This post is sort of a continuation of “Hoverfly and Hydrangea”, from a trip last month with Aeron to the gardens of the Heian Shrine (平安神宮) in eastern Kyoto.

The light was really not very good (mostly quite harsh), and I was enjoying the conversation with Aeron more than I was paying attention to the photography, but I thought I'd share a few more pictures anyway.

Some of the trees in the garden had wonderfully “interesting”, twisted shapes, though I had no idea what to do with them camera wise. As I said, the light was often really harsh, which seemed in this case to call for some contrasty B&W treatments.

Moving to another, lower-slung tree with a similarly-interesting shape...

Of course, I can't stop playing with things to interactively illustrate photography stuff, such as recent presentations of the effect of aperture on a cherry-blossom scene, or the effect of shutter speed on flowing water. Here's a pair of shots showing the effect of a polarizer filter (偏光フィルタ):

With Polarizer 偏光フィルタ有り   -   Without Polarizer　偏光フィルタ無し

mouseover a button to see that image

Wow, what a huge difference.

But really, neither is any good.. the “with” shot is just too flat without at least some reflections, much like some of the food shots in the first post I did like this back in 2008, “A Few Polarization-Filter Examples”.

In this case, I actually did take a sequence of shots as I spun the filter, to see the various intermediate results, but the results are too jumpy/choppy... I need to find a place where I can use a tripod, and take care with my shots.

I also did a similar polarization comparison in 2011 (“Heading Out To Photograph The Fall Foliage? Don’t Forget The Polarizer Filter”) and in 2012 (“Polarizer Examples With the Moss and Ferns of Kyoto’s Gioji Temple”).

Anyway, back to the garden, I found exactly one instance of this kind of yellow flower...

I generally don't like signage (it spoils the natural environment), but the signage here was thoughtfully done, though the need for the sign above doesn't speak well about the lower limits of Japanese intelligence / courtesy / common sense.

We'd gone to see the irises, which I'd heard earlier were really great, but we were too late and they were completely gone. Only a few water lily remained...

Apparently the gardens used to be open until 6:30pm, but with the change to 6:00pm, the sign was “updated” with an attempt to scratch off the “:30” part.

Continued here...