A few more shots from the other day's visit to the Kongorinji Temple (金剛輪寺) in Shiga, an hour's drive from Kyoto.

I had brought my computer to do some processing on the road, and while I was trying some "artsy" processing of the photo above (or, at least, the original of what eventually became the photo above) because the original was dull and boring and just not working, I was about to give up and delete it when someone glanced over my shoulder and proclaimed how much she liked it, and why she liked it (the three colors and three [...]

Yesterday during my visit to Shiga Prefecture’s Kongorinji Temple (金剛輪寺), I came across some very delicate (very tiny) flowers among the moss, replete with tiny red berries that looked like apples.

Continued here...

In tidying up some of my blog infrastructure today, I came across a short post that I wrote in 2007 but had not published, so I'll go ahead and share it now.

I'm used to the sometimes-odd views one sees in Google Maps due to differing photos being stitched together or other random oddness, but sometimes the final effect still gives a startling vertigo-like effect, as in the snippet above from Nagoya, Japan.

The snippet above was captured in 2007. The current Google imagery for that location also exhibits multiple different perspectives in very close proximity, though the effect is [...]

Today was another fun but exhausting day of photography with Belgian Damien Douxchamps on his last day visiting from near Tokyo. The other day I posed some desktop backgrounds from Temples in north-east Kyoto, from our outing two days ago. Yesterday we spent quite a bit of inspiring time at the Honnen-in Temple, but the cursory glance I gave to my photos last night gave me a strong "one of those days when it just doesn't work" feelings, so no post yesterday.

Today we went to the Kongourinji Temple an hour's drive from Kyoto, in Shiga Prefecture. I've posted much [...]

I'm exhausted after a long day of photography in north-east Kyoto, temple hopping with Damien Douxchamps visiting from Tsukuba (near Tokyo). Today's post is just a few quick pictures I picked out from two of the places.

I used the polarizer filter today quite a bit (with moss and the leaves), and tried the shot above with a polarizer, without a polarizer, and at half power, and found that it looked best without. Without the white sheen of the reflections in the lower half of the photo (something the polarizer was quite effective at removing), the tray with the tea [...]