Flipping around in my image library while doing some Lightroom testing, I came across an image that I happen to see fullscreen, and was wowed by it much more than a small-sized view would have led me to expect. I'd published it before (two and a half years ago in "A Few Unremarkable Fern Pictures"), but with desktop-image sizes, so I thought I'd go ahead and do that today.

It's from a trip a couple of years ago to Giouji Temple, images from which have appeared many times on this blog... if you're interested, check out the "nearby photos" link [...]

When I started to take photography somewhat seriously (circa January 2006 when I got a Nikon D200), a long-time friend who happened to work at Apple extolled the virtues of Apple Aperture, which had just been released. It was, he said, still a bit buggy, but even so was so much better than working with files one by one in Photoshop. He had a hard time constraining his excitement of the new workflow paradigm, even if the current implementation still needed the kinks worked out.

I wasn't sold on the whole new-paradigm idea, but when Apple announced their new line [...]

It's been a while since we've seen anything from Nishimura Stone Lantern stone-carving shop, so here's a close up of a stone sphere, tucked away haphazardly under the legs of a large stone lantern. (The combination is visible toward the bottom of this wider view.)

As I mentioned in "Deceptively Clear: Snow-Covered Mountains in Exquisite Detail", I prefer a darker tone to the image I use for my desktop background, so I'll give this one a try for a while. I've accumulated quite a number of them on my blog over the years, as evidenced by my pretty Desktop Background [...]

This looks like a misty-white snow-covered mountain, but it's not.

There's no mist; the fuzzy white areas that seem to be blurry turn out to show clear detail of every snow-covered branch and twig when you look at the full-sized version. (However, most web browsers will downscale the huge image at first, so you'll likely have to click once on the link to bring up the larger version, then again on that larger version to see it in its full-resolution glory).

Also, I like how the snippet of less-snowy foreground mountain in the bottom-right corner adds an odd sense of [...]

So, it's been a week since "Introduction to a Snowy Gokayama Village", and though I intended to pick up where I left off right away, I got sidetracked with related posts "Rosy Cheeks", "Japan's Deep-Rooted Ethos of Fire Prevention", "Snowy Mountains", and "Shutter Speed's Effect on Falling Snow". So, picking up where I left off in the Introduction post, more on our stroll through this picturesque frozen countryside...

I'm really disappointed with this last shot... the scene offered so much potential, but my composition here is just pathetic. Would like to return in time to that spot to try the [...]