Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/160 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Inviting Entrance
Koutouin Temple (高桐院), Kyoto Japan
I stopped by the Koutouin Temple the other day, in the Daitokuji complex in north-central Kyoto. It wasn't quite peak of its fall-foliage colors, but it was quite. (I stopped by two years ago at a time when it was at the peak of color and it's quite nice then as well.)
One of my personal favorite photos comes from the first time I visited this temple, of a lady in kimono on this path.
Anyway, here's a wigglegram to give you more of a sense of the view...
写真の上をマウスであちこちにゆっくり動かすと「３D」な感じが出ます。
And for good measure, here's a vertical-background view...
Sort of odd, perhaps, but here's a straight-down view of the path...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/4.5, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Entrance Path
Koutouin Temple (高桐院)
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Back
reverse-angle view from halfway down the long section of path
Continuing down the main path, it bends 90° to the right and eventually winds its way to the temple proper. Here's a wigglegram view after that 90° bend, looking back toward the bend, where the long section of the path is just entering the frame from the left...
写真の上をマウスであちこちにゆっくり動かすと「３D」な感じが出ます。
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Random Leaves
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 10000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Handrail
I shot these early on the same day that I ended up shooting 3,000 photos (70-gigabytes of raw data) because I was trying to see what I could do with wigglegrams. I think I have a bunch of nice ones, but they're still quite tiring to prepare for a post. Besides those on this post, I've published two so far, both sets of ladies in kimono (I published those first because I told the ladies who posed for me that I would post them, and I didn't want to make them wait.)
I'm sure I'll post more soon.
Animatable Wigglegram (8 frames) — slowly sweep the mouse from side to side to view 3D effect
写真の上をマウスであちこちにゆっくり動かすと「３D」な感じが出ます。
at the Nanzen Temple (南禅寺)
Kyoto, Japan
I've been down with a cold since my previous post the other day, of another pair of lovely ladies in kimono. That post (like this post) came from a creative, productive outing with Paul Barr, but I'm somewhat dreading the 70 gigabytes of data awaiting me.
I did find enough energy today to prepare this wigglegram, taken at the old (circa 1880) aqueduct behind the Nanzen Temple.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Due Diligence with the Color Checker
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/250 sec, f/1.4, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Animatable Wigglegram (9 frames) — sweep the mouse from side to side to view 3D effect
写真の上をマウスであちこちに動かすと「３D」な感じが出ます。
Poise
at the Tenjyuan Garden (天授庵), Kyoto Japan
I shot more than 3,500 frames today — 70 gigabytes of raw data — for about 470 potential wigglegrams. Above is one.
These two ladies from Osaka had wonderful kimono and wonderful smiles. I didn't want to impose on them much, so set up the shot and took it within seconds; despite the rush, I'm happy enough with the result.
大阪から来はったお姉ちゃんたち、ポーズしてくれた有り難う。
I actually had 17 frames in the sequence, but the marginal improvement in appearance is not worth double the bandwidth, so I'm using every other frame.
My shooting technique has a long way to go, but what I really need is a rig with 10 full-frame SLRs, each sporting a 24mm f/1.4 lens, so that I can have all 10 frames taken at once. I find that movement in the scene as one wiggles from side to side is distracting, and makes it feel more like a very short video clip instead of “being there”.
I thought about perhaps using a bunch of GoPros, but I want a big (e.g. f/1.4) aperture for this.
Don't know where this will go, but it's fun (though today, at least, exhausting).
My camera is exhausted, and now that I think about it, so am I.
Today I took 3,568 photos (70 gigabytes worth) because trying to make Wigglegrams at pretty temples in Kyoto. It was both addicting and exhausting.
Now the stress moves to my laptop and Lightroom, which will certainly groan under so many new pixels....
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Deserted Waiting Area
The Shouzan Resort (しょうざん), Kyoto Japan
This post continues the story started in “A Somewhat Lackluster Day of Photography at Kyoto’s Shouzan Resort”, last touched upon yesterday with a bunch of wigglegrams from the garden.
The only other time I came (as seen two years ago in “Photo Shoot Among the Fall Colors at Shouzan”), I hadn't realized that it was just a small part of a larger resort complex. This time I did, so did a bit of exploring.
The path from the main part of the “resort” (which dates from 1948) is through a heavily wooded and freely-accessible park, beautiful in its own right and in some ways nicer than the garden I'd paid to visit earlier in the day. But the light was fading fast, so photography was a challenge.
At one point you see a gate and bridge below...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Closed Gate
... and when you get down there, the view was nice...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/10, ISO 10000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Entrance
... though I wish I would have shot at f/1.4 and focused on the middle of the bridge.
The path eventually led to the main part of the “resort”, with a large outdoor swimming area (currently undergoing renovation), a “chapel” that probably sees a lot of wedding business on the weekends, shops and restaurants, a 50+ lane bowling alley, etc. Music that felt Bavarian was being played over the outside loudspeakers, so it sort of felt amusement-parkish.
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ships in the Night
or something like that
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/4, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nice Tree
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/4, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wider View
near the main entrance to Shouzan (しょうざん)
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/4, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Paul Photographing Nice Tree
Paul Barr, my fall-foliage partner in crime
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/4, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Paul Still Photographing Nice Tree
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Paul In Front of Nice Tree
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/4, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Back at the “Wedding Chapel”
at Shouzan (しょうざん)
And here's a Wigglegram of that scene, at f/1.4...
Animatable Wigglegram (11 frames) — sweep the mouse from side to side to view 3D effect
写真の上をマウスであちこちに動かすと「３D」な感じが出ます。
This took about one second to photograph, and hours to process, the latter because I wasn't steady enough while making the sweep, and Photoshop (or my skill in Photoshop) is just not up to the task of fixing things quickly. I used the “Auto Align Layers”, and it helped greatly, but two frames were inexplicably left at a really odd, wonky angle, so I had to go and fix them by hand. Then I was left with the task of cropping the image so that no layer had transparent pixels, which sounds simple but I don't know of a way to do it that's not manually intensive. Anyway, I eventually got it done, and the result is nice, I think, but my takeaway is to be smoother to begin with.
Finally, here's one more from earlier in the day in the paid garden, with the last bit of sunlight from behind turning the leaves into razors...
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Razor Sharp
