In the post yesterday about my trip to Giouji Temple (祇王寺) in western Kyoto, I commented about the formal entry gate (seen in the background of the second photo on that post). The picture above is the view of the gate while looking over the little door in the front wall.

The formal entry gate, having no doors to be closed or locked, seems to serve no practical function whatsoever. It just looks nice. Well, I guess on a rainy day it might provide some protection, but that's about it. It just looks nice.

You can see above how thick the thatched roof is... perhaps a foot thick.

Standing under the gate facing back toward the front wall, you see this little wall just to your left....

Yesterday was an overcast, somewhat blustery day that felt like rain would come at any moment (although it never did), so it was somewhat dark to begin with, and much more so under the dense tree cover in the temple area. So even with a fast f/2.8 lens and sensitivity pushed up to ISO 800, I still suffered long shutter times like the ¹/13 sec of the shot above. Because I was doing this all handheld (tripods are not allowed), some results were clearly fuzzy (er, so to speak).

Still, I felt that both I and the camera were “in the zone” because some shots were really crisp and didn't show any of the high-ISO noise that the Nikon D200 is known for and that I frequently see in practice (although the lack of noise could be the new noise reduction of the beta of Lightroom version 1.1 that I'm currently testing).

One such “in the zone” shot is the next one, also at ¹/13 sec, completely handheld. The fuzzy shot above is just to show the context of this one, taken while directly facing the wall edge on. I wanted to show the construction: bamboo top, wooden “roof,” and thatched wall.

I really love how they let the construction return to nature. The one above seems to be relatively new, with minimal rotting and minimal moss. Yet turning around from that position to see the opposite wall shows a much older one in an advanced state of serene....

The shot above was another “in the zone” shot, handheld at ¹/8 sec yet crisp even at full resolution.

Looking further down the same wall, three's a section that was built around a tree, which I thought was interesting

Most of the walls were like this, which I found positively lovely. There is another more formal type of wall in one area of the grounds, which will be the subject of a later post....