We've been accumulating stuff we want to get rid of that's too big to put into the normal trash.... stuff that's become trash (an old couch, a large broken lamp, ...) or that we just don't need anymore (a photo printer, Anthony's old bicycle, an old LCD monitor...). There was a lot, and it was finally time to deal with it.

I searching on Yahoo! Japan (大型ゴミ 処分 京都) and picked 京都 不用品回収センター　とくとく, and I don't regret it.

I gave the guy a call, he came over an hour later with a little truck, and we looked at what I [...]
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In "Kyoto's Souren-ji Temple at f/1.2" the other day, I shared some ultra-thin-depth-of-field shots taken with a 50mm f/1.2 lens. A thin depth of field can be distracting, or it can make for a great effect -- one that I'm quite partial to -- but I didn't think the shots on that post were all that strong... just odd/different (and colorful).

So, for today's post, I was thinking to share some better examples, but I ran out of time to do the writeup I wanted, so instead I'll just share a couple of cute shots that happen to have a [...]

Going back into my archives again, to last April's visit to the Suntory Whisky Distillery in Yamazaki, 20 minutes south of Kyoto. It's Japan's oldest whisky distillery, and offers free tours daily.

Here's one photo to remind you of the initial post...

One thing I didn't cover in that is the photogenic "Whisky Museum", housing more than 7,000 samples of whisky and assorted spirits taken over the years.

The distillery is near a train station, and you have to cross the tracks near the front gate...

I don't really care for whisky, but I love the smells around the place, [...]

This is a followup to "An f/1.2 + f/5.6 Pair" from two months ago, from an outing introduced the prior day in "A Few Pretty Pictures from Kyoto’s Middle-of-Nowhere Sourenji Temple". I'd left off with the promise to show a few more f/1.2 shots, so here we finally are.

Nothing here is really that compelling, or even makes good use of the ultra shallow depth of field that f/1.2 affords. Whatever might be notable is more due to "strangeness" than "interest", but it's a bit off the beaten path so I'm posting them.

This kind of shot is cliché, but [...]

I've posted only the tiniest fraction of recent photos that I want to post, and today I'm making a slight dent in the backlog by revisiting the photogenic day last December that yielded "Intense Rainbow Over Arashiyama" and its longer followup, and also "Pretty and Colorful Public Path in Arashiyama", a post that highlighted the first and last shots of that day's outing.

The rainbow/mountain scene above was taken a few minutes after the aforementioned first shot of the outing. I prefer the ultra-widescreen view that the "first shot" has, but wanted to have something for my desktop background, so [...]