Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/4, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ying and Yang
cherry blossom among the autumn colors,
at the Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺), Shiga Japan
My laptop, where I do all my photo work for the last couple of years, is in the shop, so I'm having to dip back into the old Lightroom catalog on my old desktop machine, where I have photos from the 90s through the end of 2010. I hadn't looked at them in ages, and wow, the quality of my pics from back then is pretty bad, so there's slim pickings for blog posts until I get my laptop back.
But these two pics aren't so bad, relatively speaking. They're “October Cherry” blossoms from an early-autumn (Nov 9th) trip to the Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺) in Shiga Japan, back when the fall colors were just ramping up for the 2010 season. It's a trip that produced many blog posts, starting with “First Taste of Fall Colors at Shiga’s Amazing Kongourinji Temple”. It's a temple famous for its deep sorrow (as presented here), but cherry blossoms amid fall colors are decidedly upbeat.
I talk a bit about what kind of cherry tree starts to blossom in autumn, in this old post.
Here' a close up of the one blossom above, taken at an angle to put green into the background...
Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
These aren't strong shots, but they'll make nice desktop backgrouns, and with snow forecast for Kyoto tonight, they'll put me in a spring mood.
Clicking on “nearby photo” under either photo brings you to all the posts from this temple over the years. I was there most recently this past November, a trip covered starting in “Another Exhausting Day of Photography: Shiga Prefecture’s Kongorinji Temple”. In particular, I really love the lead photo in this followup to that trip.