"Typhoon #18" for 2013 rolled by this morning, bringing lots of rain and the once-every year-or-so high water in the Kamo River. This post is essentially a repeat of the high-water posts from 2010 and last year, except this time there was significant flooding elsewhere in Kyoto.

If I'd had my iPhone with me while sleeping, I would have been awoken at 5am by the emergency alerts from Kyoto Prefecture and Kyoto City, warning of heavy rain. I'd never seen one of these before.

When growing up in Ohio, the National Weather Service would issues different level alerts for tornados [...]

In my post last week about a trip to a Kyoto temple last autumn, I wrote about some out-of-season cherry blossoms that bloom in November. Continuing with my recent theme of visiting my photo archives, I'm going back this time not to last fall, but just to the more recent spring, to a trip to the Ryouanji Temple (龍安寺) in northwest Kyoto.

I've posted a few times from that trip among the awesome blossoms, including:

"Weeping Cherry at Kyoto’s Ryouanji Temple" "Cherry Blossoms at Kyoto’s Ryouanji Temple, Part 1" "Subtle · Pastel · Tranquil" "The Effects of Aperture [...]

Following up from yesterday's "Tea and Sweets in Front of a Temple Garden", where I'm trying to make a dent in my photo backlog from last autumn, today we take a look at the setting for yesterday's post, the Jikkouin Temple (実光院).

The same water basin, but from a different angle with the garden-viewing room in the background, represents this visit on last year's "A Long But Photogenic November in Kyoto" post.

I'd visited with friends Damien and Paul while on a trip to Ohara, a somewhat remote mountain-village area of Kyoto. We'd just come from the most-excellent Housen-in Temple [...]

Every time I revisit my Lightroom library from last autumn's many photo outings, I find so many things waiting to be posted. Now if only I could find the time to post. Last week's "Views at the Honen'in Temple" was one attempt to catch up, and today's little post is another.

The whole "tea and sweets in front of the garden" experience is naturally inviting to the camera[sort of], but particularly since taking this shot last November, I've been giving it more attention. Other recent examples include this and this.

Getting a nice shot is tougher than you might imagine, [...]

The reflections on the wet rocks and foliage during the visit to the Honen'in Temple (法然院) presented in my previous post made for some interesting possibilities with the polarizing filter.

Swiping the mouse side to side on the photo above shows the effect of different filter rotations.

I like the rocks better when the bright reflections, but that also leaves the reflections on the foliage in the background, leaving them relatively washed out compared to the richer colors seen when the polarizer is turned to block reflections. (More impactful examples of foliage-related reflections are shown in "Heading Out To Photograph [...]