The Lucky Smile

Good luck comes with Smile.

Good luck
The 5 yen coin in Japanese is pronounced “go-en”. This also coincidentally means “good luck”. For this reason the 5 yen coin is thought to be good luck.

– Source: yesjapan –

5 Yen <五円>

Behind the shot

Device: iPhone 4 camera

Crop: Out-of-the-box Photos app on iPhone

Filter: BasicCamera app

Blog credit: Phonto app

The 2nd Monday’s theme for iPhoneography Challenge from Lens and Pens by Sally is Macro. It quite worried me because I don’t have much experience in this category of photography even though I’m always fascinated by them.

As I’ve never used iPhone to take the macro photos before, I consulted one of my best friends who happens to name ‘Google’ with this question ‘how to take macro photos with iphone 4’. I’ve got recommendation from iMore that the best estimated distance from the subject for iPhone 4 lens is 4 inches. Moreover, we should use AE/AF lock to keep the focus and exposure on the lens. Another suggestion that I’ve followed comes from osxdaily is to enable HDR during the snaps.

I decided to set up some scenes for practicing the shots by using the unique Japanese coin (5 en) which has a hole along with a 10 en coin and the lucky charm bought in Japan .

Size comparison between the prop and a quarter Dollars coin.

The lucky charm is the miniature of Seven Lucky Gods, and the one that we are seeing through the hole of Go-en is Benzaiten (Benten-sama) who is the goddess of knowledge, art and beauty, especially music. (I’ve lost 2 miniature so I have only 5 of them now.)

It was really fun trying to take several macro shots from various angles. The final outcome might not be that good but I was satisfied with it.

I feel lucky by just looking at the double good lucks from that photo :o)