Going through the photos from our recent trip to Awaji Island, most recently mentioned in the previous late-afternoon sun at a beach post, I noticed that I had a lot of geometricish "interesting shapes" photos (such as the opening shot in last week's "Hyakudanen: 100 Terraced Garden Squares" post).

I was collection some of them for a post when I came across this one, and thought that it might make for a "What am I?" quiz. The previous quiz (the more geometrically-simple Egg-Slicer "What am I?" Quiz) yielded an unexpectedly broad and entertaining collection of answers, so it'll be interesting [...]

Well, I fear this one won't be much of a challenge, but my track record at predicting which "What am I?" quizzes are of interest or a challenge is pretty bad, so I'll throw this one out. What is it?

As always, I'll leave your submitted answers hidden for a while, so as not to bias others' guesses....

(And no, it's not an egg slicer.)

I gave my new Sigma "Bigma" 50-500mm superzoom a shot in the dark (so to speak) yesterday evening, and while looking through the results today, came across this throw-away shot of a spotlight at a rock garden. The photo is wholly unremarkable except for some very weird indistinct wavy parallel tracks that can be seen in the full-resolution version, as if snails had been sledding over the rocks.

But it's not sledding snails. Can you explain the wavy lines?

As always with my quizzes, I will not make submitted answers publicly visible for the first day or three, to give [...]

This is a photo from or snowy New Year trip, which I last wrote about the other day in "Snowy Farewell to Gokayama Village", which ended up with us arriving in Gokayama Village's much more famous thatched-house sibling, Shirakawago Village.

I'd originally intended to full post, but am running out of time this evening, so thought then to just post this photo. As I was preparing it (I added a slight vignette), I noticed two dark lines in the left half of the photo (mouseover here to highlight them in the photo) that I hadn't noticed before.

Can you guess [...]

Well, my previous stone-related "What am I?" quiz was apparently too difficult for everyone, so here's a softy....

I found this stone lantern among the hundreds of odd-shaped and beautiful stone carvings in the gardens behind the Nishimura Stone Lanterns workshop. Those familiar with the Star Wars™ world (or with the vast array of Star Wars™ toys their kids might leave underfoot) will likely find that these photos call to mind the Imperial Star Destroyers from the original movies.... especially after I write "Imperial Star Destroyer" several times. 🙂

I would assume that this was carved before any of the [...]