Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » Exquisite Beauty Growing Like a Weed by the Side of the Road

Exquisite Beauty Growing Like a Weed by the Side of the Road

by Jeffrey Friedl Fri, June 3rd, 2011 12:58am JST (13 years, 10 months ago)

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desktop background image of flowers by the side of a rural mountain road in Uji, Japan -- Uji, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos

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Today's photos are sort of a combination of the softness we saw in “Exploring the Edge of Creamy Macro Bokeh with Lily of the Nile” with detail in “Exploring the Sharper Side of the Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5”. I was driving through the middle-of-nowhere mountains south-east of Kyoto with friends Shimada-san and Paul Barr, and when we stopped to check out a small shrine we happened upon, these clover(?) were right next to the car.

The shots above and below are almost identical (the flower is slightly further away in the shot above), but the effect is wildly different....

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos

same as above, but
Focused a Smidgen Further In

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The Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 was in heaven...

Uji, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos

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These are just some weeds near the car... you can barely even see the flowers in this wider shot...

Context -- Uji, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/3200 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Context

There was just something about the light and the grass in that area that was captivating...

desktop background image of soft grass -- Roadside Grass -- Uji, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Roadside Grass

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...and among it were various dainty flowers...

desktop background image of flowers by the side of a rural mountain road in Uji, Japan -- Dainty -- Uji, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dainty

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Daisy
but quite different than we saw last week

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desktop background image of flowers by the side of a rural mountain road in Uji, Japan -- Detail -- Uji, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Detail

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

More Grass
a bit busier than the first grass shot

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Hoarding -- Uji, Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2011 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hoarding

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos

For more context, here's a wider shot, with the car and the clover in the background, and the grass and other flowers in near the edge of the bridge guard rail...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/640 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Shimada-san checking out the same grass/flowers....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/8000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Paul doing the same, with the reason we stopped in the first place waiting in the background...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Continued here...

May	28th,	2010	First Shots with a Cosina Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5
April	11th,	2011	Exploring the Edge of Creamy Macro Bokeh with Lily of the Nile
April	26th,	2011	Exploring the Sharper Side of the Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5
May	25th,	2011	Exploring a Glass of Dainty Flowers With the Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5
June	3rd,	2011	A Bumpy-on-the-Bottom “What am I?” Quiz
June	7th,	2011	Scenes From Rural Japan: Mountain Village in Uji City
June	7th,	2011	Rural Uji's Kiyotakigyuu Shrine
June	10th,	2011	What It Looks Like When Tiered Rice Paddies Go to Seed
June	18th,	2011	Kyoto's Shimyouin Temple: Exceedingly Remote, Bashful, and Serene
June	29th,	2011	Final Wrapup From My Earlier Remote-Mountain Trip in Uji City
July	4th,	2011	Pleasant Little Village in Uji, Part 2
July	29th,	2011	Slightly Mysterious Stairs Into Mountain Overgrowth
August	16th,	2011	A Few Pink Blossoms at the Sennyuji Temple
March	16th,	2012	Some Random Japan Desktop Backgrounds From the Past Year
March	27th,	2012	So Much For That Glorious iPad Screen: iOS and its Apps are Not Even Color Managed
March	30th,	2012	Adding a CPU Chip to a Nikon-Mount Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 Lens
June	29th,	2012	Gioji Temple Photoshoot Continues: Little Orange Mushrooms and Depth-of-Field Comparisons
August	29th,	2016	Lovely Bicycle Ride Revisiting Uji Countryside Photographed Five Years Ago

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All 3 comments so far, oldest first...

That purple weed most certainly isn’t clover; looks more like some kind of thistle, possibly genus Cirsium.
Nice shots nonetheless, it really pays to take a closer look at the wayside!

— comment by Andreas Weber on June 3rd, 2011 at 3:00am JST (13 years, 10 months ago) — comment permalink

I agree with Andreas, perhaps it is Cirsium nipponicum (nanbu-azami); ‘Dainty’ looks like an evening primrose, Oenothera rosea, far from its home (southern USA to Peru). Grasses are beyond my ken, but it is dainty, too.

Your Voigtländer has found its niche; what a joy that lens is, to be sure !

— comment by Peter in Wales on June 3rd, 2011 at 5:34pm JST (13 years, 10 months ago) — comment permalink

si esto es una carretera en Japón, me asombra la similitud con el paisaje del entorno donde vivo,en el sur de España, hice muchas fotos y las florecillas son muy parecidas
entiendo algo de inglés pero me gustaria seguir tu blog y no encuentro donde hacerlo…

(translation to English) My blog’s home page is here —Jeffrey

— comment by karola on June 13th, 2011 at 6:00pm JST (13 years, 9 months ago) — comment permalink