So I was going through the photos from last weekend's Kyoto Marathon （京都マラソン２０１２) and came across an out-of-focus shot that I'd normally just delete, but it had some kind of odd sense of space about it that I found somehow appealing, and wondered whether I couldn't use some funky processing to turn the lack of focus into an asset.

I don't know whether I succeeded, but the result is what you see above, something that vaguely reminded me of my memory of some Leroy Neiman Olympic paintings.

I don't use develop presets very often, but I saved the extreme develop [...]

Some random desktop backgrounds in my photo library from the past year. I used these as practice with the new render engine in Lightroom 4, which I like but am not completely used to yet.

Often, a photo here is from some trip or event that I already blogged about; the "nearby photos" link under each image brings you to related posts.

So picking up from my previous post about the Kyoto Marathon （京都マラソン２０１２), once the runners started arriving, I practiced taking photos. The depth of field with this lens is so incredibly thin that it's only luck that I got anything, but like hitting the lottery to get something so close like the next shot:

It was odd for me to see the "OMRON" on each runner's number bib. They're a large international electronics company headquartered in Kyoto; I worked for them for eight years when I was fresh out of grad school back in the late 80s.

The challenge of [...]

Not far from the temple where the Japanese archery event I've been posting about was held, there's a college of massage called Kyoto Butugen (京都仏眼鍼灸理療専門学校). It's closer to the American idea of physical therapy than "massage".... words like "relaxation" and "aromatherapy" have no place here. The doctors (which in this case are students in a three-year curriculum) have a deep understanding of the physical mechanics of muscle, bones, etc., and use that to attack with vigor whatever aches and pains you come in with. The massage itself can be extremely painful (exactly as described here), but the results are impressive [...]

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 [...]