Every time I revisit my Lightroom library from last autumn's many photo outings, I find so many things waiting to be posted. Now if only I could find the time to post. Last week's “Views at the Honen'in Temple” was one attempt to catch up, and today's little post is another.

The whole “tea and sweets in front of the garden” experience is naturally inviting to the camera^{[sort of]}, but particularly since taking this shot last November, I've been giving it more attention. Other recent examples include this and this.

Getting a nice shot is tougher than you might imagine, mostly because of other people: unless you've got the place to yourself, others might be in your way or in your light (or in your view in the garden), and more importantly, you don't want to be a disturbing influence to others.

I also still don't have a good sense of what aperture to use (that is, how much background blur to create). To cover my basses at least to some extent, I took the above scene at three different apertures... sweep the mouse side to side over the photo below to see them:

As you can see, I went with the middle one to give at least some sense of the garden without distracting with too much detail.

The garden itself is nice, but better in person than in a photograph. Just to give an idea, here's a quick snap:

Compare this to the garden at the Daihouin Temple (大法院), or at the Enkouji Temple (圓光寺), among others, and you'll see what I mean. Still, there are many areas in the temple gardens that are exquisite; we'll see more from this temple in a later post.

Back to the tea-and-sweets shot above (the vertical desktop-background one), now that I look at it in the context of this article, I think it's cropped a bit too tightly. I do have another sequence of shots from a bit further back; I'm not sure why I didn't choose one of them:

In this sequence, I didn't use Lightroom's amazing lens-correction profiles to remove the natural vignetting of the lens when it's wide open, so it's readily apparent here. I think it “works” well in this composition, at least better than it would have in the tighter sequence above, which is why I removed it there.

If I were to spend some time with this sequence, I'd adjust the crop to center the tea and sweets a bit better, but that ship has sailed; I started writing this post three days ago and it just does not want to get finished, so I'm cutting corners.

I'll close this post with a shot of Paul Barr next to me, attempting his own version of a “tea and sweets” shot, while someone further down the line is receiving their refreshments.

[footnote]

Near the top I wrote:

The whole “tea and sweets in front of the garden” experience is naturally inviting to the camera.

I should point out that the experience is intended to be naturally inviting to a calm, serene mind, and that whipping out a camera and clicking away is pretty much missing the whole point.

I realize this, but have found that I personally get much more serenity this way. I guess to me, using the camera — and trying to express through it — is foremost a soothing, healing experience (despite often being a source of great frustration).

I'm sure I'm not the only one for whom this is true, but everyone feeling this way must remember not to be an impediment to others' more-traditional sense of enjoyment (to not “disturb their wa”, so to speak). To my shame I think I often failed in this respect when I was younger, perhaps getting too caught up in the selfish pursuit of my own enjoyment. I'm hopefully better now.

One must also remember that temples and shrines are religious sites of spiritual importance to most visitors, so that should also guide one's sense of courtesy.

Occasionally I'll purposefully partake in one of these experiences without the camera, to give myself another chance at the deeper, intended experience, but so far it's always been frustrating, seeing great shots in my mind and not getting a chance to make them real. I suppose the resulting photos are more real to me than the actual experience, which now that I put it that way, sounds pretty pathetic.

Anyway, whatever, more pretty pics coming soon! :-)

The reflections on the wet rocks and foliage during the visit to the Honen'in Temple (法然院) presented in my previous post made for some interesting possibilities with the polarizing filter.

Swiping the mouse side to side on the photo above shows the effect of different filter rotations.

I like the rocks better when the bright reflections, but that also leaves the reflections on the foliage in the background, leaving them relatively washed out compared to the richer colors seen when the polarizer is turned to block reflections. (More impactful examples of foliage-related reflections are shown in “Heading Out To Photograph The Fall Foliage? Don’t Forget The Polarizer Filter”.)

But all in all, I'll take the reflections on the rock.

This next example, a close-up of the rocks, is just freaky, as the different surface angles have their reflections attenuated at different stages of the filter rotation:

The next two examples of the same water basin show how well reflections are cut from the surface of the water, but like in the first shot, I want it both ways: I'd prefer to keep the reflections in the water, but cut the reflections from the moss, bamboo, and rock. Oh well.

I've been doing so many of these interactive comparisons lately (such as comparing various shutter speeds with flowing water and comparing apertures) that I decided to make a category for them on my blog, Interactive Photo-Effect Presentations.

Skimming through my 2,000+ blog posts for articles to include, I was surprised to find more than 20.

The view above, of the entrance gate to the Honen'in Temple (法然院) in eastern Kyoto, is from the outside looking in, as opposed to the views in yesterday's post, which were from the inside looking out.

The path leading to the entrance gate is in two parts... the first being an exceptionally-well-done cobblestone path with what seems to me to be a decidedly modern feel...

Frankly, I find the modern feel to be a bit jarring in the rustic traditional temple setting, but I like the cobblestone path a bit better than what follows directly in front of the main gate: plain dirt.

The duo-nature path includes some cobblestone steps rising toward the gate, and in the lead photo I placed myself such that the lens was just slightly below the level of the dirt part of the path, thereby rendering it invisible in that scene.

The thatched gate roof had lush moss, which I always love but can never do justice in a photograph...

From just inside the gate you can look down on the path and sand sculptures that we saw yesterday...

Better view of the ferns, which I love:

Normally you can not enter the temple buildings nor see the private gardens, but they are apparently opened for a few days every few years, and due to Dameon's encyclopedic knowledge of Kyoto temples, our visit this day was not a coincidence.

You are not allowed to take photos in the buildings, but I was permitted to take them of the garden areas...

When going through these photos last night I came across one in black & white; apparently I'd fiddled with it soon after loading the photos in November. I'm not sure it's worth sharing, but FWIW, here it is....

I love how a leaf is used for the spout. The only other time I've ever seen that was in an outside basin at this very temple, the first time I visited it 8½ years ago:

Back to the Nov 2012 visit, here's someone else taking a picture of the basin/gargoyle...

Continued here...

Dipping into my archives to last November (of “A Long But Photogenic November in Kyoto” distinction), here are a couple of photos from the Honen'in Temple (法然院) in north-eastern Kyoto. It's a simple temple with some nice garden features, including its famous entry gateway seen above (and here).

The path is flanked by two meticulously-groomed piles of sand.

Continued here...

Trying to get back into the swing of a normal routine after returning home to Kyoto from a three-week family vacation, I'm starting to look at more of the photos I took during the trip.

Half of the trip was spent in Bellingham Washington (near Vancouver) at my sister Marci's place — it's her son Josh featured in “Slice of Americana: Anthony’s Cousin is Bat Boy at a Local Baseball Game” — with our brothers Mike and Alan (and their families) later joining us so that all of Anthony's American cousins were together for the first time in four years.

I'm in good shape for the first time in many years, though I was never athletic to begin with, so I was excited to give it a shot when the opportunity came to go hit some baseballs. I think I last tried baseball when I was in second-grade little league, where I never got a hit during a game.

We had only a little-league kid's bat, so that made it somewhat of a challenge, but we were all able to hit well and especially for me, being my first time in 40 years and all, it felt supremely satisfying to do so.

My brother Alan may know his way around a baseball diamond, but despite giving it a good try, wasn't so hot his first time with a Nikon D4 and a 70-200m f/2.8 zoom, so there aren't too many pictures of me....

It was great fun, and even with the tiny kid's bat we all got shots out near the 300-foot wall of the little-league park. Marty had the most difficult time of it because he didn't have the benefit of him pitching to himself (he's the best pitcher among us), so he had to make do with the less-than-stellar pitching of us brothers.

I hope we can try again next year with a big heavy adult bat.