Here's a wigglegram (which I hereby dub in Japanese as「クネクネ写真」) from an outing a few days ago to the "Fallen Leaf Shrine" (岩戸落葉神社) in the mountains north of Kyoto.

That's at the same place as my first try at the whole "stereo photo" thing earlier this month, a vist first seen in "A Slightly Early Visit to Kyoto's Fallen-Leaf Shrine".

This subsequent visit is after an additional 11 days of leaf fall. Despite how beautiful they are, it's rare for a temple or shrine to let fallen leaves accumulate; they clean them every day or multiple times per day. But [...]

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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos Garden-Viewing Room at the Daihouin Temple (妙心寺大法院) Kyoto, Japan Desktop-Background Versions 1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600  ·  2880×1800 Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/1.4, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos Green Tea and […]
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On the outing the other day that produced yesterday's "A Few Pretty Pictures from Kyoto's Middle-of-Nowhere Sourenji Temple" post, I brought along a 50mm f/1.2 lens. I don't use that lens much and need to learn how to use it... my limited experience to date has been chronicled in "Impossible Photography: No Light, No Tripod, No Hope. D700 and a 50mm f/1.2" four years ago, and "Artsy-Fartsy in Kyoto, at f/1.2" five yeas ago.

I'm about to head out this morning for some more fall-foliage photography, but I thought I'd quickly post this pair of shots at different apertures.

This [...]

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As I mentioned in this morning's post, I went on a drive to the northern mountains of Kyoto yesterday. Our first stop was the middle-of-nowhere Sourenji Temple (宗蓮寺).

It was cold and the light was lush. On the way from where we parked I snapped this picture, which unfortunately has a local farmer going by in his little truck and Paul Barr caught mid step, but the richness is almost unreal...

There were a bunch of very oddly pruned trees whose bottom half looked like large bonsai trees, with tall super-thin shoots doubling the height from there...

The style does [...]

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Five and a half years ago -- 1,609 blog posts ago -- I posted "Kyoto’s Road to Nowhere", about a bridge that led straight into the rocky face of a mountain:

On a mountain fall-foliage-photography drive yesterday with Paul Barr and Damien Douxchamps, we came across the same bridge, now with the addition of a tunnel (the Oofuse Tunnel; 大布施トンネル))...

It's still a monumental waste of money, considering the expense that two bridges and one tunnel must have cost, and the total lack of apparent benefit in bypassing a few hundred meters of pleasant road.

One can hope that it's [...]

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