On my deep-mountain scooter ride deep in the mountains north of Kyoto the other day, I came across something I hadn't quite expected, a tree floating upside-down flying across a small valley between two local peaks.

(By the way, I wonder whether the large cone-shaped tree behind the backhoe is the same pseudo-cedar discussed in "Deep In The Mountains Above Kyoto's Kumogahata Village", but without the branch pruning done by the tree farmers....?)

This thing this was absolutely amazing to watch....

Picking up the action with a different log...

Then the claws open slightly and the internal knobby-teeth tracks spin, [...]

If the pic above looks familiar, it's because I had a portrait version of it on "An Amazing Day of Photography at Some Eastern-Kyoto Temples" back in April. I was rummaging around in my Lightroom catalog today and got depressed at how many posts are waiting for me to get around to them -- I have so much I want to share -- so I thought I'd start with a few more from the morning of the photogenic stroll that produced that post.

Having recently posted "Trying Some Hard-Edged Black and White", I thought I see what I could do [...]

Last week I posted "Deep In The Mountains Above Kyoto's Kumogahata Village" and its followups, featuring photos from a rainy car trip into some remote mountains. The weather was nice yesterday, so I went back on my scooter, and could probe deeper than I could with the car.

Today's simple post just shows some scenes of the roads I was on, or of areas just off the road.

Fallen trees looped off at the road line was a frequent sight. The mountain is covered with trees, and they fall from time to time, and if they block the road, they're [...]

If you get the point of this "What am I?" quiz, leave your answer in the comments. I'll withhold all comments until I reveal the answer in a few days...

While at the Shimyouin Temple the other day, I intended to ask permission to take a portrait of the priest and his wife. To prepare, I asked Paul Barr to stand in for a quick test shot in the dim entry room, with soft light splashing in through the door from the gloomy downpour outside.

When I got home, instead of deleting the test shot I started to play with it a bit in Lightroom, and found a fairly powerful image emerge as I pushed it toward a hard-edged black & white (heavy on the blacks, contrast, and clarity).

It [...]