Today was still winter-ish, but not nearly as bitingly cold as it’s been recently. So, first we went out to a cafe in Kyoto for a late breakfast, then to the Botanical Gardens.
Genbo shows off his two-tooth gap right there in front.
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The botanical gardens were nice and empty, not surprising considering there were no flowers outside, and the trees looked like this:
Have yet to figure out why they do this to some trees and not others. Keep out cold? Pests?
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We went into the greenhouse, and my lens (and Maki’s glasses) immediately fogged up, resulting in way too many pictures like this:
So this is what it feels like to have cataracts
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Couldn’t figure out what this machine was, but figured it might have been the humidifier responsible for my foggy lens.
Eventually we went to a less tropical room in the greenhouse, and my lens cleared up enough to snap some real photos.
Something very typically Genbo about this expression. Sometimes I think it screams, “I’m going to be a white-collar criminal someday.”
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And, finally, botanical stuff:
This one in particular shows off the nice bokeh of the 85/1.4
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A ray of light falling perfectly on this one
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I use my own personal email address(es) for lots of stuff, but I also find it convenient to use Gmail. Now I find that they are beginning to implement image-based ads in their service.
It is, of course, a free service, and they can operate it as they wish. The first image that appears in an ad, though, is the last time I use it. (Of course, if it appears in emails I send with Gmail, how will I know about it? Hmm….)
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I’ve written before (most recently here) about high dynamic range (HDR) photography, where you compensate for the camera’s inability to render detail in light and dark areas simultaneously by combining multiple photographs of the same subject. Well, it turns out the technique brings a lot to my iPhone, as well. There is a built-in function to take HDR images, but the output isn’t nearly as good, I’ve found, as when you use a little app called Pro HDR.
Here is a screen grab of it in action. You let it take one light exposure and one dark, then combine them as so. You can even hand-hold, and as long as you aren’t too unsteady it merges the images without lots of artifacts.
Here is the result. I chose to include the sun in the image, which inherently causes lots of flare and desaturation, but even with this the shot looks pretty good. It looks much better than would have been possible with a single exposure alone in these conditions.
Here is another shot of the same subject. Notice the details in the highlights and the shadows without the end result looking overly fake (although you can tweak it for that effect if you wish).
Now here are a couple old photos taken with the program. First, a thimble-full of sake before drinking it.
And, someone’s illegally parked bike tossed unceremoniously into the bushes. Great quality photo for how dark it was.
No real story behind these. Just some shots I liked.
“Am I smarter and better looking than Dad, yet?”
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Another snow today, so I took the opportunity to snap a few shots from our balcony. I think we’re perfectly positioned as far as snow goes. It only snows enough to stick a few times a year, giving us the pleasures associated with it without most of the hassle.
Genbo is starting first grade next April at the school outlined below in red. It’s about a 15-20 minute walk.
Can already hear it: “Dad…Can you give me a riiiide?”
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On the other side of this mountain/big hill lies Kyoto
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We went up to Maki’s parents’ house in Fukui for the first few days of the new year. It’s a lot colder there than it is here, so Genbo and Zoe were looking forward to playing in the snow. One of the first things we did was hatsu-moude, or the first visit to a shrine to wish for good health and happiness in the coming year.
All of us, together with Maki’s sister and niece
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The first thing to do is stand in line to throw some money in the box for the resident spirits.
“Some filthy lucre for the Shinto deities please, mom”
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Those thick ropes are attached to the bells, which you ring to wake up the spirits to watch you throw money in, clap your hands together three times, bow your head, and wish for good things.
Wakey, wakey, narcoleptic Shinto spirits
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Here Genbo has just purchased some good-luck animistic schwag, this time in the form of a blessed arrow that will grace our home for the year and hopefully keep away the eviiiiiil spirits.
Genbo really liked the arrow and all the violence it represented
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Unfortunately, his arrow-inspired antics were severely impinged upon by…
I have no idea what the horse signifies, but the picturesque building in the background is the kura, or storehouse of the shrine.
All in all, I really like this shrine, called お総社 (“O-souja”). It’s kind of small-scale, old-fashioned, and down-home. Only people from the area come here, but they do so a lot. I think Maki used to play in the grounds when she was a little kid.
I decided to take advantage of the new snowfall to go take some photos. And, since I almost always find the part more interesting than the whole, ended up with some macros. No surprise there. A big surprise was the fact that, shortly after taking these photos, I discovered my precious Voigtlander 125/2.5 was mechanically broken, and its barrel would not de-extend. I’m going to send it in to get it fixed, and pray these aren’t the last photos taken with this rare classic.
I’ve always loved pansies as much as I’ve hated the name. I like how, in this first one, the two new sprouts or whatever coming off the stem just happen to be in the 2-3 mm of the image in focus. Serendipity strikes.
This one deserves to be clicked and viewed enlarged. In fact, a friend of mine just got a new printer capable of huge A2 prints (23.4 x 16.5 in), so I think I’m going to have to make an egregiously large print of it.
And, though this buried petal screamed for attention, I didn’t get an image I really liked, despite a long time trying…
1 January 2011 1/1/11
Or, as they say in Japan, 11/1/1. Either way, happy new year!
Here are a couple shots from our balcony. We got record amounts of snow dumped on us on December 31, making for a beautiful new year’s morning. Even late at night on the first, most of this is already gone already…
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Lens: 35/1.8
I have a backlog of family photos that I want to post this year, so all the excellent artistic photos and the insightful commentary about Japan combined with a shrewd street photographer’s eye will have to wait.
I like these, taken by Jeffrey, both because Zoe looks unbearably cute and because I have so few shots of the two of us. Just a note: the sartorial choices here are definitely hers. She really wanted to wear her daycare field-uniform on top of her regular clothes, and I didn’t care enough to say no. That, and it’s cute in a three-year-old-girl way. These are all taken at the park across the street from our house, with some shots of Genbo and Jeffrey’s son Anthony mixed in.
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Family,
Friends
Thanks to Jeffrey for the photos.
Some well-earned R&R for the ground-crew
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A couple weeks ago we (Kids, Maki, mom, and I) went to a dinosaur exhibition at the Asia Trade Center in Osaka. It’s so funny watching Genbo accumulate a vast store of dinosaur-related knowledge when he knows so little about the rest of the world. Just yesterday he was able to correctly identify a scene on a BBC dinosaur documentary as occurring during the Cretaceous because there was some kind of minor dinosaur around I had never even heard of, and that dinosaur, he knows, was from the Cretaceous.
I won’t bore you with a lot of dinosaur bone photos, but I kind of like this one, and was impressed at the 2500 ISO performance of my new D7000.
Not one to be left out of the dino-action
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Maki and I were surprised and delighted to see this ferry in the harbor. This is the one we took six years ago when moving from Oita to Kyoto. Boy was I happy to get out of Kyushu. I remember waiving the place a very enthusiastic goodbye from that boat.
We then walked across the street to the Osaka World Trade Center, the second-highest building in Japan at 55 storeys. We went up the observation deck, but the whole place was deserted, with an eerie ghost-mega-complex feel to it.
Genbo gives a dinosaur impression, while Zoe indulges in a little ear-feeling, finger-sucking, comfort-seeking
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That round building is the Osaka Maritime Museum, which actually looks pretty cool.
Literally, in Japanese, the “Osaka Sea Time and Space Building”
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On the way home we stopped in at a local favorite of ours, with a couple tables and a counter. We started out at a table, but Genbo and Zoe liked to watch them prep the food from the counter, so they sat up their themselves, conversing with the proprietors and other patrons, while Maki and I sat back and laughed quietly.
I’m into flowing water these days. Last Nanzenji post.
Here are a couple more from our recent trip to Nanzenji. The fall foliage was glorious blah blah blah. These are more interesting (to me) than photos of things created by people explicitly for the purpose of having their photo taken (or would have had there been cameras x00 years ago).
Now this guy has the right approach to teaching his daughter how to tackle things bigger than she is.
More beautiful than any three artfully placed trees
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