As I mentioned the other day, we visited the Nanzen Temple, and on the way, stopped by to see the area where I took the Vine and Bamboo pictures that I posted last fall. It seems that the vine had come back to life, so this is the summer version of the picture.

Just like last time, I've included links to desktop-background versions in various sizes, both widescreen and standard.

The vine emerges from behind the fence in its middle, with the part growing above the center apparently new growth. I find it mildly interesting that the new growth would [...]

About a month and a half ago I was futzing around with night exposures and took this 30-second picture of the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. I was wondering whether I might get the really interesting results as I did during cherry-blossom season, but in this case the result was thunderously boring.

However, it was about this time that I decided to finally start playing with the new sharpening controls in the betas I was testing for Lightroom 1.1, and for whatever reason, I used this image as my first test.

Proper sharpening seems to be more an art than [...]

As mentioned in my previous post, Adobe has just released Lightroom 1.1, a free upgrade to their wonderful photo-workflow application. Correspondingly, I have upgraded my Custom Metadata Viewer Preset Builder, a web application that allows you to create custom metadata display configuration templates for use within Lightroom.

This description is presented with Lightroom 1.1 as an example, although the config files should work in any version of Lightroom 1.x, including 1.3.1.

This post is the introduction and documentation for my template-builder application. If you have used the previous version, you'll find lots of new things here, including new [...]

Adobe has officially announced the highly anticipated "Version 1.1" upgrade to their Lightroom photo-workflow application, four months after Version 1.0 was released. Lightroom creates a whole new world of organization and expression for photographers, one that fulfills many needs the user might not have even realized where there.

Yet, once the user settles in, they find themselves invigorated into wanting even more organizational and creative functionality, and this free upgrade is a step in that direction.

There are many new features in 1.1, some of which have been previewed already (including the new sharpening controls released in [...]

So, yesterday's post left off with a photo from the stairs looking at the dining platforms over the upper river. The stairs were those going down to the lower "noodle platforms" (where the noodle part of the lunch is to be eaten), and so here's a view from the same position, looking down at them.

Here's more of a zoom. Notice the trough-like thing in front of the counter Aunt Jeannette is sitting on?

That trough-like thing is really a flume in which water -- and occasionally soumen noodles -- flow. You sit in front of the flume, watching for [...]