This is a followup to "An f/1.2 + f/5.6 Pair" from two months ago, from an outing introduced the prior day in "A Few Pretty Pictures from Kyoto’s Middle-of-Nowhere Sourenji Temple". I'd left off with the promise to show a few more f/1.2 shots, so here we finally are.

Nothing here is really that compelling, or even makes good use of the ultra shallow depth of field that f/1.2 affords. Whatever might be notable is more due to "strangeness" than "interest", but it's a bit off the beaten path so I'm posting them.

This kind of shot is cliché, but [...]

You probably can't see the cute little stick bug unless you know what you're looking for....

Continuing in yesterday's vein of revisiting old outings, this one goes back to late in last year's cherry-blossom season where I came across a little stick bug.

He eventually wandered off to a leaf...

A pair of blossom shots, sans bug...

The shot above is similar to this one of a less-bloomed blossom. I tend to try that kind of edge-on shot with this lens (a Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5), with other examples that come to mind including this, this, and this. The one above [...]

I've posted only the tiniest fraction of recent photos that I want to post, and today I'm making a slight dent in the backlog by revisiting the photogenic day last December that yielded "Intense Rainbow Over Arashiyama" and its longer followup, and also "Pretty and Colorful Public Path in Arashiyama", a post that highlighted the first and last shots of that day's outing.

The rainbow/mountain scene above was taken a few minutes after the aforementioned first shot of the outing. I prefer the ultra-widescreen view that the "first shot" has, but wanted to have something for my desktop background, so [...]

In "Massive Support Column at Nara's Todai-ji Temple" I noted that of the many massive columns in the 320-year-old "Hall of the Great Buddha" (until recently the largest wooden building in the world), one particular column was quite special.

The columns, including this one, are about 20 meters (65 feet) tall; impressive any way you look at them.

It was very dark inside this cavernous building, with what light there was mixed among scattered incandescent floodlights and ever-changing skylight wafting in from the occasional window. Adjusting color balance on these shots has been a nightmare, even with ample use of [...]

I mentioned the other day in "Massive Support Column at Nara's Todai-ji Temple" about a recent photo trip to Nara, an hour's train ride south of Kyoto. I made the trip with Kyoto photographer friend Aeron, who besides being a great photographer is also seriously photogenic (I mean, really, just look at that smile), so along the way I took the opportunity to try some very impromptu portraits.

And when I say "impromptu", I don't mean something like these from five years ago where I spent 15 minutes, or these from six months ago whee I spent a couple of [...]