Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/22, ISO 5000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Roof
of a minor wall at the Kyoto Imperial Palace (京都御所)

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The grounds of the Kyoto Imperial Palace are open for tours most days, and like other imperial palaces in the area (Shugakuin, Sento, and, Katsura), holders of a foreign passport can visit pretty easily. It's much more difficult for a Japanese citizen to visit, except during a special open house for a few days each year.

During the open house, huge throngs of tourists (Japanese and foreign alike) visit, which makes it unappealing to someone who can visit on a less-crowded regular-tour day, but after finally making my first visit to the palace last week, I realized a great benefit to a photography-minded visitor of going during the open house: you can move at your own pace, and can stay as long as you like. (On the standard tours, your movements are tightly controlled and the group moves at a brisk pace.)

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/3200 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
North Gate
Kyoto Imperial Palace (京都御所)
one of half a dozen entrances along the almost-mile of surrounding wall

The palace is located within a larger city park that's always open to the public. Here's the Map view in Lightroom, with the yellow marker near the top where I was standing when I took the photo above (aiming at the gate in the wall to the south west of the marker):

The center block is the imperial palace, and as you can see from the other markers for other photos I took, only about half of the grounds are accessible to tourists.

The gate in the north wall (seen above, from outside) is similar to the south-east gate seen in the three-lovely-ladies wigglegram the other day, though that view is from the inside.

The only other photo showing on the map outside the palace walls is this next one, of the main entrance gate, after we'd had our bags inspected by police...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/1250 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Main Site Entrance
Kyoto Imperial Palace (京都御所)

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/500 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Palace Entrance
for use by visiting dignitaries

The first thing you see when you enter the grounds is a receiving entrance to a palace building. None of the buildings are open to the public, so the entrance is probably not used more than once or twice a century (since the emperor no longer lives here). Anyway, I love the detail in the construction of the ornate roof...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/8, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos

The site has many buildings and courtyards and walls and areas, and sometimes the view through a door would be across a courtyard through another door. I liked the geometry.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 140 — map & image data — nearby photos
Through and Through

For some reason, an ox-drawn cart on display garnered a lot of attention...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/5, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ox-Drawn Cart

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wheel Detail

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cambered

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 110 — map & image data — nearby photos
Through and Through
again

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Courtyard

The leading photo of this article (“Roof”) was taken here, on the left side of the doorway.

There's not much exciting here, but it's been a while since I posted something, so here we are. At the doorway seen in the photo above, I took photos to make a wigglegram, and so I've been stalled at this point in my photos because for the last several days I've been consumed with improving my wigglegram-making software. It's really been quite fun (though the math makes my brain melt). I find it particularly interesting how different crops on the same set of photos can result in vastly different end effects. We'll see some examples soon.

Continued here...