I paid another visit today to the outstanding Haradanien Garden (原谷苑) in north-western Kyoto, where the wigglegram ("3D photo") I posted the other day was taken. Today's visit was to do some portraiture with some very photogenic friends, but first a quick post of a small cluster of blossoms (of the millions at the garden) that caught my eye.

To give a sense of context, here's Paul Barr at the same tree...

Continued here...

It's been a busy few days since I posted "Weeping Cherry at Kyoto’s Ryouanji Temple (龍安寺)". I came down with a cold, my wife performed in a local production of Swan Lake, and I recovered from my cold, in that unfortunate order. No time to even look at the photos from the other day beyond a quick glace at the top of the stack, so here are a few more from the start of that outing...

After all the buds and blossoms I posted last month (such as here, here, and here), I told myself I'd concentrate more on shots [...]

I popped up to Shogunzuka the other day for the first time in ages, for what I hoped was a promising sunset that ended up being very hazy, lending more of a moody shrouded feeling than "dazzling", but a little over-exuberance in Lightroom brings out a variety of dynamic results.

A couple of months ago I posted some similar shots in "Views of Kyoto From Shogunzuka Over The Years", and some others last summer in "Anatomy of a Nice Kyoto Sunset", so I worry I might wear out this kind of overprocessing that's best only in moderation, but I guess [...]

I popped over to the Imperial Palace Park ("Kyoto Gosho", 京都御所) yesterday for some blossom Joie de Vivre kind of shots of folks enjoying the many blossoms... mostly peach and cherry these days. It's the same place I took a bunch of blossom closeups seen two weeks ago in "The Buds and Blossoms are Just Peachy", but this time the lens was the very special the Nikkor 300mm f/2.

It was quite crowded, but nevertheless still quite pleasant.

The bokeh with this lens can be great (such as here), but the bright branches in the background of the shot above [...]

During my outing the other day near Kyoto's famous Kiyomizu Temple, the crowds were out in force, but the atmosphere was still quite pleasant. It helped that it was the nicest day, weather wise, in ages... warm, with no rain.

Amidst the hustle and bustle in the area outside the temple, these two ladies somehow found a wonderful backdrop inexplicably devoid of people, so one posed for the other, creating the kind of nature+kimono scene I'm partial to.

Mostly I thought it'd look better to focus on the photographer to leave the subject of her photo out of focus in [...]