Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/250 sec, f/4, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wilty-Looking Purple Iris
While on a drive in the mountains of northern Kyoto today, we came across a pretty scene... a small watter-filled field of wilty-looking purple flowers, with a backdrop of the sun setting behind some mountains.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/1000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 500, — map & image data — nearby photos
To me they were “wilty-looking purple flowers,” but Fumie guessed they were one of three kinds of flowers, each of which turns out to be an iris of some sort when I look up the Japanese names she offered.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 48mm — 1/1000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Enjoying the Flowers and the Frogs
The field was apparently filled with frogs, their loud din similar to that mentioned the other day.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/500 sec, f/4, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hideo Kubo, R.I.P.
The field held a grave marker for a Hideo Kubo, who was (according to the stone) rather high up in the Japanese Navy at some point in his life. The Japanese Navy hasn't existed since WWII (Japan now has a “Maritime Self Defense Force” rather than a Navy).
The stone doesn't say when he passed, but the condition of the stone suggests closer to now than to WWII; just because the stone mentions his WWII (or prior) military service doesn't mean that he died while in the Navy, but merely that he wanted to be remembered that way.
Turning around and looking the other way shows part of a very typical mountain village, with a garden and a sturdy modernish house in the foreground, with more traditional Japanese countryside houses and some rice fields further back.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 30mm — 1/160 sec, f/6.3, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Typical Japanese Mountain Homes
What gorgeous photographs!
I think the iris is kakitsubata – Iris laevigata. It is wild in Japan, but also much cultivated. “In the 8th century, travellers who saw I. laevigata as they journeyed were reminded of their lovers, and when they composed a Japanese traditional poem (tanka), they compared this flower to the beautiful women they longed for.” – according to ‘The Pictorial Book of Iris Laevigata, by Akira Horinaka (Abocsha, 1990).
Peter
Hi I am an editor of a regional Iris newsletter and I would like to, with your permission use some of your photos to teach others of Iris species.
Thanks for sharing these wonderful photographs
Anita