After arriving to Ishigaki Island on the first day of our short Golden-Week vacation, we puttered around the island a bit, and ended up at Oganzaki (御神崎) in the north-west corner of the island. In checking photos on Google Earth prior to the visit, it seemed like it should provide a nice sunset, and when I mentioned it to Fumie, she said she'd had it on her list as well, from reading the guidebooks.

It's not much more than a small lighthouse and a small park...

Beyond the park area the adventurous can take paths out onto the rocks and [...]

After our visit yesterday to Kyoto's Konzou Temple, Anthony and I headed all the way across Kyoto, around some small mountains, and into Otsu City to play in the park with his friend Gen. They have a great park across from their place that we've visited many times.

Gen's little sister, Tamaki-chan, has a very important quality that every child should have: she likes me. Even though her Daddy had to wake her up from a long nap and she was a bit pouty, her puzzling like of me allowed her to put up with me and my camera.

She [...]

Having a kid in elementary school means a new set of hours for the parents, and as part of that I found myself wandering around outside after returning from school. (Parents accompany first graders to school for the first few days; there are no school busses, so the vast majority of kids take the subway or bus, all by themselves, so the parents go for the first few days to ensure they're settled.)

I got off the bus one stop early to walk around the grounds of the municipal museum of art, which is pretty this time of year. (Clicking [...]

So, unlike yesterday's gloom and rain, today was clear and sunny. The cherry blossoms are not yet near full, and they don't seem to be particularly good this year anyway (we had an extended cold snap just as they were starting to blossom, which seems to have messed them up in varying ways), but nevertheless, I took the tripod and headed out for the last evening of the local cherry-blossom lightup.

Last year I took shots from closer to my place, but this year I wanted to try the long view, from where the canal bends, so I made the [...]

The other day I posted a tree/island silhouette that I took on our recent jaunt to Okinawa. The shot was taken in the rain under a gloomy overcast, near dusk. Because I was exposing for the silhouette, I could get by with a relatively undemanding exposure that I could have achieved even with my old D200...

I took the shot from a beach near the road, and while returning to the parking lot in the increasing rain, I noticed an Okinawan grave tucked away deep in a clump of trees, nestled in the darkness at the side of a hill....