What a week it's been. I took more photos today than in the first three months of the year combined, and this is after a ramp-up in activity at the start of the month due to the cherry blossoms and then a highly photogenic three day family trip followed by a fun photographically-friendly play date for Anthony. Suffice to say I've built up a new backlog on top of my old one, but it's sure a nice problem to have.

So today I went to the preschool/kindergarten entrance ceremony for my friend Britto's boy, to snap some photos..... he's an [...]

After 430km of driving, I'm ready for a snooze...

Today was a laid back Saturday for me. Anthony was on a trip with his grandparents and Fumie was working on ballet, so I stayed home to try to make a dent in the unending backlog of stuff I'm behind on. But with the blossoms starting to come out in force and the temperature approaching 20°C (66°F), I couldn't resist to step outside a bit with the camera. The mood outside was wonderfully relaxed, an uncrowded, low-key version of the cherry-blossom joie de vivre that I've written about before. It was really nice. I expect next weekend will be the [...]

Well, perhaps not the first in all of Japan, considering that the cherry-blossom season can start in early January in the southern islands, and also not first considering that some varieties of cherry have been blossoming for weeks already here in Kyoto, but this morning I found the first cherry blossom in the local area, which is populated with Japan's "standard" Yoshino Cherry.

I was happy to have noticed the one single blossom among all the buds on all the trees around. By the time I returned from some errands, more had appeared, but this was the lone blossom at [...]

Daniel Cutter asked whether I'd tried the "Camo Duck" shot on my previous post in black and white. The nature of the original shot had it almost all monochrome to begin with, except for the duck itself, but prior to Daniel's comment I hadn't thought to take it all the way to pure monochrome.

But, it's easy enough with Lightroom (as simple as the "v" keyboard shortcut). Wow. I then tweaked the B & W conversion a bit to melt the duck away a bit further, and here we are.

I'm not sure whether it's photography, but it's fun. Thanks [...]