I took my camera when I walked to lunch through a small area of eastern Kyoto yesterday. These are some of the shots I took along the way.

Both lunch and the walk back will be their own posts...

Continued here...

I've found especially this spring that I tend to use the Voigtländer 125mm more than ever, and seem to be falling into the easy-pickings trap of macro flora photography. I guess it's a phase.

This seemed particularly evident to me the other day on the outing with Paul Barr that produced "Photographer's Low-Hanging Fruit: a Pretty Flower", which this post is essentially a continuation of.

To be continued...

Picking up from yesterday's intro post on the Ishiyama Temple (石山寺) half an hour away in Otsu, Japan, here are a few more shots from early in the visit to the large mountainous grounds...

To be continued...

There were plenty of folks enjoying the blossoms, but it was quiet and relaxed, nothing at all like the ugly, disgusting spectacle you so often find (that I wrote about seven years ago in "The Ugliness of Japanese Cherry-Blossom Viewing"). It wasn't even like "Cherry-Blossom Joie de Vivre in Kyoto". It was just a normal (chilly) Sunday afternoon in the park with kids playing and folks jogging, but with a quiet floral bonus for those who happened by.

Anyway, the photo above is horrible from a photographic sense, but I like the mood.

I was playing catch with Anthony and [...]

Some random desktop backgrounds in my photo library from the past year. I used these as practice with the new render engine in Lightroom 4, which I like but am not completely used to yet.

Often, a photo here is from some trip or event that I already blogged about; the "nearby photos" link under each image brings you to related posts.