As I mentioned in my previous post, yesterday was the Kyoto Marathon （京都マラソン２０１２). I thought it'd be a fun experience to photograph, to see what I could come up with. The first challenge was to pick a location along the 42-kilometer course that was both photogenic and accessable. (Huge swaths of the city were shut down to traffic, so I wanted something I could easily reach by bicycle.)

The course runs for several miles south along the rivers in the east of the city, so guessing that would be fruitful, I set off there, only to find mile after mile [...]

Today was the Kyoto Marathon （京都マラソン２０１２). The guy above, looking remarkably affable and relaxed, was not only leading the race at the 35km mark (about 80% of the way done), but had a full 30-second lead on second place, and more than a minute on third. I have no idea whether he ended up winning or even finishing, but at this point he looked solidly in command.

UPDATE: he won the race by 29 seconds, in a leasurly time of 2:26:21.

He was, at that point, #1 out of 14,093 runners: 1÷14,093 is 0.00078052, hence the caption.

The finish line [...]

Taking a break from the craziness that ensued for me yesterday when Lightroom 4 was released, I thought I'd pick up from last month's "Setsubun Festival at the Heian Shrine: Intense Burn Begins".

Once the blaze was going in earnest, they started throwing bundles of wooden slats into the fire, each slat with someone's wish for good health or the like written on it...

The heat for the fire-poker guy must have been almost unbearable. It was very very hot, even for me upwind 20 meters (two highway-bus lengths) away. But he could never retreat.

As I wrote about in [...]

After a two-month public beta, Adobe has just released Lightroom 4.0.

It's not a free upgrade, but with the price now cut in half (upgrades are now $80), it's an easy decision.*  There's a lot new if you're coming from Lr3, the most important likely being the new rendering engine. Laura Shoe has a post and video about what's new here, and Victoria Bampton's always exhaustive "what's new" list is here.

* At just $80 for the upgrade, even from Lr1, it's an easy decision, but Adobe usually comps me a free copy, which is very nice, so if [...]

It's been a while since I last posted about the traditional Japanese archery event that I attended last month. I left off a while ago with "Traditional Japanese Archery: More Ladies, Part 2", and you can see all the posts about the event via any of the "nearby photos" link under each picture.

The main event was for 2,200 twenty-year-olds, but when they were done a couple dozen instructors got to shoot, so I'll post from that group today. I'm still buried updating my plugins for Adobe Lightroom 4, so mostly just pictures today...