Engetsu Islet in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture

Aug 08 | Evan | No Comments |

This summer in Japan I had planned to spend a week exploring Wakayama Prefecture. Wakayama Prefecture, Southeast of Kyoto and Osaka, is most famous for Koyasan and The Kumano Kodo, but this trip I wanted to explore the beautiful coastline in the Kii Peninsula. As it turned out, a typhoon also wanted to visit Wakayama Prefecture at the exact same time, so my trip got cut from 7 days to 4 days! In any case, I still managed to see much of what I wanted, though most places weren’t at the time of day I would have liked to be there for. One place I could photograph as planned was Engetsu Islet in Shirahama. I ended up coming to Engetsu Islet for 2 sunsets and 1 sunrise, partly because I just liked the location but also because there are lot’s of points around the coast to photograph Engetsu Islet from.

Imagine the coastline in the shape of a “U” but on the right side, instead of a straight line, it’s an “S” and most of the U merged with and S coastline I walked trying to find location I liked to photograph from. This was also the first time I had attempted to use graduated neutral density filters and also a 10 stop ND filter (which is what makes the water look so creamy in some of these photos). I really enjoyed exploring the area and had fun learning about the new filters, though I still have a ways to go with them I suppose! Here is a comparison of with and without the 10 stop ND filter:

The last morning I was in Shirahama, I even got to see a rainbow along with Engetsu Islet which was kind of nice if not a little cliche of a photo though…