Lighting a scene to photograph in a pleasing way is either a matter of luck, or the combination of two skills: knowing the physics of light (that is, knowing the results you'll get from lighting decisions), and having the creative sense to use that knowledge toward an aesthetically-pleasing end.

For my part, I generally go with the "luck" option, but that's about to change.

I've recently started reading  Light -- Science & Magic:  An Introduction to Photographic Lighting, and the first chapters have made me positively giddy with expectation.

As I lamented once before, good photographers apparently make bad writers [...]

From the "Words Really Can't Do It Justice" department, rummaging around in my image library I found these shots that I took with my cellphone last year, on Route 1 in Yamashina (Kyoto, Japan).

As I earlier posted from our trip to Miyajima an island near Hiroshima, Japan, one of the main photographic attractions is the large main gate of the Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社、宮島). It's off the coast in the intertidal zone, so when the tide is in, it's in the water and really pretty. There's a nice daytime shot of it at high tide at the end of this post, and on another post, some night shots.

Perhaps it's just the geek in me, but I think there's a certain interest to it even at low tide. I like to see how things [...]

More pictures from Anthony's birthday the other day.

We had a couple of those pull-the-string-and-streamers-pop-out party favors....

Yet just 0.69 seconds later....

A present from Grandma and Grandpa had him looking for assistance...

Inside was an "age 8+" radio-controlled car that I'm sure we'll see more of in a later post, and a book that got an immediate and thorough inspection...

Fumie's mom made a wonderful spread for dinner. Anthony and Fumie's brother are playing with Anthony's new train in the background of the next shot....

The foreground bowl is rice topped with egg (the yellow stuff), cucumber, ikura salmon [...]