On the way to the Nanzen Temple the other day (as seen in this post and in this post), we stopped by the location where I made the vine on bamboo fence shots last fall. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the same vine had come back to life, so decided to take some more pictures.

In preparation, wanting to be able to set the proper color balance later, I pulled a white business card I happened to have from my pocket and asked Anthony to hold it such that it was illuminated by the same light as the vine I'd be photographing.

We'd had some minor "issues" on the way, and still had a tear on his cheek from that. It was sweet, in a way.

He wanted to take some pictures too, so I hesitantly left him with my camera (Nikon D200 with Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 zoom — way way way larger than he could easily handle) while I went back to the bicycle to get something. His first shot was a bit shaky, but he evened out and got a number of very nice shots.

The first two above are just as they came out of the camera, but I had to adjust the last one quite a bit, since the image had exposed for the sky and I was more or less just a silhouette. Hmmm, maybe he's a smarter photographer than I thought....

From the vine photoshoot we next passed one of the largest private estates in Kyoto. The picture above is of the rather large garden area outside the main gate of the grounds. This time I was back behind the camera, as the missed focus on the bamboo indicates.

Perhaps it's just me, but I really like the composition in the shot above.

Elsewhere along the road, a building on the same estate had a wall with this thatched branch cover treatment. It's purely decorative, and does its job well.