You probably can't see the cute little stick bug unless you know what you're looking for....

Continuing in yesterday's vein of revisiting old outings, this one goes back to late in last year's cherry-blossom season where I came across a little stick bug.

He eventually wandered off to a leaf...

A pair of blossom shots, sans bug...

The shot above is similar to this one of a less-bloomed blossom. I tend to try that kind of edge-on shot with this lens (a Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5), with other examples that come to mind including this, this, and this. The one above is perhaps the least strong.... I probably shouldn't bother posting it.

This next one is even less strong, but I like it for comparison with its focus just a tad further back so you can see detail on the petals, and get an interesting effect with the filaments of the neighboring flowers...

I've posted only the tiniest fraction of recent photos that I want to post, and today I'm making a slight dent in the backlog by revisiting the photogenic day last December that yielded “Intense Rainbow Over Arashiyama” and its longer followup, and also “Pretty and Colorful Public Path in Arashiyama”, a post that highlighted the first and last shots of that day's outing.

The rainbow/mountain scene above was taken a few minutes after the aforementioned first shot of the outing. I prefer the ultra-widescreen view that the “first shot” has, but wanted to have something for my desktop background, so cropped the one above more aggressively to achieve the proper aspect ratio.

The photo was taken from a bridge looking north. The view to the south also had interest...

The wider aspect ratio of this one causes it to look smaller in my blog's presentation, but clicking through yields a larger version you should be able to scroll side to side.

I was on a temple-hopping outing with Damien Douxchamps, and our first stop was Suzumushidera (鈴虫寺)....

There was a long line for the temple so we decided to skip it, but the scene at the top of the stairs had many photogenic opportunities, including this fallen leaf stuck in the bare branches of a shrub. I normally tend to prefer richer, higher-contrast shots, but something about this mostly-washed-out scene appeals to me.

The appeal of the next shot is equally baffling to me; perhaps it's the colors...

We quickly moved on to the next spot, but before we go, two more washed-out somehow-appeals-to-me shots from the area...

In “Massive Support Column at Nara's Todai-ji Temple” I noted that of the many massive columns in the 320-year-old “Hall of the Great Buddha” (until recently the largest wooden building in the world), one particular column was quite special.

The columns, including this one, are about 20 meters (65 feet) tall; impressive any way you look at them.

It was very dark inside this cavernous building, with what light there was mixed among scattered incandescent floodlights and ever-changing skylight wafting in from the occasional window. Adjusting color balance on these shots has been a nightmare, even with ample use of the color chart, because the lighting changes with each location, and over time as clouds passed.

I think it's accurate to say that every person who paused for a photo flashed a peace sign. This is exceedingly common in Japan (much to the angst of non-Japanese), but here the saturation rate was a full 100%.

The unknown girl who opens this post played her part by flashing a peace sign for me, but I much prefer her natural reaction to the situation, seen 1.5 seconds earlier...

Of course, I had to give it a try.

I'm 192cm (6'4") tall, but I've gotten into pretty good shape in the last year (continuing to lose fat beyond how I was here), so I thought there might be a chance I could do it. But even if I couldn't, the attempt would make for funny pictures. Aeron had never used my model of camera, but I imposed on him to take pictures for me...

One thing I haven't mentioned yet is just why people are climbing through a hole in a column in a temple housing a huge (15 meter tall) Buddha statue.

Well, I don't know why people climb through beyond the obvious “because it's there”, nor, for that matter, why the hole was made in the first place, but the salient point is that the hole is the size of one nostril of the Great Buddha statue that the building houses.

奈良の東大寺の大仏殿で、一本の柱は穴が有ります。穴の大きさは大仏の鼻の穴の大きさと同じです。面白！

So, I guess, folks climbing through are pretending to be Buddha snot?

Continued here...

I mentioned the other day in “Massive Support Column at Nara's Todai-ji Temple” about a recent photo trip to Nara, an hour's train ride south of Kyoto. I made the trip with Kyoto photographer friend Aeron, who besides being a great photographer is also seriously photogenic (I mean, really, just look at that smile), so along the way I took the opportunity to try some very impromptu portraits.

And when I say “impromptu”, I don't mean something like these from five years ago where I spent 15 minutes, or these from six months ago whee I spent a couple of minutes, or even these from eight weeks ago... I mean really impromptu, where I set up the shot without him knowing, get his attention, and take the shot all within a few seconds.

This says more about his easy smile than my meager photographic skill, of course, but I'll take a shot like that to my name any day.

It was tough, but I got him to suppress the smile for 1/80th of a second.

A few other shots he happened to be in...

A short followup to my post the other day about Japanese candles to mention that Alice Gordenker's Japan Times article is now online, as well as her blog post with more details.

Also, on YouTube, I found a video of someone with 50 years experience making a batch of Japanese candles, best seen after having read Alice's article and then her blog.

And finally, one more shot of the one of the setups I mentioned in my first post.