I wandered up to Kyoto's Shogunzuka overlook (将軍塚) the other day where I can sometimes find nice sunsets (like this, and as in this amazing photo).

The cloud formations held great potential, but sadly, it manifest itself only in my imagination (and then in Lightroom)...

The place was empty except for one other photographer, who was similarly disappointed.

She was a professional photographer, there on her free time in hopes of a nice sunset. At least we could chat while we waited to see whether anything developed. It turns out that she uses Lightroom, the first time I've run into [...]

This is sort of a followup to January's "Informal GPS Logger Test: iPhone 4s GPS is Shockingly Good" post about GPS and GLONASS loggers. We took a drive today in the mountains, and I took the opportunity for another informal test of location-logging technologies

Garmin eTrex 20 GPS + GLONASS dedicated logger.

Dual® XGPS150 GPS-only bluetooth logger, recorded on an iPad with the Guru Maps app.

Apple iPhone 4s (GPS + GLONASS) recorded via the GeoTagr app, which for some reason the company sent me for free out of the blue the other day (probably hoping for a [...]

Here are a few shots from the Koumyou-in Temple in Kyoto (光明寺, 京都) taken on the same outing as the photos accompanying my Lightroom 4.1 post the other day.

One of the verandas consisted of a single plank of pine more than a yard wide (94cm by my foot-measuring estimation). I'd never seen anything like it; I assume that all the trees big enough to allow this big a plank were harvested long ago.

I talked to a lady that I took to be the owner of the place, who said that the temple building itself was not all that [...]

I snapped this shot on yesterday's hike. It was very hazy, so the "layered mountain" effect that I like so much was strong. Perhaps too strong... I would have liked more contrast.

Taken from almost the same spot, looking a different direction, is a moody shot I like of the "Azalea Hillside" (つつじヶ丘), which can apparently be spectacular, but I missed it by a week:

Stéphane said that the previous week, the hillside was covered in every color except green, but now many of the other colors had been taken over by green. It was still pretty, so I'll have [...]

I took an impromptu hike to the top of Kyoto's Mt. Hiei (比叡山) yesterday, about exhausting myself to death in the process. I'm much less in shape than I thought. I tagged along with Stéphane Barbery, who has done it several times of late.

I made the half-hour walk from my place to his, then we walked for another half hour or so to get to the trailhead next to the Baptist Hospital in eastern Kyoto....

The kind of Kyoto hikes I've done before have all had steep slopes, such as Daimonji, the local Higashiyama trails or other short hikes, [...]