terms of compostion and diversity of subject matter (especially considering the somewhat restricted focus of your shoot). Even the individual shots of the "crew" at the end of your gallery had impact on this viewer.

Garrie

[hevezimj]

Garrie,

Thanks for the comments and glad you enjoyed the work.

Matt