Archive for the 'Pretty Photos' Category

Posts including photos that I think are particularly pretty, usually about nature.

A Few Desktop Backgrounds from the Shouseien Temple

Today was another busy day leaving little room for a blog post (on the plus side, I cleaned my room, but on the other hand, so to speak, Anthony fractured a finger while playing ball at school), so like yesterday, I'm taking it easy, this time with a few simple images from the Shouseien Temple (渉成園), which we first saw the other day in "First Peek at the Shouseien Temple in Downtown Kyoto".

I'm normally good about getting an "establishing shot" that shows the context for some detail or other that I want to share, but I seem to have [...]


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Taking It Easy With Some Flowers From Kyoto’s Gioji Temple

I've been busy with my Lightroom plugin stuff all weekend, so just a simple post today on some pretty flowers found among the moss during a recent visit to the Gioji Temple (祇王寺) in Kyoto.

We'll start with what I assume is some hydrangea (ajisai - アジサイ) just beginning to bloom...

It frankly doesn't look much in the small thumbnail, but clicking through to the larger version has the tiny buds in the center come alive like stars in a nebulae (or something like that).

I tried a side-view approach to get the petals edge on, and I shouldn't have [...]


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Gioji Temple Photoshoot Continues: Little Orange Mushrooms and Depth-of-Field Comparisons

Back again to the mossy temple visit from "Tag Along With Me on a Photo Shoot at Kyoto’s Gioji Temple", with an orange followup counterpart to the "Gioji Temple Photo Shoot: Nicolas’s White Little Mushrooms" post.

The temple's entrance gate is covered by a little roof of bamboo and decaying moss-covered wood. For context, here's a photo of the roof with Nicolas under it (photographing a spider):

The bamboo on the roof makes a grid of squares... the mushrooms of today's post are in the lower-rightmost square:

Once Nicolas was done, I moved in with my all-time favorite lens, the [...]


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Pastel Fall Foliage, Courtesy of Lightroom and my Plugin Testing

This one is very much a matter of taste, but I came across this rendition of a fall-foliage scene while futzing in Lightroom as I tested my Lightroom plugins. I often need to make an image look completely different than before, so I can tell at a glance when it arrives at an upload destination I'm working on, and in doing this I usually just slam a develop slider one way or the other to its limit. I tend to not pay attention to which slider I grab, or what the result is, but sometimes the result does grab my [...]


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First Peek at the Shouseien Temple in Downtown Kyoto

I went with a friend to the Shoseien Temple (渉成園) today, in downtown Kyoto Japan. It's a little osasis on what must have been the outskirt boonies of Kyoto 360 years ago when it was started, but now it's in the middle of the city, a short walk from Kyoto Station.

It's got quite a different vibe than your average temple; here, they embrace being rustic, but always with class. It's nice.

I haven't really looked at my photos yet, but I'm sure I'll post more once I do.

It must have been painful for the owners during the last [...]


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