As I mentioned on the helicopter-and-rainbow post earlier in the week, I made a visit to a couple of remote mountain temples in the Takao area of north-west Kyoto. The first, the Jingoji Temple (神護寺), is accessed by walking down a long and winding flight of steps into a ravine, across a small bridge, then up an even steeper flight of windy steps on the side of the facing mountain.

The photos on this post are from the paths outside the temple area; it was really beautiful inside and I'm still a bit overwhelmed by the experience, so I'll have [...]

So, after yesterday's post of Anthony's surprisingly good photography at the Eikando Temple, here are some of my own.

I got a call today that the nearby Eikando Temple was bathed in some gorgeous late-afternoon peeking-through-some-storm-clouds sun, so I thought I'd go and take a look. It's always absolutely amazing during the fall-foliage season, even in the rain, so I knew I couldn't lose, but it became all the better when Anthony said he wanted to join me. Normally he couldn't care less about anything like that, but for some reason wanted to try taking pretty pictures.

So, I grabbed my Nikon D700 for me and a point-n-shoot compact for him, and we rode our bikes over.

He took [...]

Stéphane Barbery invited me today to visit a temple and shrine near Mt. Yoshida, an area a 20-minute walk from my place that he introduced to me a few years ago.

In the years since, I've gone by the steps seen above many times, but I'd never actually gone up them, but today I was continuing my slight walking-for-health kick and had arrived on foot, so I took them.

I'd hauled my tank of a Nikkor 300mm f/2 because Stéphane had found a good vantage point for a photo of the neighboring temple, but it turns out that conditions weren't [...]

Today I revisited for the first time a few of the temples that I first visited last spring (as seen in "An Amazing Day of Photography at Some Eastern-Kyoto Temples" and "Revisiting April's Eastern-Kyoto Temple Stroll, among others), spending most of the time wandering the sprawling grounds of the Imakumano Kannonji Temple (今熊野観音寺).

It was almost completely deserted except for light tourist traffic in the main area. Those who ventured 30 seconds beyond were treated to the most amazing single tree I've ever seen, the red one seen above. It was a dull, heavily-overcast day, and there were no electronic [...]