I met this young lady several years ago, and was pleased to have a chance to make some photographs for her today. Her easy smile made it all too easy. I'd been borrowing Damien's Nikkor 200mm f/2 since the autumn without having encountered a reason to use it, but today provided the perfect opportunity.

I've barely looked through the images so this'll have to do for now.

Continued here...

Dipping into the largely-untapped reservoir of things I want to post about, here are some pictures from a December 2012 visit to the Todaiji Temple (東大寺) in Nara, about an hour's train ride south of Kyoto. I posted a bit from that trip in "That Massive Column in Nara’s Todaiji Temple Is Nothing To Sneeze At", but it's a visually rich place, so I've been wanting to post much more.

I'd made the trip to take some pictures for a friend who is the author of Lonely Planet's "Japan" guidebook. A few of the photos from this trip made it [...]

This post is a mini review of a couple of bluetooth (wireless connection) speakers I've been using recently, one small "brick" speaker for the home, and a pair of earbuds for the gym.

Above we have the Braven 710. I lifted the (almost-certainly CGI) image from their web site; if I would have not been lazy and instead taken a photo myself, I would have put something there for context so that you can see that it's small... it's about the size of a sort-of-squished hotdog bun.

We like it. It's got great sound from such a small package. I've [...]

I recently made my first trip to the area of southern Kyoto historically known for its sake production, which likely dates back thousands years. Written on the cup above is "月桂冠" (Gekkeikan), the name of a sake-brewing company founded in 1639.

Gekkeikan sake is ubiquitous in Japan. Here you see its name on barrels outside a temple in the area...

It's my understanding that the (certainly-empty) barrels of sake represent a monetary donation from the brewery, to match what in olden times was an actual gift of sake. In either case, the brewery gets advertisement and good karma.

This particular [...]

I came across this today and knew it'd be a great "What am I?" quiz. If you want to cheat, the image metadata includes a hint. Maybe. 😉

As always, I'll keep any guesses private until I reveal the answer in a day or two.