As I mentioned earlier today, full bloom has finally hit Kyoto.

Having recently read photographer Rick Lee's blog post When is dusk dusky enough? about how actually shooting a "night" shot at dusk can make use of a bit of remaining skylight to balance the harsh artificial lights, it reminded me of the lessons from Strobist's classic How to Photograph Christmas Lights, and made me want to try it with the cherry-blossom lightup that's going on in my area during the evenings this week.

I brought my D200, tripod, remote shutter release, Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8, and Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 across [...]

This is the same area whose blossoms were featured in last week's It Has Begun and this week's Sakura from my Kitchen Window. Digging around in my blog archives a bit, from 2006 I find Long Night Exposures and Cherry Blossoms and Cherry Blossom Finale, and even a few from 2005 before I moved here: Indeed, the Blooms have Bloomed in Kyoto and Poetry for the Season and More Cherry-Blossom Pics.

It's a pretty area, but photos would look much nicer without the cinderblock wall in the background (a wall one doesn't really notice until you look through the viewfinder).

I'm not sure what variety these blossoms are, but they're quite different from the standard white blossoms that are just getting going in Kyoto, the late-blooming fluffy pink variety, and (of course) the deeply rich plum-blossom pinks. The colors are much like the shidare zakura ("crimson willow cherry") that fill the nearby Heian-Shrine, but the tree doesn't seem all that willowy, so I don't know.

I've been busy on Lightroom projects, and trying to get ready for a short trip to the Amami Islands that we're starting tomorrow morning, but I knew this tree was at full bloom, so I [...]

Well, at least the first that I've noticed. Returning from a trip to the store around 2pm, I noticed a few blossoms on the trees near my place. It's just in time, too, because as I noted in the last couple of posts, the plum blossoms have started to wane. So, I grabbed a few snapshots of them, and even turned a couple of ones with blue sky in the background into desktop backgrounds....

Using the time-lapse sequence I made last year as a guide, it seems that these trees have started to bloom about one day earlier than last [...]

After Easter mass, we made the 15-minute drive over to Kitano Tenmangu, a Shinto shrine in north-west Kyoto that dates from 947, famous for its pink and white plum blossoms. It was my first visit.

We didn't realize just how past their prime the plum blossoms were: the trees were mostly bare. I see now that they have their plum-blossom festival in late February, so we're a month late to the party.

Still, there were a few bunches of blossoms here and there, in deep pink, bleached white, and various colors in between.

I'm sure it's breathtakingly spectacular during full [...]