Looking at the Exif data may well provide a clue.... or maybe not.

The last time I posted a picture of a burnt wall, it was due to an unfortunate fire that destroyed a nearby restaurant. This time is a bit different.

The quietly famous Murin'an Garden (無鄰菴) near my house in Kyoto has outside walls that are quite varied and interesting. Some of them, such as those shown above, are wood whose top surface has been burnt to charcoal. Looking at a view showing the wall in situ you can see that the burning is clearly purposeful..

While it's clear that the wood has been burnt intentionally, the reason is not clear. [...]

Here's a bit of insight that should not be too surprising...

"If your business model relies on charging for services that others are willing and able to do for free, it's probably time to find a new line of work."

It's not uncommon for professional photographers to have a policy, on principle, to never work for free, so a recent post by Strobist's David Hobby suggesting that occasionally working for free has benefits has stirred things up. The one-sentence summary of David's post is:

Use some of the down time this economy has created [...]

Here are some more shots from the outing up to Shogunzuka that I posted about last weekend....

Inside, a plaque describing the area...

Looking a bit toward the left...

While back at the park overlook....

But...

I accepted an invite the other day from my friend Shimada-san to visit the Nanzen'in temple/gardens located in a sequestered back corner of the large Nanzenji temple complex. It was my first visit to that sub-temple, and I'll post more about it later, but suffice to say that it was spectacular. I took a bazillion pictures, which I found totally missing when I got home and tried to load them onto my PC. The card was corrupt and Windows hung trying to read it. Yikes!

It's the first time I've had a problem like this in the 10+ years I've [...]