When I went to the Heian Shrine yesterday morning during the brief spell of amazing snowfall, it was with the intention to enter their gardens to take pictures, as I did during a snowfall two years ago. Most of my pictures from the Heian Shrine, such as yesterday's, or of the intense burn, or the Setsubun events, are from the large areas of the Shrine that are open to the public without cost. There are other areas, including a large and beautiful garden that costs 600 yen (about US $6) to enter.

Unfortunately, it wasn't yet open when I was [...]

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Is this shot at all interesting?

We awoke to a pretty layer of snow this morning, and I'm now going through the 249 shots I took on a short outing with Anthony. I was about to add this shot to the reject pile when I had second thoughts. I converted it to grayscale, futzed with the grayscale mix in Lightroom, and now it has some appeal to me, although I can't put my finger on exactly what.

Maybe the grayscale makes it interesting? I had a grayscale shot on my Artsy-Fartsy in Kyoto af f/1.2 post, which was met with [...]

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I'm occasionally asked about my photo and blog-writing workflow, and having just been asked twice in as many days, I thought I'd just go ahead and post about it.

Unlike this post, most of my non-technical posts have a lot of photos, either to tell a story (like this) or to just share pretty photos (like this). In either case, I start with the photos.

Photo Workflow

My photo workflow is pretty much the same whether it's a subject I intend to blog about or not...

I download the tracklog from my GPS unit to my PC.

I transfer [...]

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It's been almost two years since Anthony got a bicycle, but although he enjoyed it a few times at first, he didn't have all that much interest again until lately, so when we went out for a ride today, it was perhaps the half-dozenth time we'd been out. However, I have a feeling he'll really be wanting to do it more, because today – for the first time – he was able to ride unassisted for fairly long stretches.

I'd used Carlos' great advice on teaching a kid to ride a bike a month or so ago, which perhaps sparked [...]

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Having grown up in Ohio – land of arctic winters and steam-bath summers – I learned to enjoy the change of seasons. I missed them when I lived in California, but Kyoto is better, with glorious springs and autumns. Kyoto's winter is short on snow and thus is fairly drab, so I'm excited whenever the forecast has any chance of snow in it. Sadly, nothing usually comes of it, so any flakes that do materialize are cause for enjoyment. I love snow so long as I don't have to drive in it, so I'm always wishing for more.

Yesterday mid-morning [...]

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