Because I have so much free time (NOT!), I've turned copious amounts of it into a new plugin for Adobe Lightroom that provides the simple but useful function of telling you what focal lengths your images were shot at.

It's like a stripped down version of ExposurePlot, but integrated into the Lightroom catalog.

Currently the plugin does only 35mm-equivalent focal-length plotting, but I've named it the more generic "data plot" to allow for future expansion.

You can see the version history and download the latest at the plugin's home page.

Anthony was looking forward to his shichi-go-san wishes-for-a-long-life children's blessing event because he had been assured that it involved candy and toys. We were looking forward to it because we knew he'd look so cute, as the Anthony in a Hakama picture I posted the other day bore out.

It's just a short walk to the shrine, and it was a wonderful day, so we headed out with Fumie's folks...

The shrine does a brisk business as a venue for marriage ceremonies and photo shoots. A friend of a friend got married here a few years ago, and you can [...]

Another photo from yesterday's Shichi-go-san event with Anthony. Anthony gestures to his grandfather with his ougi (folding fan).

I thought I'd give this one a try in B&W, which is a much more difficult proposition than you might expect if you've never done it. In Adobe Lightroom you can adjust all kinds of parameters for how the conversion from color is done, completely changing the character of the result in wild swings with a flick of a slider. Even while remaining in the grayscale world, the creative opportunities are endless... and if you are not guided by an innate sense [...]

As I mentioned the other day, today Anthony had his first shichi-go-san event, an important milestone in Japanese culture for kids aged six, four and two. The event's name means "seven, five, three", and represent the ages when you add a year to account for their time in the womb.

The Heian Shrine near our place is very popular for this, and last year I would sometimes just hang out around the shrine during and photograph the kids, the results of which I've posted in "Kids in Kimono: Cute Enough to Eat", "More Kids in Kimono: Still Cute", and one [...]

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we took Fumie's folks out for their 35th wedding anniversary, to Moritaya (モリタ屋) for sukiyaki.

Sukiyaki involves cooking fresh veggies and meat right at the table, with a bit of sauce and water. One specialty to the Kyoto style is to sprinkle a bit of special sugar (some kind of large-grain coarse white sugar) into the pan, which both adds a bit of sweetness and prevents the meat from burning.