It was more amazing than I could have possibly imagined. It was overwhelming. I am so exhausted (from it, and from not having slept last night trying to build a plugin for Adobe Lightroom to import face-recognition data from Google's Picasa photo app) that I have not even unloaded my images from the camera.

But Paul, who has never used Lightroom, wanted to give it a try, so I loaded his images and gave him about a minute's instruction, and let him loose. Having been inspired by some of Stéphane Barbery's recent work – such as his Jidai Matsuri shots, [...]

The other day in "Nishimura Stone Lanterns: the Workshop" I introduced the workshop of a fifth-generation stone-carving shop in north-east Kyoto that Paul Barr and I "discovered" the other day.

Next to and beside their shop are areas just teeming with a huge variety of stone carvings. I assume it's their "warehouse" and sales floor (so to speak), but I'm not really sure. It sure looked pretty if you stuck your head in a bit to look.

Paul is standing just behind the old discarded cutting wheels featured in the Fairly Dirty "What am I?" Quiz the other day.

I [...]

The initial destination of my photo outing with Paul Barr yesterday (the one where we discovered the workshop of Nishimura Stone Lanterns) was to visit the Nitenji Temple, nestled up in the mountains of north-east Kyoto, perched precariously over the ravine on the road over to Otsu.

After the outing, we returned to my place and I introduced Lightroom to him, and in using random photos from the day to demonstrate things you could do within Lightroom's Develop module, I happened upon the soft-focus creamy effect you see above. I liked the effect in this case, so I decided to [...]

Anthony visited his friend Monet today. She lives up in Hieidaira, a community in the mountains between here (Kyoto) and Otsu. The drive up the twisty crowded mountain road was breathtaking, and while they played I returned for a few photos.

I stopped at a few places along the short (5-mile) route, but there were way too many colors to fit in one post; these are just a few shots from the first place I stopped....

Fall colors at a temple or shrine in the city can be really pretty, especially at a big place that gives you opportunities to [...]

Buddhist shrines and Shinto temples can be almost any size, ranging from huge sprawling multi-building complexes, down to little things a few feet square. Often they're found in clusters, so it was no surprise when Zak Braverman and I went to visit the small Himukai Shrine tucked away at the base of a mountain in eastern Kyoto, we found next to the parking lot a tiny room-sized shrine, the Kaneda Inari Shrine.

What was somewhat surprising (to me, at least) was the state of its gate, rotting so much that I didn't dare touch it for fear of toppling it.