Typhoon #4 of the season blew nearby on Tuesday, the first one to have any impact on Kyoto. It wasn't particularly eventful, but as I discovered after 2007's Typhoon #4, the air can be quite clear and the clouds quite dramatic after a typhoon blows through, so yesterday after a photogenic hike in western Kyoto, I went up to Shogunzuka in eastern Kyoto to catch the sunset.

As usual, I was hoping for a jaw-dropping display, but as usual, I didn't get it. Still, it was better than most. And as usual, the deep color of the sunset (this time [...]

Did some hiking today. Took some pictures. Here's one.

Continued here...

As I mentioned yesterday in "Rich Colors: A Good Start to an Amazing Day in Kyoto", I started a wonderful day of exploration and photography with a visit to the Gioji Temple (祇王寺) in western Kyoto.

In keeping with my "spray and pray" approach to photography 🙂 I ended up taking almost 600 photos over the course of the day, but maybe my approach is not quite as unskilled as I thought, because most of my shots came out nicely. Or maybe Gioji is just that photogenic and inspiring.

So, as somewhat of an exercise in showing my thought process [...]

I had the most amazing day of photographic and gastronomic discovery today, so much so that a month's worth of blog posts won't do it justice. During the day I took off to the mountains of western Kyoto with a friend, and in the evening met other friends for an all-you-can eat (all-you-can-drink!) BBQ buffet. A truly wonderful day.

I barely had time to glance at some of the photos from the mountains before having to run off to the BBQ, but the colors above caught my eye. It has no post processing except white balance (which I set via [...]

I mentioned the other day in "Happy Ordination Anniversary (54!) to Kyoto Institution Fr. Graham McDonnell" that I'd come across a weird flower, and was quickly informed (both here and on Google Plus; not a word from Facebook, where my blog-post notices never elicit a comment) that it was the flower from a passion-fruit vine.

The shape of the flower apparently lends the "Passion" to its English name, summoning images of the Passion of Christ.

The Japanese name seems to come from the same construction, though along a different path: tokeisou (時計草) means "Watch Plant"

It looks to be a [...]