Having recovered from a mild but lingering cold, I went out for some lite temple/shrine exploration in western Kyoto with Paul Barr yesterday. The autumn colors are late and weak this year, but it's always fun to explore new nooks and crannies of Kyoto, so I enjoyed it.

There's a tradition of sake (rice wine) companies sending donations to shrines in exchange for prominent display of their patronage, and the barrels on display at this particular shrine we came across were particularly large.

It's the season for children's "7-5-3" celebrations (as described here, and as seen with my own kid [...]

As I mentioned the other day in "Kyoto Fall-Color Preview With Impact: Impressionism in Lightroom", I stumbled across an artsy photo treatment in Lightroom that gives an interesting life to most any photo it's applied to. The more I played with it, the more I felt its gimmicky intensity is like the Auto Tune for images (Auto Tune is an audio-processing technique that can make most any singer sound in tune). I avoided it in the followup("Kyoto's Eikando Temple Continues to Amaze"), but it's hard to leave it completely alone, so here are a few more...

Here's one that's darker [...]

After "discovering" yesterday that I'd not even looked at thousands of photos from last year's fall-foliage season, I thought I'd go through a bit more today to pick some from the first batch, an outing to the Eikando Temple (永観堂) in eastern Kyoto. Unlike yesterday's highly "artsy" shots, these are pretty straightforward.

I posted an almost identical pagoda photo a couple of years ago, though it was later in the season then, and the light wasn't as good. Many of the shots on today's post are similar to previous years', as any of the under-image "nearby photos" links will attest....

I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted... time has just evaporated as I've been working on a new Lightroom project. Taking a break from that, and realizing that Kyoto is just a few weeks from the start of its most glorious fall-foliage season, I thought I'd dip into my archives from last year for some "Fall Foliage Preview" shots for this year. I was dumbfounded to find several thousand photos from a bunch of outings that I'd not even looked at yet. Always just too busy.

Anyway, I was futzing with a throw-away photo in Lightroom, [...]

Here are a few final photos from the Ikebana show that I talked about the other day. As I wrote then, the works are just lined up on folding tables right in front of unappealing backdrops, so it's not a great situation for photography....

... under mixed lighting...

... in a crowd...

Nevertheless, here are some shots showing a variety of ikebana works and details. Not all are my cup of tea, but I like many of them....