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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 3600 — image data
This Evening's Sunset in Kyoto

Kyoto had a nice sunset this evening, nicer pehaps than those I've posted about of late (here, here, here, here, and here), but not as good as the best I've ever seen, and not, unfortunately viewed from the photogenic Shogunzuka overlook where I've gotten a lot of nice sunset shots over the years.

Still, it's always nice to have a nice sunset.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200mm — ¹/400 sec, f/8, ISO 2500 — image data

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A cute little scene unfolded before me at the Nagaoka Tenmangu Shrine (Nagaokakyo City, Japan; 長岡京市の長岡天満宮) yesterday while killing time before Fumie's ballet recital. The captions represent what I imagine is being said or thought...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Take My Hand, Sweetie”
手をつなえで行こうね

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
“I Can Walk By MYSELF”
いや、一人行ける

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Hmm, What Have I Done?”
えっ、

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Not Working Out Quite As I Expected...”
なんか寂し

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Ah, Yes, This Feels Right”
やっぱり、パパと一緒がいい

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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/800 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Forest of Flowers

Fumie had a ballet recital today that she'd been preparing for the last five months. Of course, she gets a bouquet of flowers for her efforts; I always get them at the flower shop just inside here; I describe to the guy what she's wearing/dancing, and he comes up with a perfect bouquet.

Taking pictures of flowers in a bouquet is even less challenging than photographing animals in a zoo, but it was a nice bouquet so I went ahead and shot a few. The sunlight was harsh, so for the closeups I made some shade...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/4, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos

Of course, if it's not in frame, it doesn't exist, so I could take the photos while it was sitting in the trunk of the car...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos

As tired as I am from a long day, I can only imagine how tired Fumie must be. She danced beautifully a choreography that just a few months was technically impossible for her; she certainly earned her bouquet today.

We celebrated with dinner and drinks at the always-tasty Togiya near Ooike/Kiyamachi.

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Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 at an effective 82mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Stay Out

My previous post showing some photos from Nagoya Station a couple of years ago brought to mind that I'd taken the shot above from a train while passing through Nagoya Station some years prior to that, on a shinkansen (bullet train) trip to Tokyo to visit a friend.

I remembered the shot, but I had no idea when it had been, but with Lightroom's Map module and many years of having geoencoded my photos, I could easily find the one other shot in my library that had been taken at Nagoya Station, and so here we are. (Prior to Lr4, I would have used my Proximity Search plugin to find the shot, but that's now superfluous with Lr4.)

With both the barbed wire at the bottom and the saw-tooth wire up top, it was clear they didn't want folks running across the tracks.

Having taken this shot with a Nikon D200 almost five years ago, I thought its sharpening could use some masking, to lower the noise. While sliding the “Masking” slider in Lightroom, if you hold down the Option/Alt key, it shows you where the mask is, and in this case, it made for an interesting result due to the edge-detection algorithm used for the mask. Here's a screenshot of how it looked in Lightroom (with the “Masking” slider marked in red).:

Lightroom screenshot while in
Sharpening-Mask Mode

This reminded me of a post two and a half years ago, “Gettin’ Freaky With Lightroom Tone-Curve Presets”, which totally pushed the envelope on the new tone-mapping features introduced in Lightroom 3, creating exceedingly wild results with totally unrealistic tone-map presets. If you don't recall that user-interactive article, pop over there check it out: it's perhaps not all that practical, but it's fun.

So, I thought I'd try some of the funky tone-curve presets presented on that post on this image, and was rudely reminded that they didn't work in PV2012, the new Process Version (i.e. develop render engine) default in Lr4. So, I built a copy of all the presets that works with PV2012, and added the to that page.

Then I returned to this photo and tried a few of the presets, but couldn't get anything cool like the edge-detection mask...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 at an effective 82mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
With the “Wave 3B” Preset
and some other funky hue changes after that

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 at an effective 82mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
With the “Notch Thin 6” Preset

So, that was disappointing, but at least it prompted me to update the presets for modern Lightroom processing.

Here's another photo from that trip on the shinkansen (bullet train) five years ago, taken while we happened to be running in parallel with a local train on the approach to Tokyo Station:

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 at an effective 67mm — ¹/125 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Going My Way
Local train travels in parallel with my bullet train on approach to Tokyo Station
Speed of both trains was 70kph (43mph)

My laptop with all my photos from the last year or two is now back from repair, so I guess this dip into my old archives, is done.

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bird's-Eye View, Nagoya Station
名古屋駅、二年前

Desktop-Background Versions
1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600  ·  2880×1800

As I wait for my laptop to come back from the shop, I realized that this gives me an opportunity to actually revisit the 93,462 photos in the Lightroom catalog on my desktop computer, which I haven't looked at since moving my photo-processing workflow my laptop a year and a half ago.

Then, as now, I was always behind on what I wanted to post, so there must be thousands of things waiting to be shared that will never see the light of day. Lacking the energy for a real search, I decided to go with the first thing that caught my eye as I started to click around, some photos I snapped through the window of our hotel above Nagoya Station while in town for my brother-in-law's wedding two years ago. (Nagoya is 45 minutes east of Kyoto by bullet train.)

Photographically they're nothing special, but I like the patterns in the shot above.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Typical Japanese Urban Expanse

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/125 sec, f/13, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flat
So very different from Kyoto (as evidenced recently here, here, and here)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/100 sec, f/13, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Down

Sorry about the odd presentation in that last shot... I had to compensate for some pretty drastic tilt.

I include this picture because it shows the wider context for the next shot. In the wide context, you can see the train station from above (as in the first shot) and the expanse of city beyond that, but also at the bottom you can see an orange square.... a little shrine.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/100 sec, f/13, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Optical Illusion

At first glance it looks like the little shrine is right next to a set of uncovered railroad tracks, next to a bunch of covered tracks like in the first shot. However, while the covered train tracks are at ground level, the shrine is on the roof over the 18th floor(!). The track next to the shrine is, I'm guessing, for the window-washing crane that services the lower floors.

I'm also guessing that the shrine is a private one for hotel staff or the like... it's in way too ugly a setting to be open to the public, but I'm just guessing.