Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/160 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Unretouched
back corner of Kyoto's Sourenji Temple (宗蓮寺)
Straight out of the camera.
(except for white balance, set in post via a gray-card reference shot)

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As I mentioned in this morning's post, I went on a drive to the northern mountains of Kyoto yesterday. Our first stop was the middle-of-nowhere Sourenji Temple (宗蓮寺).

It was cold and the light was lush. On the way from where we parked I snapped this picture, which unfortunately has a local farmer going by in his little truck and Paul Barr caught mid step, but the richness is almost unreal...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Rich
just outside the Sourenji Temple (宗蓮寺)
Kyoto, Japan

There were a bunch of very oddly pruned trees whose bottom half looked like large bonsai trees, with tall super-thin shoots doubling the height from there...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Grotesque

The style does not appeal to me at all (they make me think of grotesquely large Chia pets). I've seen a similar style at Shouzan, but those were the size of large bushes... these were full-on trees reaching multiple stories tall.

Here's one where you can sort of see the scale...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/100 sec, f/4.5, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos

And here's an abstract something-or-other that I just sort of like...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/160 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Entrance Steps
Paul Barr up top, Damien Douxchamps down below

Here's what Paul was looking at in that shot...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/50 sec, f/10, ISO 5600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Steep and Colorful
and not more than a little visually overwhelming

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I'll share shots from the relatively-small temple area in another post, but for now I'll end with this pleasant little alcove on the opposite side from where the stairs above end...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Back Corner
of the Sourenji Temple (宗蓮寺)

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Walking to the fence at the end and turning around to face the camera, I took the photo that leads this post.

Normally I end up doing something to every photo I take in post processing (in Lightroom).... nudging exposure, contrast, noise reduction, white balance, etc., because I'm simply not careful and patient (and skilled) enough to get it right in camera. I could never be a film photographer.

The image quality can generally afford this post-processing step because I shoot in raw format; it both affords great latitude in post processing, and can save me from disasters.

To some extent I've embraced this lazy unskilled approach to save me time with white balance. I just leave the camera at “Auto” and don't care about it while shooting, then set the white balance later in bulk via a reference shot of a WhiBal card (like this and this) or from a color chart (like this).

You can never really say “straight out of the camera” with a raw-format image because the result you get necessarily depends on the raw converter and its particular quirks, but other than setting the white balance via a neutral square on a color-cart shot, the lead photo is just as it appeared when first loaded into Lightroom. Just amazing.

Continued here...