(IMAGE: Schweeeeet!) A bad photo of my new multiple-monitor goodness
I found myself suddenly lusting for a second monitor, and with visions of a tax writeoff dancing in my head, I opted for the mid-level Eizo FlexScan SX2461W, a 24" widescreen that offers a 1,920 × 1,200 desktop in luscious relatively-wide-gamut color.
(If I'd had visions of hitting the lottery dancing in my head, I'd have gone for the $6,000 Eizo ColorEdge CG221)
I had trouble setting up my XP box for dual monitors until I installed the latest drivers for my ATI graphics card — ATI's new “Catalyst Control Center” made it trivial to set up [...]
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(IMAGE: North-Eastern Amami-Ooshima) the area where Fumie's grandmother lived before WWII
As I wrote before, it was often windy and rainy during our New-Year's trip to Amami, in southern Japan, but the weather was quite dynamic and squall might be immediately followed by brilliant sunshine.



Within 10 minutes of each of these photos being taken, it was raining.
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(IMAGE: Mean, Nasty Demons)
The Heian Shrine (a huge shrine in eastern Kyoto) had Setsubun events today (Wikipedia on “Setsubun”). The main event associated with Setsubun is mamemaki – 豆撒き, literally “bean scattering” – which involves throwing dried beans at demons while yelling “demons out! Good fortune in!”
As you might expect of any event that involves the throwing of beans, kids love it.
(IMAGE: Nasty Demon Threatens Docile Camera-Toting Population)
Kids love it unless they think the demons are real...
(IMAGE: Hiding Behind Mommy)
(IMAGE: Mr. Whitehair-and-Orangepants Heads Away)
(IMAGE: Cautiously Emerging, Still Wary)
The demons eventually headed up toward the main building [...]
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Yesterday's events were more than just throwing beans.
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(IMAGE: Old Wall Of Coral)
The roads of southern Japan's Amami Islands used to be lined with walls built from dead coral, but now only a few such remnants of the past remain. During our trip to Amami, we visited the most western village on Kakeroma-jima (the island outlined in purple on this map) and found some of the old walls. Some were quite tall, perhaps two meters.
(IMAGE: Old Walls of Coral) and lots of sticks
The five sticks seen leaning against the walls in the image above are an example of what one often saw while driving around Kakeroma-jima: long sticks placed at frequent intervals [...]
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(IMAGE: Me  @  f/1.2) Photo by Zak Braverman
Zak kindly offered to loan me his Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 for a while, so I took a walk down to the Starbucks on Sanjo (eastern Kyoto, Japan) for the pickup.
f/1.2 is an extremely big aperture. I've written about the shallow depth of field you get at large apertures (small “f” numbers), such as on this Sigma 30mm f/1.4 post, but this f/1.2 aperture is a new experience for me. Focusing on anything relatively near with the aperture at f/1.2 results in a paper-thin field that's in focus, but even then, the focus is “soft” due to spherical aberration and perhaps other things [...]
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(IMAGE: Hot Stuff)
You may recall (from my shrine-closing ceremony post last fall) photos of a Shinto rite of hope and good fortune of some sort, involving the burning of small sticks that had people's names and ages on them. As the sticks burned, the wishes and hopes of the person rose with the smoke (to the gods, I guess).
As I hinted with the Hot Stuff post the other day, this rite was done as part of the Setsubun events at the Heian Shrine.
(IMAGE: Bundle of Sticks) 50 sticks per
At the shrine-closing ceremony, perhaps 60 sticks were burnt. At the Heian Shrine this past [...]
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We moved to Japan in early April 2004, staying at Fumie's folks' place in Hirakata-city, an hour south of Kyoto. Fumie had arranged an apartment prior to arriving, so once we were over jet lag sufficiently to move, we started the process of building a new life.
This was prior to my having started a blog, but for the first couple of weeks I kept an “on-line diary”, half for my family in The States to read, and half for my own memory. It apparently didn't work well for the latter goal, because I forgot about it until I ran across it today.
18-Month-Old Anthony (IMAGE: [...]
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My blog and everything else hosted on my server may be inaccessible on and off for a while, until I can get some hardware replaced. A CPU fan has failed, so the thing is turning into a space heater until it hits thermal shutdown.
Wish me luck...
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(IMAGE: A Touch of Snow)
Having grown up in Ohio – land of arctic winters and steam-bath summers – I learned to enjoy the change of seasons. I missed them when I lived in California, but Kyoto is better, with glorious springs and autumns. Kyoto's winter is short on snow and thus is fairly drab, so I'm excited whenever the forecast has any chance of snow in it. Sadly, nothing usually comes of it, so any flakes that do materialize are cause for enjoyment. I love snow so long as I don't have to drive in it, so I'm always wishing for more.
(IMAGE: “Hurry Up [...]
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(IMAGE: Proud Bike-Rider)
It's been almost two years since Anthony got a bicycle, but although he enjoyed it a few times at first, he didn't have all that much interest again until lately, so when we went out for a ride today, it was perhaps the half-dozenth time we'd been out. However, I have a feeling he'll really be wanting to do it more, because today – for the first time – he was able to ride unassisted for fairly long stretches.
I'd used Carlos' great advice on teaching a kid to ride a bike a month or so ago, which perhaps sparked Anthony's renewed interest.

I reported a couple of months ago about a Black Frame Syndrome affecting my D200, whereby the raw image data was fine, but the embedded jpg previews were all black. (A NEF file has two embedded JPGs.)
Because I shoot raw, the only practical effect for me is that I get a black frame when I try to review the images on the camera LCD, but someone shooting in JPG mode would find all their images completely blank. Yikes!
This happened to me for the second time yesterday, but this time I believe I've figured it out.
It turns out that the D200's white balance [...]
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(IMAGE: Property Boundary)
While out with Anthony riding a bike yesterday, I took a few other random shots that seem interesting or pretty (at least, to me) that I'd like to share. These were all taken within 100 yards of each other, in the Okazaki area of Kyoto.
(IMAGE: Some Kid Doing What Kids Do)
(IMAGE: Big Bird)
(IMAGE: Faster Than Autofocus)
(IMAGE: Girls on Swing)
(IMAGE: Big Gate)
The main gate of the Heian Shrine has appeared on my blog a bazillion times – see the “related posts” box below for a few from the past year – but I'd never seen it [...]
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(IMAGE: “Chill Well Prior to Consumption”)
I'm a big fan of the red berries that populate Kyoto's fall and winter, and of snow (well, at least so long as I don't have to drive), so it was a treat to get the combination today when we awoke to a nice few inches of snow.
The obligatory “snow views from the livingroom window” shots...


The sun was shining on the branches above, so they were starting to half melt, and so there were a lot of shiny/sparkley drops hanging from the branches. I don't think I captured it very well.
Before bringing Anthony [...]
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(IMAGE: Heavy Burden)
I posted one set of pictures from yesterday's snow in Kyoto, from the morning. I hope some of the pictures were nice, but mostly they were for storytelling – not for their intrinsic beauty – because the lack of beauty in the photos accurately reflected the snowy urban reality of the scene.
However, later in the day, I found myself in northern Kyoto, just before the city ends and the mountains begin, just as a snowstorm ended and a brilliantly rich, blue sky was emerging. This time, my pictures' lack of intrinsic beauty is a reflection of my lack of photographic skill, because the [...]
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(IMAGE: Mangroves on Amami Ooshima)
On the last day of our New Year's trip to the Amami Islands in southern Japan (all Amami posts), we went for a canoe ride among the Mangroves that grow in one spot, on the mid-eastern coast of the main Amami Ooshima island, where fresh water from a river mixes with the salt water of the East China Sea.
Fumie took on the role of Guest Services, and I was Propulsion and Documentation. (That is, she held Anthony while I paddled and occasionally tried to take a picture with one hand while trying to not drop the oar with the [...]
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(IMAGE: Long Escalators at the Kansai International Airport) two years ago, just after getting my Nikon D200
I'm occasionally asked about my photo and blog-writing workflow, and having just been asked twice in as many days, I thought I'd just go ahead and post about it.
Unlike this post, most of my non-technical posts have a lot of photos, either to tell a story (like this) or to just share pretty photos (like this). In either case, I start with the photos.
Photo Workflow
My photo workflow is pretty much the same whether it's a subject I intend to blog about or not... I download the [...]
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(IMAGE: Sigma APO 200-500mm F2.8 EX DG)
11 months after being announced, Sigma's 200-500mm f/2.8, 35-pound monster is finally available for purchase. When it was announced almost a year ago, I naïvely speculated that it might run $6,000, so it was a shock when I found it at a retailer in Japan for about 2.6 million yen (US $25,000). I haven't seen it in a US retailer yet, but I doubt it'll be substantially less.
I wouldn't have gotten one at $6,000, but at $25,000, all I can say is “wow”, and note that my birthday is coming up....
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(This post's title is one of the “cute” titles that, as I wrote yesterday, I normally try to avoid; now you know why I try to avoid them.)
(IMAGE: Too Fast for my Cell-Phone Camera)
As I wrote last week, Anthony has learned to ride a bike. Today we went out for a ride on the sidewalks around town, and he rode for extended periods without my direct help. I wanted to be right there, so I trotted/ran alongside him like a Secret Service agent running alongside the President's car. It was quite a workout.
Nearing home, we stopped by a park with a [...]
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Is this shot at all interesting?
We awoke to a pretty layer of snow this morning, and I'm now going through the 249 shots I took on a short outing with Anthony. I was about to add this shot to the reject pile when I had second thoughts. I converted it to grayscale, futzed with the grayscale mix in Lightroom, and now it has some appeal to me, although I can't put my finger on exactly what.
Maybe the grayscale makes it interesting? I had a grayscale shot on my Artsy-Fartsy in Kyoto af f/1.2 post, which was met with overwhelming silence, so maybe [...]
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(IMAGE: This Morning)
Today was one of those “Why I Hate Living in Kyoto” days.
We awoke to a touch of fresh snow this morning, so Anthony and I headed out to play in it for an hour before he had to go to school. His play involved knocking snow off of anything that held it, and mine involved a Nikon D200 and a 17-55 f/2.8 zoom.
I took 249 pictures, of which 228 avoided the cutting room floor (including the iffy crow and snow shot I posted earlier). Of those that survived, there must be about 50 that are – to me – just stunning.

(IMAGE: Conditions of Entry)
When I went to the Heian Shrine yesterday morning during the brief spell of amazing snowfall, it was with the intention to enter their gardens to take pictures, as I did during a snowfall two years ago. Most of my pictures from the Heian Shrine, such as yesterday's, or of the intense burn, or the Setsubun events, are from the large areas of the Shrine that are open to the public without cost. There are other areas, including a large and beautiful garden that costs 600 yen (about US $6) to enter.
Unfortunately, it wasn't yet open when I was there so I [...]
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(IMAGE: Temple Pagoda)
I've been posting a lot of the same stuff lately (snow, Heian Shrine, and shots from Amami), so I thought I'd mix things up and revisit some older files in my library. I often get caught up in new events, leaving many shots I want to share to languish in my library until I find a chance to get back to them. So today, I randomly picked a day from last year to revisit, and it turns out to be June 3rd, which was the first day of Aunt Jeannette's visit to Kyoto.
The shot above contains a temple pagoda – the [...]
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(IMAGE: Anthony and George) — Anthony's drawing from yesterday morning —
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(IMAGE: Checking out the Snow)
It's snowing like gangbusters this evening in Kyoto, and the forecast is more through tomorrow afternoon, so I'm hoping to wake up to a wonderful blanket of snow, a better version of the light snow that made for some wonderful pictures at the Heian Shrine earlier in the week.
The shots on today's post are from that same outing last week, of the Jingu Michi Street bridge over the Kyoto Biwako Canal, which is between our place and the shrine. The bright orange sides of the bridge offered the first thing for Anthony to push snow from once we left [...]
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( Desktop Background Images )
(IMAGE: Gardens at the Heian Shrine This Morning) Kyoto, Japan
With a forecast for snow all night, I was disappointed to wake up to find less accumulation than we had the other day (Amazing Snow at the Heian Shrine), which itself wasn't really all that much. In fact, it was sunny out. Still, we all went for a walk, and despite no prognosis for good photography, I brought along the camera and tried to make the best of it.
It was clear that it was going to be an unphotogenic time when we arrived at the bridge featured in yesterday's Snowy Bridge [...]
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(IMAGE: Still Water is Meant to be Poked)
I'm still sick, so today's post is a simple continuation of yesterday's snowy visit to the Heian Shrine, today focusing mostly on the gardens, except for this next picture:
(IMAGE: Arriving at the Heian Shrine)
You can see how little snow there was, compared to the amazing shots last week.
The rest of the pictures are from inside the gardens, which costs 600 yen (US $6) to enter per adult. Anthony got in free. We were the first to enter, the two photographers behind us immediately ran to the far gardens, while we took a [...]
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(IMAGE: Couple 'a Rocks)
Continuing in a series about Sunday's snow in Kyoto, and the Heian Shrine, following after yesterday's Snowy Gardens of the Heian Shrine, Part I, we move over toward the north-east gardens....
(IMAGE: Fringe of Color)
(IMAGE: Snowy Roof)
(IMAGE: Stepping Stones)
The stepping stones seen above are apparently a big draw, but they didn't seem particularly interesting to me on this day. I was more interested in how the lattice roof (as mentioned yesterday) made for an area that looked like a little porch area for enjoying the gardens.
(IMAGE: Covered Bridge)
(IMAGE: Stone Lantern)
(IMAGE: Ducks)
The shot of [...]
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(IMAGE: Playing at Otsu's “Yumekko”)
I came down with a cold the morning of the snow in Kyoto the other day, likely because I spent the previous day at a kids' play spot with Anthony. Anywhere where kids congregate is a human petri dish of microbial fun, so I probably picked up something then.
Kyoto City has a wonderful play spot for infants and preschoolers, the Play Land at its Kodomo Miraikan (“hall for children's future”), and Anthony has been enjoying it for the last four years. Zak invited us to come to Otsu City's version of the same thing, and I was astounded at how nice [...]
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Continuing with the Snowy Gardens of the Heian Shrine series (earlier parts: Part I, Part II) from last Sunday's snowy morning walk in Kyoto, we had just arrived at the garden's covered bridge when it started to snow again.
(IMAGE: Entrance to the Bridge)
(IMAGE: View over the Water) just as the snow was starting
(IMAGE: View over the Water) a few minutes later
(IMAGE: Checking Out the Snowflakes)
(IMAGE: Photographing the Snowflakes)
(IMAGE: Protecting Mommy from the Snowflakes)
Quite coincidentally, a few days before I took these pictures, I happened to have posted some pictures of the gardens from last summer, including one of [...]
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