Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Light Dusting
at Nishimura Stone Lanterns (西村石灯籠), Kyoto Japan

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I've been to the garden behind Nishimura Stone Lanterns (西村石灯籠) many times — that link is just one of many posts; see the nearby photos link under any of these photos brings you to many more — but yesterday was the first time in the snow. I posted a few moss/snow shots on my earlier post today.

There wasn't much snow, but enough to add just a touch of new character. I went with Zak Braverman and Nicolas Joannin...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Hey, I Found a Snowflake!”

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Frozen

For a few minutes the sun came out at the same time the snow got a little harder, and so I took the opportunity quickly to try some “creative” sun/snow/shadow shots...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Close Focus @ f/2.5

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/11, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Close Focus @ f/11

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/11, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Darker Look

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Less Snow than Moss

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Square

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Off The Beaten Path

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Towering

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
New
the small basin, still free from moss, was obviously newly carved

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Target-Rich Environment

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sunny Disposition
during one of the brief splashes of sunshine

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Well Balanced
( his first child is due tomorrow, so he'll soon have something cuter to photograph )

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ice-Colored Stone

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Uphill

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
More Alien Landscape
similar to those on the earlier post

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sleeping Beauty

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hey There Big Guy...
... but, uh, you've got something stuck in your teeth

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos

He looks quite different than he did three years ago, when he was mostly vegetation free.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Mirror Mirror on the Wall...
with a lid of ice that had formed inside a basin

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Yoke of Snow
this little guy didn't look as amiable as the two just above

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Alien Landscape
moss on a snow-covered stone lantern

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I'm adamant about keeping my blog content what  I  want to share; I hope others will happen to like it, of course, but I don't “pander for pageviews”,* despite having been called an attention whore by a random Internet anonymous coward the other day. 🙂  So, I don't often pay much attention to my blog's pageview statistics, and I often go months without even seeing them, but I've looked at them this past week, and the results are interesting.

The photos on today's post, by the way, have nothing to do with the text; I just wanted to include some pictures, so I'm including a few shots I took in the light snow yesterday at Nishimura Stone Lanterns (西村石灯籠) in north-east Kyoto Japan.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
From Above

Most regular readers of my blog don't actually visit my blog directly; rather, they read the full-text feed via Google Reader or the like, so I get no pageviews at all from them. Instead, the biggest driver of my blog traffic is the collection of outside links to specific posts that has developed organically over time, such as (for example) the many links to my camera autofocus test chart that have appeared on camera forums around the world in the years since I wrote it. Lots of article views come via random web searches as well. Overall, I've been running a steady 300,000 article views a month for years.

But occasionally a specific post garners special short-term attention, such as when last week's “Disappointed in Fstoppers.com: Wholesale Copyright Infringement as a Business Model” was mentioned on reddit.com. This caused a huge spike in article pageviews for a few days. I don't use reddit.com, but it calls itself “the front page of the internet”, so it's not surprising to see a jump in traffic from them.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
From The Side
though a different kind of moss

So it makes for an interesting comparison to see the effect of having the subject of a six-year-old blog post tangentially referenced by Randall Munroe's xkcd.com, in his “Perl Problems” cartoon yesterday. If you don't know xkcd.com, its tagline is “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” That doesn't quite sound as sweeping and impressive and popular as “front page of the internet”, does it?

The jump in traffic? 30× that of the reddit jump from last week. Not thirty percent... thirty times.

Keep in mind that my blog is not even referenced in the cartoon, where there are no links at all. Merely, the cartoon makes an indirect, obscure reference to a subject that I covered in an article in 2006, itself related to a book I wrote.

So, folks discussing the cartoon at places like this and this make reference to that blog post, and here we are.

(Muddying the comparison a bit is the fact that my old article has surfaced at reddit here, here, and here, but as of this writing, the resulting pageviews from them are not material.)

I have been a regular reader of xkcd for years, and often find it brilliant, insightful, and downright awe-inspiring amazing, but for me this particular cartoon was a dud because I didn't understand the other obscure reference the cartoon played upon (which, I find out later, turns out to be related to some modern rap singer). Of course, I immediately recognized the connection to my six-year-old blog post, “Source of the famous “Now you have two problems” quote”, but lacking a pedigree in American rap music, I didn't understand the cartoon.

That's how it is with Randall's cartoons: they make absolutely no sense if you don't understand the often obscure references, but tend to be brilliant when you do.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos

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* but I'm totally pandering with today's article title.🙂

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 @ 62mm — ¹/200 sec, f/6.3, ISO 4500 — map & image data — nearby photos
My Son Anthony
crosses in front of my camera four years ago, at age six
Shogunzuka Overlook (将軍家), Kyoto Japan

Continuing to dip into my 2010-and-before archives because my main computer is in the shop, today's posts are various views from the Shogunzuka overlook (将軍家) in eastern Kyoto, a 30-minute hike (or a 5-minute drive) from my place.

I used Lightroom's Map module to bring up all the images that are geoencoded to that spot (so that excludes early images before I started to geoencode), and picked some. These were taken from 2007 to 2010, with a Nikon D200 or a Nikon D700. Taking advantage of the modern render engine in Lightroom 4, I picked images that I could give a bit of punch to....

Visiting the “nearby photos” under any image brings you to the large set of images I've posed from up there over the years. I've made the trip in search of a nice sunset many, many times. The majority of times I end up with absolutely nothing to show for it; photos that appear on my blog are from the few times it's notably photogenic.

Other pictures from the same outing as above appeared on “Today’s Sunset in Kyoto: Ho-Hum & Yawn”, from 2008.

The next few photos are from my first visit up there with any kind of skill with a camera, in July 2007's simply-titled “Views of Kyoto From Shougun-zuka”. It was right after a typhoon had blown through. To say the view was “dynamic” would be quite the understatement...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 mm f/2.8 @ 55mm — ¹/350 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 116mm — ¹/3000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/640 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

By a year later, in mid 2008, I had a nice tripod, so I tried some night shots, as seen in “Kyoto, From Shogunzuka, at Night”...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — 1.3 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bicycle Parking

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Soothing Sunset
from the same outing as the photo that leads this post

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 145mm — ¹/800 sec, f/4.8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Fiery Horizon

I'm not excited about this last one, but there it is. It's from the outing that produced “Not Quite Giving Up on Sunsets... Yet” in November 2008.

This next photo is from toward the end of that outing... the technical quality is as bad as the one above, but the sheer dynamic range of nature makes me like this one.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 160mm — ¹/500 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Downtown Osaka
30 miles to the southwest

The next three are from “Today's Photogenic Adventures in Kyoto” in December 2008...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/320 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Subdued

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Touchdown

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 @ 32mm — ¹/640 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sweeping

These next two hyper-dynamic shots are from an outing that I hadn't yet posted about...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Moody

Nikon D700 + 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/3200 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Under the Shelf

Moving into 2009 now, the next two quiet shots are from the outing that produced “Spot On: Camera Metering Basics”....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70 mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/11, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Waiting

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Finally, three shots from another really dynamic sunset, in October 2010. This first one reminds me of this shot from last year that I really like...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 58mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/11, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ducking Behind Clouds

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/500 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Final Peek

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Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500mm — ¹/800 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sayonara

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Temple's Lake
at the Eikando Temple (永観堂), Kyoto Japan

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Since my main computer (a laptop holding my photos for the last two years) is still in the shop, I'm taking random walks through the 90,000 photos in my desktop-computer's Lightroom catalog, dating through the end of 2010. I'm taking the opportunity to delete a lot of cruft, but occasionally run across shots I want to share because they're pretty or interesting or respond well to “weird” processing...

Photos on this post date from 2007 (with a Nikon D200) to 2010 (with a Nikon D700). But, at least, they benefit from 2013-level processing in the name of Lightroom 4 and, I suppose, an older and more-mature(?) me.

The photo above dates to the end of 2010, and is almost identical to “Reflections of a Picturesque Bridge”, except for modern processing to my current taste.

This next photo, from spring 2007, shows some late-blossoming cherry overlooking the canal near my place...

Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — ¹/4000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Overabundance of Fluff

That outing has already been represented on my blog in “10 Gallons of Blossoms on a 5-Gallon Branch” (which describes this species of cherry), “Cooling Off with Pastel Cherry-Blossom Desktop Backgrounds”, the March 2008 “Kyoto Cherry-Blossom Preview”, and an interesting interactive post that I'd forgotten about, “Kyoto’s Okazaki Area, From Mt. Daimonji”.

This next cherry-blossom shot dates from the following year...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/250 sec, f/4, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos

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This photo came from an outing already represented by “Perfect Weather for a Snooze on a Park Bench”, “Cherry-Blossom Snow”, and “Just Like That, Kyoto’s Cherry-Blossom Season Ends”.

This next shot shows an ornamental lantern at Kyoto's Yoshida Shrine (吉田神社), with what looks to be a Photoshop mistake at the base...

Nikon D700 + Zeiss 100mm f/2 — ¹/800 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

A close inspection shows a stone base with a complex shape designed to hold a wooden post with an equally complex shape. It all fits together and locks with a single square peg, and allows the wood to remain off the ground, away from moisture/bugs.

Nikon D700 + Zeiss 100mm f/2 — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos

More from this shrine appears on “In Search of Yoshida Shrine” and “Serendipity: Pleasant Sunday Morning at Kyoto’s Yoshida Shrine”.

This next shot, of a temple's roof peeking out from the trees, is from an outing in 2009 covered in various articles starting with “Holy Cow, the Gardens at Kyoto’s Eikando Temple are Gorgeous!”...

Nikon D700 + Zeiss 100mm f/2 — ¹/320 sec, f/2, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Eikando Temple

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This next shot is by Paul Barr...

Nikon D3 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 60mm — ¹/125 sec, f/4, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
at Nishimura Stone Lanterns
photo by Paul Barr

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It's the same stone basin seen in “Paul Barr + Stonecarver’s Garden + Lightroom”, but from a different angle. That post started a run of about a dozen that featured photos from that most-amazing outing. The main one is likely the 51-photo “A Superficial Overview of the Gardens Behind the Nishimura Stone-Carving Workshop”.

I'll go a bit quicker with the rest of the photos... the “nearby photos” under each photo generally leads to related photos...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210mm — ¹/500 sec, f/29, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 52mm — ¹/500 sec, f/9, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Woven
at the Souken-in Temple (総見院), Kyoto Japan

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/5000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Towering
Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺), Shiga Japan

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Highly Polished Marble
Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺)

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Simple Path
Yoshiminedera Temple (善峯寺), Kyoto Japan

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5— ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 5600 — map & image data — nearby photos
High Dynamic Range
Eikando Temple (永観堂)

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/4, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Classic Momiji Shot
Eikando Temple (永観堂)

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — image data
Togetherness
Eikando Temple (永観堂)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/320 sec, f/2, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Light Dusting
Shouzan Gardens (しょうざん)

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/5000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bread
Kamo River north of Nijo, Kyoto Japan

There's an interesting story behind this one, explained on “The Great Kamo River Battle for the Bread”.

Well, that's enough for today. Another 90,000 more photos to comb through....

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/4, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ying and Yang
cherry blossom among the autumn colors,
at the Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺), Shiga Japan

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My laptop, where I do all my photo work for the last couple of years, is in the shop, so I'm having to dip back into the old Lightroom catalog on my old desktop machine, where I have photos from the 90s through the end of 2010. I hadn't looked at them in ages, and wow, the quality of my pics from back then is pretty bad, so there's slim pickings for blog posts until I get my laptop back.

But these two pics aren't so bad, relatively speaking. They're “October Cherry” blossoms from an early-autumn (Nov 9th) trip to the Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺) in Shiga Japan, back when the fall colors were just ramping up for the 2010 season. It's a trip that produced many blog posts, starting with “First Taste of Fall Colors at Shiga’s Amazing Kongourinji Temple”. It's a temple famous for its deep sorrow (as presented here), but cherry blossoms amid fall colors are decidedly upbeat.

I talk a bit about what kind of cherry tree starts to blossom in autumn, in this old post.

Here' a close up of the one blossom above, taken at an angle to put green into the background...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos

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These aren't strong shots, but they'll make nice desktop backgrouns, and with snow forecast for Kyoto tonight, they'll put me in a spring mood.

Clicking on “nearby photo” under either photo brings you to all the posts from this temple over the years. I was there most recently this past November, a trip covered starting in “Another Exhausting Day of Photography: Shiga Prefecture’s Kongorinji Temple”. In particular, I really love the lead photo in this followup to that trip.