After the baptism yesterday, Anthony and I got together with some other friends, and ended up going to Hieidaira (a small community nestled in the mountains, just over the border from Kyoto, in Otsu) to see some huge mushrooms.

Nils Ferry's wife Yoshiko and three-year-old son Greg were with us. I've met Nils many times (such as when he took me to some temples in his area to see the autumn colors last fall), but had never had the pleasure of meeting his wife.

The mushrooms were big and fuzzy....

Apparently, they start out as balls, then start to expand [...]

Peter requested some fern pictures. I happen to have a few poorly-photographed fern pictures in my library, so here they are....

The next three fuzzy shots were taken in the dark shade under deep forest cover, handheld, while on a short hike in the hills with Anthony last May. I've got a monopod on order now, which hopefully should make this kind of situation easier to photograph, but in any case, here are the shots I did get:

The next picture is sad. I took it when we stopped in the mountains in the middle of nowhere to eat our [...]

Here are a few more shots from Kyoto's Giouji Temple (祇王寺), to add to the other posts in the set (linked via the "related posts" box below).

I love how the "do not enter" gate uses a piece of bamboo set into notched pillars of granite. A classy touch.

Continuing with the story about last fall's hike up Kyoto's Mt. Daimonji and the ensuing silly lunch on top, here are some hazy views from the top. Kyoto is usually fairly hazy, so when it is nice and clear, I'm tempted to make the hike back up there for better pictures.

These two shots were taken at either end of my Nikkor 70-200/2.8 zoom's range, with the one below showing this area (mouseover here) in the one above.

Below, some notable sites include the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (seen earlier in this post), the Main Gate of the [...]

It's hot and humid in Kyoto now, so I'd like to try to cool off by returning to the quintessential pleasantness of Kyoto's spring.

The image above was made by applying the same Photoshop "Darken" blend-mode technique that I used to create the Color of Kyoto foliage desktop background last fall, but this time to a pair of pictures I took during a cherry-blossom outing in April.

Links below the picture are to desktop-sized images in both widescreen and standard versions.

Unlike the previous time where I used three pictures, I used only two this time. Also, instead of [...]