

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Question Was, What am I?

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/40 sec, f/22, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Answer Is, A Bunch of Offering Statuettes
At the Sanzen'in Temple (三千院), Kyoto Japan
The other day I posted the first photo above as one of my “What am I?” quizzes. The second photo shows the same view, but with a smaller aperture and the focus on the foreground.
Here's the view from the front:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
View from the Front
I posed the quiz as being a simple one to anyone familiar with the Internet because all one had to do was click on the “nearby photos” link under the photo (as I have under almost all photos I post) to find out that I had previously blogged a post titled “A Bazillion Offering Statuettes at the Sanzen-in Temple”, showing photos of the statuettes in the immediate vicinity of the quiz photo.
I lead that older post with a shot similar to this:

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Very Isolated
Except that this time they were bathed in the warm glow of the setting sun, and I used my true-macro Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 to isolate the point-of-focus statue even further. It's not my normal desktop-background fare, but I thought I'd give it a try and offer desktop-background sizes as well.
The mostly-creamy nature of the version above might work okay for a desktop background, but as a photo I think it's a bit too unbalanced, so for, er, balance, here's one with a wider depth of field...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/8, ISO 5600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Less Isolated @ f/8
There were a lot of statuettes...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 @ 24 mm — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Really a lot...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
More over here...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
End of the Line
So there are just over 15,000 of them with labels, but there were racks and racks of unlabeled ones as well, waiting, I suppose, for sponsors.
Some were off-colored and dusty...
Some were adorned with ornaments...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/4, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Mini Sandals
like those in this post

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Various Ornaments
This is all just one display shoved in the corner of a far-flung area of a huge temple complex, but it's visually interesting so it seems to catch my eye each time.
Of course, with a visit in autumn, the fall colors are the main attraction. In keeping with yesterday's post about yesterday's visit to the Yoshiminedera Temple where I showed the first photo I took that day, here's the first photo I took during last week's trip to the Sanzen'in Temple (where I later took all the shots shown above)...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
First Photo of a Productive Day
I've provided desktop-background sizes for three photos on this post, but it's this last one that I'm most looking forward to using myself. I've been posting a lot of these lately... it's just such a photogenic time to be in Kyoto.
I think the shadow unbalances VERY ISOLATED. The Depth of Field is fine. That isolated statue has a lot of symbolism: the irony of the lonely person in a sea of people /an answered prayer from a deity’s perspective /an illustration that all of us really want/need very similar things. IMHO: the f8 shot brings out some of the detail in the shadow area but does not stir emotion like the f2 shot. Maybe the photo equivalent of a B-side for you but I’m glad it left the cutting floor and made it to the album.
I was glad to finally get the answer but I don’t really see how “real life experience” relates to finding the answer, though internet 101 certainly would seem to have helped. I could see that something was between the camera and the tree but had no idea what it was. Now I know.
The real-life experience is that on the web, things often have related links nearby. Given a quiz about a photo, a link to “nearby photos” certainly sounds like a fruitful avenue to explore. —Jeffrey