Archive for the 'Cherry Blossoms' Category

Pics of Cherry Blossoms and such

Personalizing Lightroom’s Amazing New “Auto Tone” Feature

Lightroom 7.2 introduced an entirely new version of its "Auto Tone" feature, a one-click adjustment of photo brightness and contrast to hopefully-pleasing results. The prior version of Auto Tone used what might be called a "stupid, brute force" method that merely adjusted tone ranges to try find a numeric balance. It wasn't very useful.

The new Auto Tone, however, is fantastic, being powered by an artificial-intelligence engine trained with thousands of hand-tweaked photos from highly-regarded artists. It does a sufficiently-good job that I now use it as part of my new-photo workflow, to give me a better starting point for [...]


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Cherry-Blossom Portraits with Monet and May

I've remained friends with the family of one of Anthony's preschool classmates, and even though they haven't been in school together for nine years, we still keep in close touch. The other day I did a quick photoshoot of the family's two girls, Monet and May, who should now be about 15 and 13 years old, respectively.

I'm sort of rusty with the camera, so wasn't sure what to expect, but the moment I took the first photo, I knew that the girls would do all the work and I could just press the button; no photographer skill required when [...]


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Cherry Blossoms are Quite Early in Kyoto This Year

Cherry are blossoming quite a bit early in Kyoto this year. I had a shopping errand to do, so I took the long way to check out a few cherry-blossom spots around town. Unlike a similar outing last year, this year I had only a small little camera with me, so the photos aren't too exciting, but they perhaps give a sense for some of the places. Many were at full bloom already.

Each photo has a map link under it.

I swung by the Kyoto Imperial Palace Park (京都御所公園), which has some nice blossom areas in its northwest, and [...]


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Century of Wazuka Climbs, Part 2

This post picks up on last month's "Century of Wazuka Climbs, Part 1", about what was for me an epic day of beauty and climbing, and some trials and tribulations. "Part 1" ended with a delicious lunch, so this part picks up from just after.

So, after lunch, I made my way south to the deeper, even-less populated mountains of the Wazuka region of southern Kyoto Prefecture.

I thought that I had posted these guys before, but it seems that I didn't. It's the same intersection as this photo from "Tea Tour with Manseki and Gorm" last year.

This mild [...]


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Nigel’s Birthday Craziness: Ascending Hanase Pass on a Mamachari

ナイジェルさんは誕生日に際して花背峠まで登った、ママチャリで。

Nigel Randell usually does something sort of crazy on his birthday, such as this ride two years ago that I joined in on for a short portion.

This year, Nigel rode his heavy rusty mamachari (built-like-a-tank city bike) up to Hanase Pass, the 600+ meters of climb (2,000') being a challenge on the best road bike.

Neil, whom we've seen on my blog here and here, among others, is an extremely strong rider, but today on the occasion of Nigel's mamachari ride, was creating a challenge for himself by riding an old used bike with the seat dropped all [...]


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