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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tinge of Fall
Shisendo Temple (詩仙堂), Kyoto Japan
I'm exhausted after a long day of photography in north-east Kyoto, temple hopping with Damien Douxchamps visiting from Tsukuba (near Tokyo). Today's post is just a few quick pictures I picked out from two of the places.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/3.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Slanted
tatami mats, bamboo, and my socks
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 140 — map & image data — nearby photos
Preparing for Winter
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Starburst
Not as wild as a passion-fruit flower, but still pretty wild
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lunch
Green tea and a sweet, at the Rurikou-in Temple ( 瑠璃光院 ), Kyoto Japan
(I normally don't eat lunch, but made an exception when Damien treated)
I used the polarizer filter today quite a bit (with moss and the leaves), and tried the shot above with a polarizer, without a polarizer, and at half power, and found that it looked best without. Without the white sheen of the reflections in the lower half of the photo (something the polarizer was quite effective at removing), the tray with the tea and sweet was dark and indistinct.
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 10000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Step
Yellow stepping-stone island in a lake of gray stone
Rurikou-in Temple ( 瑠璃光院 )
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Indistinct
Rurikou-in Temple ( 瑠璃光院 )
That last one might be a bit disconcerting until you know what's going on (and perhaps even after). The focus is on the floorboards, so the garden beyond the windows is all out of focus, but more than that, you're looking at the out-of-focus garden through old panes of glass that have developed strong ripples over the decades. It was pretty in real life; I'm not sure that the photo is anything but annoying, but we'll see.
Continued here (sort of)... or maybe here or maybe here or here, etc., etc., etc. It was a busy week.
Great pictures! I really love Rurikoin during autumn. And really beautiful Matcha Shot.
(…and it’s Rurikoin, with an “u”)
Ah, thanks… with the font they use on the ticket for the furigana, even with my glasses I can’t tell the difference. Fixed. —Jeffrey
1. That last shot surprised me. I first thought I was looking through a windowpane at the top and a jalousie window below. Must have been a wet day.
2. Under “Starburst”, I believe you’ve captured a very nice picture of a Toad Lily, which is a terrible name, I think, for a lovely late-blooming flower. This appears to be the last bloom of the stalk. I had several of these “Tricyrtis” awhile back, but they died out. This reminds me how much I like them and should get some more.
3.You will quickly lose your trim form if you continue to overindulge in lunches like this one.
Tinge of fall – that is just a great shot of a some perfect gardening and definitely does it for me. Great composition and all that. Both by the gardener and the photographer.
Starburst – I have always wondered why they are called toad lilies…as agree with Mrs Friedl that it could not be more unlike a toad.
Step is really calm.
A pretty good haul!.
But what do you do with the other 490 or so that don’t make it to the blog?
That day’s photos are already buried behind what came later (and with foliage season just getting started, will be further buried in short order), so maybe nothing. But if I ever move from Kyoto to the inside of a blank cinderblock world, I’ll have enough fodder in my archives to continue posting every day for years. —Jeffrey
I too have wondered about the name toad lily for these rather striking plants.
This link is worth looking at for some highly detailed close-up photography of the flowers: http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjan10/bj-toadlily.html. It also makes passing reference to the supposed origin of the name, with a link to a rather long-winded debunking of the tale. The latter implies that the name originated from a supposed use of the plant to attract toads to eat, by a supposedly primitive tribe in the Philippines, ‘discovered’ in 1971. I can only add that these plants were called toad-lilies before that, e.g. in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Dictionary of Gardening, 2nd edition, (1956) and in the 1951 edition of L H Bailey’s Manual of Garden Plants.
For what it’s worth, I understand that the Japanese name, hototogisu means ‘cuckoo’; I wonder why …
My dictionary gives two definitions of hototogisu, one being the plant and another being a kind of bird. If there’s any relation beyond coincidental, it doesn’t mention it. —Jeffrey
I’m with Annie, we want more pics 🙂
And may I suggest a socks upgrade? (笑)