Having become interested in upping my skill in taking portraits, I cornered Paul Barr to pose for some while we were at the Shisendo Temple (詩仙堂) yesterday (a wonderful place Damien Douxchamps introduced me to in a visit last week, a few photos from which made it to this post).

I brought my laptop with these photos to A's Bar, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant/bar with really excellent food (try the udon and avocado/salmon salads), and processed them with Paul. The limitless artistic directions that Lightroom affords meant we went round and round with each photo, but in the end is seems [...]

I mentioned in my previous post that I'm not generally a fan of the wide-angle lens, so I find the photo above somewhat annoying, but also somewhat attractive. I can't decide.

The next two items likely fall into the same category for many folks.... two-frame animated GIFs that give a "3D viewer" feeling, like those old image-pair glasses we had as kids...

I've long noticed that when flipping among images in Lightroom, sometimes I get a momentary 3D stereo feeling when adjacent images are almost identical except for a slight horizontal displacement (like our two eyes' horizontal displacement), and [...]

Paul Barr arrived in Kyoto last night for the fall-foliage season, and so today for our first outing we made a return trip to the aptly-named Ochiba Jinja (落葉神社), meaning "fallen-leaf shrine". This is my (our) second trip, the first having been documented two years ago in "Carpet of Yellow Deep in the Mountains of North-West Kyoto".

The first trip had been on a Dec 2, two weeks later in the season than our trip today, so most of the leaves that time had already fallen; this time most were still on the trees, and the color hadn't even fully [...]

A belated continuation of our recent visit to Naoshima Island and its artsy Benesse House hotel/museum two weeks ago.

While packing the car to go home, I came across a lone piece of tiny colorful vine that had somehow found its way to the sidewalk. Ever since I took this pic six years ago, I've been a fan of vines like this.

I loved the shape of this tiny island (Oozuchi Island) four miles distant (also seen here in my first post). According to Wikipedia, it's less than 30 acres (1/20th of a square mile), but rises to an elevation [...]

One of the main points of interest at the Kongorinji Temple (金剛輪寺) are the many jizou (地 蔵) statues. I give a more-detailed introduction in "Deep Sorrow at the Kongourinji Temple’s Path of Jizou" from two years ago when I wrote about this path after my first visit, but in short: these statues were placed by parents who lost a child, as a form of prayer that the child will find an easy path to heaven.

Each statue is unique, and has a hand-sewn bib, a colorful pinwheel, and the engraved name of a child.

Before you get to the [...]