Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/160 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
checking out the carp at the Shoren'in Temple (青蓮院), Kyoto Japan
What a difference a day makes.
Yesterday I had such a wonderful, inspiring time at the ikebana show at the Shoren'in Temple; today was great until the evening when I had the mind-numbing, soul-sucking experience of spending four hours on half a dozen travel web sites trying to find reasonable tickets for Fumie and her folks to visit my folks this winter when Anthony and I are already visiting.
Through the process I became intimately familiar with global flight schedules, but was unable to produce an itinerary that combined the best flights for us... every travel web site I checked would invariably not offer the best flight on one segment, no matter what options I selected. To give you a feel for how desperate I became trying to build this Atlantis itinerary, I even tried the pure-Evil that is Orbitz.
In the end I got an okay itinerary at a relatively great price, so I guess I shouldn't complain. I also guess I should let my folks know that they'll finally meet my wife's folks. (I suppose, though, I've just done that with this post.)
In any case, the process left me devoid of life, so I quickly scanned through the photos from yesterday's ikebana (flower-arranging) show presented at the eminently classy Shoren'in Temple, grabbing the first half dozen photos that calmed my nerves, and so here we are.
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 5000 — map & image data — nearby photos
by Anthony's fourth-grade classmate
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/160 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
always on the outside edge of the building
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 4500 — map & image data — nearby photos
I'd normally caption this as
but since this is a kid, “Bored” is probably correct
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/160 sec, f/2.5, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
with style
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/160 sec, f/2.5, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
by a very young kid in full-on kimono
Like yesterday's event, this post combines a number of photogenic elements... a nice temple, nice kimono, and nice flower arrangements. All have been featured many times on my blog, but for a few ideas to explore...
- Temples — my blog's “Temples & Shrines” category
- Nice kimon — see this, this, this, this, this, and probably a hundred others.
- Ikebana — here, here, here, and here, among others.
Maybe I’m just grumpy, but all I see in that first photo is a young girl adopting the pigeon-toed stance so many other Japanese girls do because they think it’s cute. It becomes ingrained in the musculature, and they end up walking with their toes pointed inward all the time, which just looks deformed to me. I want to hand out cards from orthopoedic surgeons to all these girls.
For what it’s worth, other photos don’t show the pigeon-toed stance, so either she was trying to get more forward leverage with a triangle stance, or I just happen to have snapped the photo during some kind of adjustment. —Jeffrey