I occasionally post desktop-background-sized versions of pictures that I think might be good for that use, and so my blog's desktop-background photostream and category of desktop-background posts are full of them. I don't actually use many of them myself, though... I think I'm too lazy to bother changing them.

For the last year and a half I've used "Destination Unknown" (a mountain stairway), and for the year prior to that I used "The Color of Kyoto" (funky pastel-effect fall foliage), and for the half year before that "Daigo Temple Cherry Blossoms". But I switched recently (like I said, first time [...]

In last week's post "A Visit to Kyoto's Sanzen-in Temple" (which was followed up by some pretty desktop backgrounds and Part II), I included a photo captioned Contemplation, showing a lady at the edge of a garden-viewing room, viewing one of the temple's gardens.

I never got around to actually entering the garden-viewing room myself, but on the way out of the temple grounds an hour or so later, a small break in an intermediate wall gave a glimpse of the garden and the garden-viewing room from right angles to before, and I took the opportunity to snap another shot.

A few desktop-background pictures from the first half of yesterday's visit to Sanzen-in Temple in Ohara, a mountain suburb of Kyoto, Japan....

Continued here...

This post continues from my previous post, "Cherry Blossoms in the Rain at the Heian Shrine". Even more so than in that post, a lot of the pictures this time have a sort of distinct (distinctly annoying?) feel, with multiple planes of focus (or the lack there of).

Also, as with some of the photos in last month's "Kyoto 2009 Cherry-Blossom Preview", some this time have had a touch of Lightroom's "negative clarity", which I apparently am enamored with. The shot above, of course, has had a lot of negative clarity applied, to give it a glowing pastel feel. I [...]

Last Tuesday, after Anthony went to school on the bus all by himself, I thought I'd take advantage of the rainy weekday morning (no crowds!) to check out the cherry blossoms in the garden of the Heian Shrine. The most common variety of cherry blossom around here (the pure white yoshino) are almost completely gone, but the Heian Shrine's justly famous garden is full of other varieties that were still pretty much at full bloom.

By the time I started over (the shrine didn't open for an hour and a half after Anthony had gone), the rain had started up [...]