Archive for the 'Fall Colors' CategoryYesterday afternoon, prior to the Pleasant Day Along the Kamo River, I had to kill an hour with Anthony near his school. We decided to go with a classmate, Mizuki-chan, across the street to the grounds of Kyoto's old imperial palace... (IMAGE: Heading To The Park) (IMAGE: After I Said “Okay, You Have an Hour to Play”) (IMAGE: Must. Inspect. Rocks.) (IMAGE: Just Being Kids) While they played, I and the camera noticed some things... (IMAGE: Baby Pinecone?) (IMAGE: Field of Purple) (IMAGE: Agriculturally Minded) “Planting” flowers brought from a field (IMAGE: Final Touches) (IMAGE: Blossoms Gone, Leaves Green) (IMAGE: ( [...] 
View full post » (IMAGE: A “Hurry Up So I Can Play” Pose) As I noted yesterday, I was at a park on the grounds of Kyoto's old imperial palace with Anthony the other day. I haven't featured the little man in a while, so I thought I'd share a few pictures... (IMAGE: Heading In) (IMAGE: Being a Kid) (IMAGE: Checking Out the New Toddler Playground) (IMAGE: Must... Make... Leaves... Into.... Pile) (IMAGE: Have Stick, Will Poke) (IMAGE: Crop Circles) (IMAGE: Anthony vs. Cherry Tree) 
View full post » I love my Nikon D200, but yesterday added a new woe to the “Dead Battery Syndrome” I experienced a couple of months ago: “Black Frame Syndrome” Yesterday, Kyoto was a cold and heavily overcast, with sporadic misty rain. Occasionally and all too briefly, the sun would poke out in brilliant fashion to set the foliage momentarily on fire, so on the way back from picking up Anthony at preschool, I stopped by the grounds of the old imperial palace, now mostly a big park heavily laden with fall colors at their peak. The trees were amazing, but it was dark and dull, so it wasn't too interesting [...] 
View full post » Crisp and Clear, Blazing Sunshine Every day this week I've really enjoyed each morning's trip to drop Anthony off at school, as the cornucopia of rich colors along the way are mentally enriching, spiritually uplifting. They give me yet another reason to count my blessings to be able to live where I do. And this, mind you, is while it's been a depressingly overcast and hazy week. So, consider what it was like in the brilliant and crisp sunshine that greeted Kyoto today. It was simply glorious. Words or pictures can never do it justice. Today was the epitome of a perfect autumn day at [...] 
View full post » My head is swimming due to a cold I came down with yesterday, so to brighten things up a bit, here's a touch of color from the same outing here in Kyoto, Japan that produced the fall-foliage desktop backgrounds I posted the other day. (IMAGE: Autumn at the Nanzen Temple) Zooming back a bit.... You can see these same trees in the “Placing Incense” photo my summer “More From Nanzenji” post. 
View full post » ( Desktop Background Images ) Today was one of those “I hate where I live” days (in Kyoto, Japan) that I seem to be having a lot lately. A simple visit with some friends to the “Fall-colors Festival” at the preschool of one of their friends turned into a veritable feast of indulgent photographic delights. The fall colors have been creeping up for the last couple of weeks, as I've shown in a few posts (here, here, here, and here), but it's definitely not yet even near peak. Still, there are some wonderful spots of color, and many of them are at the Eikando Temple (where, according to [...] 
View full post » I really hate where I live. Not only Kyoto in general, but in particular, the specific area of Kyoto where I live. This morning I walked to the nearby convenience store for some bread, and I was assaulted by beautiful scenes of inner-city fall foliage. Not only did they positively scream at me, they punched me in the face, demanding that I photograph them. Geez, all I wanted was some bread, and I get this!? I don't have time for this. What a crappy place to live. (IMAGE: Machiya on Jingu-Michi, Kyoto Japan) ( Desktop Background Images ) Jingu-Michi (“Shrine Street”, which dead-ends at the front [...] 
View full post » I seem to be buried under a photographic avalanche of my own making. I thought that today I'd get started with the bonanza of interesting and/or pretty pictures that I hinted at yesterday, but instead, today I took two more shots that I want to share. While waiting for the fall colors to come into full swing, there are the occasional early flashes of color that entertain. My office window affords a nice view of the neighbor's front garden, with one such “early flash of color” tree. It was overcast and rainy today, with occasional short bursts of sun sprinkled throughout, and during one such sprinkle I finally [...] 
View full post » (IMAGE: Another Taste of Autumn) Kyoto, Japan After yesterday's first taste of autumn while being stuck with nothing better than a point-n-shoot, I thought I'd head back to the same area today with some better equipment. I brought my Nikon D200, Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR zoom, a Nikon TC-17EII 1.7× teleconverter (my first outing with it), and my monopod. And Anthony. What I neglected to bring was enough time, light, or skill. I got there just before the last direct rays of light disappeared, and without the dynamic clouds of yesterday, there were no visual fireworks in the sky, so the whole point of being there sort [...] 
View full post » (IMAGE: Autumn Hits Kyoto) ( processed with some freaky over-sharpening in Adobe Lightroom ) Anthony and I went out today to try the remote control car he got from Grandma and Grandpa for his birthday last week, our schedule or the weather conspiring to prevent us until today. We headed to the rear of the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (in the same area as the “Hanami and Lunch” picture on this post) and gave it a try. I happened to have my point-n-shoot with me, so snapped a couple of pictures... (IMAGE: Remote (out of) Control) (IMAGE: It's Fun!) I'd not charged the battery in [...] 
View full post » Finishing up my Kyoto fall-color preview featuring pictures from last year that didn't make the cut a the time, here are four final images to get one into the autumn mood. (Previous installments: Part I, Part II.) Wall roof at the Konpukuji Temple Bamboo and Momiji at the Enkouji Templewhere many of last year's Kyoto Fall Foliage Desktop Backgrounds were taken. From the street outside the Eikando Temple From the same area as the Color of Kyoto Desktop Background and the Vine and Bamboo Desktop Background. 
View full post » Continuing with the Fall Color Preview from last week, here are a few more from Kyoto last year. (IMAGE: A Touch of Orange) (IMAGE: Konpukuji Temple)(related post) The next few pics are from Enkouji Temple, where I took many of the pictures that appeared in last year's Fall Foliage Desktops post. (IMAGE: Enkouji Garden) (IMAGE: To Each Their Own) (IMAGE: Everyone's a Photographer) The next shot is of one of the fusuma (sliding doors) inside the temple. (IMAGE: Enkouji Fusuma) The next shot is representative of a common scene around town, with many colors mixed together. (IMAGE: Lotsa' Colors) The problem is getting a [...] 
View full post » Looking at my server logs lately, it's clear that people are looking forward to fall, as I can see the popularity of posts like the following bubble higher: The Color of Kyoto — Desktop Background Kyoto Fall Foliage Desktops Photoshop's “Darken” Blend Mode (and more fall-foliage desktops) Those three are particularly popular at the moment, mostly via people coming from the search engines' text and image search. As fall gets closer, more and more posts from my Japan, Fall Colors category will become more popular. Fall hits Kyoto a month or more later than it seems to hit elsewhere in the world, so interest will wane by the [...] 
View full post » The image above is a tiny version (click to enlarge somewhat) of a “painting” I made from a photo I took at Ryouanji (龍安寺 — the Ryouan Temple in Kyoto Japan) a couple of years ago. One of the toys I picked up on my trip to The States is a Wacom Intuos 3 pen tablet, which came with a copy of Corel's Painter Essentials 3 that I used to paint-ize the photo. Corel's product is a mixed bag. It's just fantastic when it works, but it had a tendency to crash on me every five or 10 minutes, just disappearing without a trace (losing all [...] 
View full post » Garden at the Enkouji Temple, Kyoto Japan, Fall 2006 One lovely side-effect of using Adobe Lightroom as the hub of my image workflow is that I now have all the shots I've loaded into it available at my fingertips (which at this point is everything since last summer, currently about 12,500 images that have survived the delete key). I came across the wonderful photo set from when Nils and I visited some temples last fall, and realized that I hadn't posted many of them. At the time, I did post a bunch of fall-foliage desktops, and a few about our visit to Konpukuji Temple, as well as [...] 
View full post » A few days after I posted a photo of a vine on a bamboo fence (see the image at the lower left), I went back to see it in a different light. I was surprised to see how much the vine had withered away in just four days (image lower right). Original (in 10am shade) Four Days Later (in 3pm sun) You can also see how harsh the direct sun of the second is, compared with the morning shade of the first. Harsh sun or not, I thought some of the other shots I got that day might make a nice desktop background [...] 
View full post » While on the short outing last week that yielded the surreal foliage image, I happened upon this scene. While sitting on my scooter, I whipped out my camera and took this picture. I have no idea what they were waiting for; I doubt it was their transportation, since it was a one-way street heading in the direction they're looking. The street was positively packed with people, so the few cars that were around were going very slowly. I was lucky to get a clear shot. On the temple grounds is a temple-run preschool (the sign on the gate above the kimono-clad lady with the cell [...] 
View full post » This post describes how I made the funky-color Kyoto fall leaves image from the other day. I'd wanted to check out the vine growing through a bamboo fence again, in afternoon light (as opposed to the morning shade I'd seen it in before), so I went back on Wednesday afternoon. It was a productive visit, with a few shots of the fence that will certainly find their way here in the future. However, the subject of today's post is what I saw when I looked up. Kyoto's impressive autumn colors are in full force now, but there are some trees that are slower in [...] 
View full post » This perhaps looks like a painting or a photo with a painting effect applied, but it's actually a combination of three photos I took yesterday, with no other special effects added. I'll describe how I made it in a later post; it's my hope for now that you'll simply be able to enjoy it. The part shown above is just a small portion of the whole image, so that I could show some detail lost during the reduction required to fit a picture onto my blog. Even at that, it's from a version that was reduced to 25% of the original. A reduced-size version [...] 
View full post » Relaxing at the Enkouji Temple Another product of my trip to Enkouji the other day (also see this post and this). Like most of these kinds of pictures, this one really needs to be blown up to enjoy it in its full glory, so be sure to click on the image for a larger view. 
View full post » | 
Jeffrey Friedl You are currently browsing the archives for the Fall Colors category. Blog Basics Index of Photos Post Categories Currently Popular(Not counting recent posts)
(Popular six months ago)
(Most popular posts, ever)
|