Jeffrey E.F. Friedl's Blog, page 37

The Whole Gamut of My Blog In One Spectacular Visit to the Yoshiminedera Temple

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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 320 —
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Picturesque Path

at the Yoshiminedera Temple (善峯寺)

Kyoto, Japan
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I paid a visit to the Yoshiminedera Temple in the mountains of south-west Kyoto today, and the
resulting photos pretty much covered all the main things I normally have on
my blog. Let's run through some of them....

Above we have a vertical desktop background, which I started doing
four years ago. I've now posted 385 of them.

And here's a wigglegram featuring Ai (who appeared with her husband in this photoshoot a year
and a half ago)...

div#dumjUEISBISBJcA img { width:690px; height:459px; visibility:hidden; position:absolute; top:0; left:0; border: solid 10px #311}

















Animatable — slowly sweep mouse from side to side to view effect
写真の上をマウスで左右にゆっくり動かすといろいろな撮影効果を楽しむことができます。

1)return true;if(!L){L=1;document.getElementById('pumjUEISBISBJcA1').src='http://regex.info/i/JF4_061895_sm.jpg... x=Math.floor((e.clientX||e.pageX)/BW);if(X==0)X=x;else if(x!=X){var which=x>X?i+(x-X):i-(X-x);if(which>=I.length)which=I.length==2?0:I.length-1;else if(which

I first started
making these things that I call
“wigglegrams” two years ago, and I still have a lot of work yet to make
them better. I've only just realized that I really need to ensure a faster
shutter than normal static shots, because (duh!) I'm moving; the
frames at the end of the one above are quite blurry. And I've got to move more smoothly...
this one is still a bit wonky.

Of course, I need to have a photo of people taking photos...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/4.5, ISO 640 —
map & image data — nearby photos

... and of folks gathered to see a nice view...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 28mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

... and folks pointing at something...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 160 —
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... and someone holding a quince...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Okay, that last one is not common on my blog, but you've got to start sometime.

It's been five months
since I've posted a cautionary example about remembering to use a
polarizing filter, so here's one:

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Without Polarizer

偏光フィルター無し








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 250 —
map & image data — nearby photos

With Polarizer

偏光フィルター有り









span.b114 { padding: 6px; border: gray 1px solid }


Without / 無し
  -  
With / 有り


mouseover a button to see that image — 以上のバトンをクリックしてね

Three years ago I posted
“Heading Out To Photograph The Fall Foliage? Don’t Forget The Polarizer Filter” using photos
from this very temple, but I'm getting better in my processing because I can use my wigglegram technology to align the shots.
(Other polarizing-example posts include

wet grass,
polished granite,
wet rocks,
lotus leaves,
a mountain stream,
a bed of moss,
and my first post on the subject six and a half years ago, “A Few Polarization-Filter Examples”.)

And speaking of both “wigglegram technology” and “things that often appear on my blog”, here's killing two birds with one stone:
another wigglegram, and Damien Douxchamps and his famous red hat posing Terminator Style with
his Nikkor 70-200 zoom lens:

div#dumjUEISBISBJcB img { width:690px; height:459px; visibility:hidden; position:absolute; top:0; left:0; border: solid 10px #311}
















Animatable — slowly sweep mouse from side to side to view effect
写真の上をマウスで左右にゆっくり動かすといろいろな撮影効果を楽しむことができます。

1)return true;if(!L){L=1;document.getElementById('pumjUEISBISBJcB1').src='http://regex.info/i/JF4_062469_sm.jpg... x=Math.floor((e.clientX||e.pageX)/BW);if(X==0)X=x;else if(x!=X){var which=x>X?i+(x-X):i-(X-x);if(which>=I.length)which=I.length==2?0:I.length-1;else if(which

This is on the steps leading up from the parking lot, before the entrance. They were the last photos I took before we moved on to the next temple.

But we're not done yet with the tour of stuff commonly found on my blog. Here's a normal landscape-mode desktop background
(the 841st), taken
from about where Damien is standing in the wigglegram above, of the temple's entrance, a couple of hours earlier on the way in.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Entrance to the Yoshiminedera Temple

善峯寺の正門
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Of course, it certainly wouldn't be an autumn post without a photo of Paul Barr smiling...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 —
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...or a photo of the back of his head while he snaps a photo of a pretty scene...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 320 —
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We need a photo showing people staring inquisitively at something, while also giving a sense of context
for the scale or slope of the place...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 280 —
map & image data — nearby photos

... and of someone using a smartphone to take a photo of the thing being
stared at, in this case, a garden-friendly
spider...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/640 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

I've much more to post out of the 706 photos I took at this temple (and the mere 270 at the other one we visited today), including even
a “What am I?” quiz, but they'll have to wait for another day.

Continued here...

Boat at Kyoto’s Shugakuin Imperial Palace

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 —
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Imperial Boat

at the Shugakuin Imperial Villa (修学院離宮)

Kyoto Japan
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The fall-foliage season is in full swing in Kyoto, and with the number
of photos I take in an outing I'm quickly filling up my laptop's disk. So before I can even look at this year's photos, I need to make room for them
by cleaning up prior years' stuff. I've spent the last couple of months
going through my photos from 2012, and have worked my way through to late
November 2012, and my
first visit to Kyoto’s Shugakuin Imperial Villa, and realize that I
hadn't even looked at all those photos yet.

So, here are two more from that trip.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 900 —
map & image data — nearby photos
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My First Fall-Foliage Outing for 2014: Temples in the Takao Area of Kyoto

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400 —
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Very Little Mushrooms

on the roof of the ticket-taker booth

The Kosanji Temple (高山寺; often incorrectly called the “Kozanji Temple”)

Kyoto Japan
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Almost-microscopic mushrooms growing in a bed of moss is hard to resist when you have a nice macro lens,
as seen in prior posts
here and here.

Paul Barr is back in Kyoto for the first time in a year, as is the fall-foliage season. Paul,
Damien Douxchamps, and I made our way out to the Takao (高雄) area in the mountains of north-western Kyoto
to see the fall colors. It was my first outing for fall colors this year (though in the past month or so I've
posted a lot of fall-foliage shots from prior years, including
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here).

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 500 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Muted Colors

it's still early in the season
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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 1600 —
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Detail

I love this kind of roof, and the “rain chain” (kusaridori; 鎖樋)
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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/2, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Wind Chime

from 1985 (though it looks like it could be 1885 or 1685)!
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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2200 —
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Gate Roof Detail
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Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1100 —
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Impromptu Photo Op

at the Saimyouji Temple (西明寺), Kyoto Japan








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 —
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Sip of Tea

at the Jingoji Temple (神護寺), Kyoto Japan








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2500 —
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The Last 1%

final steps of a very, very long winding flight of steps from the bottom of the mountain








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 450 —
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I Love the Curves

of the temple roofs in the background








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 —
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Rich Light

And, to celebrate Paul's return to Kyoto after a year...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/320 sec, f/2.5, ISO 5600 —
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“A Paul Spotted In Its Natural Environment”

To be continued...

A Few Photos From The Start of a Visit to the Kyoto Imperial Palace

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/22, ISO 5000 —
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Roof

of a minor wall at the Kyoto Imperial Palace (京都御所)
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The grounds of the Kyoto Imperial Palace are open for tours most days, and like other imperial palaces in the area
(Shugakuin, Sento,
and, Katsura), holders of a foreign passport can visit pretty easily. It's much more difficult for a Japanese citizen
to visit, except during a special open house for a few days each year.

During the open house, huge throngs of tourists (Japanese and foreign
alike) visit, which makes it unappealing to someone who can visit on a
less-crowded regular-tour day, but after finally making my first visit to the palace last
week, I realized a great benefit to a photography-minded visitor of going during the open house: you
can move at your own pace, and can stay as long as you like. (On the standard tours, your movements are
tightly controlled and the group moves at a brisk pace.)

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/3200 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

North Gate

Kyoto Imperial Palace (京都御所)

one of half a dozen entrances along the almost-mile of surrounding wall

The palace is located within a larger city park that's always open to the public. Here's the Map view in Lightroom,
with the yellow marker near the top where I was standing when I took the photo above (aiming at the gate
in the wall to the south west of the marker):

The center block is the imperial palace, and as you can see from the other markers for other photos I took,
only about half of the grounds are accessible to tourists.

The gate in the north wall (seen above, from outside) is similar to the
south-east gate seen in the three-lovely-ladies
wigglegram the other day, though that view is from the inside.

The only other photo showing on the map outside the palace walls is this next one, of the main entrance gate, after we'd had
our bags inspected by police...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/1250 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 —
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Main Site Entrance

Kyoto Imperial Palace (京都御所)








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/500 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 —
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Palace Entrance

for use by visiting dignitaries

The first thing you see when you enter the grounds is a receiving entrance to a palace building. None of the buildings
are open to the public, so the entrance is probably not used more than once or twice a century (since the emperor no longer lives here).
Anyway, I love the detail in the construction of the ornate roof...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 —
map & image data — nearby photos








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 1600 —
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The site has many buildings and courtyards and walls and areas, and
sometimes the view through a door would be across a courtyard through
another door. I liked the geometry.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 140 —
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Through and Through

For some reason, an ox-drawn cart on display garnered a lot of attention...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 450 —
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Ox-Drawn Cart








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 500 —
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Wheel Detail










Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 320 —
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Cambered








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 110 —
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Through and Through

again








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 400 —
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Courtyard

The leading photo of this article (“Roof”) was taken here, on the left side of the doorway.

There's not much exciting here, but it's been a
while since I posted something, so here we are. At the doorway seen in the
photo above, I took photos to make a
wigglegram, and so I've been stalled at this point in my photos because
for the last several days I've been consumed with improving my
wigglegram-making software. It's really been quite fun (though the math makes my brain melt). I find it particularly interesting how different crops on the same set of photos can result in
vastly different end effects. We'll see some examples soon.

To be continued...

Huge Main Gate at Kyoto’s Chion’in Temple Now Shrouded in Scaffolding

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/1000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 —
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Incongruous







Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/3200 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 —
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Doubletake

main gate of the Chion'in Temple

今日から二ヶ月知恩院（京都市東山区）の三門は足場包む

I was surprised today to notice that the huge main gate of the
Chion'in Temple (Kyoto, Japan) is in the process of getting a huge
wooden scaffolding. It
seems that it'll be having its roof tiles repaired for the next couple
of months.

This construction is in addition to the multi-year renovation of the main
hall that includes taking apart its roof,
but as I belatedly discovered the other day, there's so much more to this
site, so it's well worth a visit.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 —
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Supplies

piled up on the main stairs up into the center of the gate








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/9, ISO 1600 —
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Wooden Scaffolding







Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 140 —
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Simple Ties








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/800 sec, f/1.6, ISO 100 —
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With Damien







Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/800 sec, f/1.6, ISO 100 —
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(the scaffolding is bigger than Damien)







Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 250 —
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Inside








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/1000 sec, f/1.6, ISO 100 —
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this temple should be called the

“Temple of Staircases”

As I mentioned in a recent post, this place has a lot of flights of stairs. The flight seen above, parallel off to the side of the main flight that goes through the big gate, is now used as the main way to the temple proper.

From up the stairs a bit, looking back toward the back of the main gate...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/8, ISO 1250 —
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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/3.2, ISO 180 —
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Back Edge of the Scaffolding








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 220 —
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Fall Colors are Starting








Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 —
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Picturesque Scaffolding?









Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/1000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 —
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A Wigglegram of Three Lovely Ladies in Kimono at the Kyoto Imperial Palace

Note: this article may not appear properly in news readers.

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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/2500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Lovely Day at the Kyoto Imperial Palace

these young ladies were quite the attraction for photo ops

I visited the Kyoto Imperial Palace for the first time yesterday, and
these three young college students also enjoying the sites were kind enough
to pose for a
wigglegram for me. The frame above is the last in the series, after
they broke out in a smile at the rapid-fire sound of my camera capturing
frames at the zippy pace of 10 per second.

昨日京都御所でこの大学生の美人達はポーズしてくれて、僕はウイグルグラムを作りました。以下の写真の上にマウスをあっちこっちしてね！

Here's the wigglegram:

div#dXyZOEK5fK5fJcA img { width:690px; height:459px; visibility:hidden; position:absolute; top:0; left:0; border: solid 10px #311}





















Animatable — slowly sweep mouse from side to side to view effect
写真の上をマウスで左右にゆっくり動かすといろいろな撮影効果を楽しむことができます。

1)return true;var x=Math.floor((e.clientX||e.pageX)/BW);if(X==0)X=x;else if(x!=X){var which=x>X?i+(x-X):i-(X-x);if(which>=I.length)which=I.length==2?0:I.length-1;else if(which

Kimono are almost always photogenic, which is why they tend to appear in
my
wigglegrams, such as this one and this one.

Because the individual frames are taken manually (as I sweep myself and the camera from one side to the other
while the camera fires a burst of 10 to 20 frames), they're all jumbled and misaligned, so before a wigglegram
can be made I must somehow line them all up. This is a royal pain to try to do manually in Lightroom, so for a while
I had a system where I used some features of the Hugin photo stitcher
that sometimes worked like magic, but more often gave unusable Salvador-Dali like results.

So I finally bit the bullet and dusted off my trigonometry and built a Lightroom plugin that
allows me to straight and crop the group automatically. The concept was simple, I thought, but it turns out
that converting natural thoughts of alignment and rotation do not map at all to how Lightroom does it internally,
and wrapping my brain around it enough to bridge the gap was one of the hardest, most frustrating things I've attempted
in a very long time. Frankly, my brain is just not cut out for math. (This, despite my undergraduate degree officially
being in math.)

Anyway, the upshot is that now there's much less friction for me to make wigglegrams, so I plan to post more of them.

To be continued...

How To Keep a Japanese Washing Machine Clean

For some reason, Japanese washing machines build up a sludge of some
kind, out of sight, on the underside of the drum, and at some point it builds
up enough that it starts randomly leaving small deposits on your clothes
like speckles of mud. This sort of defeats the purpose of washing them.

洗濯機の汚れはなかなか掃除やりにくいですが、この商品で簡単にピカピカになりました。400円だけで、かなり良いバリューです。

It's particularly maddening because the washer we have has special
cleaning features meant to avoid this, but they apparently do not work.

I thought that I could take the thing apart myself to clean it, but it
turns out that to get the drum out you need a special tool not available to
the general public (a “hammerless flange nut
turner”), so at one point I had to have a service come in and clean it
($200!).

Six months later the speckles were back, and not wanting to make a habit of paying $400/year in maintenance
on the washer, I gave the $4 cleaner shown at right a try. It worked fantastically.

You fill the washer with hot water, pour this stuff in and agitate for a few minutes,
then let it sit overnight. All the sludge ends up floating in the water and it's really gross...
but after draining and running a couple of non-load loads, our speckles are gone. At least for now.

If you live in Japan with a Japanese washer, this stuff is recommended.

Rediscovering the Chion’in Temple, Part 2

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 170mm — 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Heading Down

one of the many stairways at the Chion'in Temple (知恩院)

Kyoto, Japan

Picking up from yesterday's “Rediscovering Kyoto’s Chion’in Temple via a Short Mountain Hike”,
where I had descended on a mountain trail into a back area of the Chion'in Temple that I hadn't known existed. Yesterday's post ended with me
getting to the main area I'd always known about...

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 65mm — 1/250 sec, f/4.8, ISO 2200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Quaint Little Bridge

I'd seen this area briefly last year, at the end of the roof-repair visit, when it was lit up for
an evening lightup event. Here's a photo from Nov 2, 2013:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/50 sec, f/6.3, ISO 6400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Evening Lightup

last year

去年の秋
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(A similar shot appeared late last year as decoration on a post about Garmin's
horrible products.)

At that time the area was closed off so I couldn't investigate further, but yesterday I was free to stroll around. The view from on top of the bridge, looking lengthwise down it, shows one of the bazillion little outlying structures
that are common at temples...

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 1600 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Minor Outlying Structure

Looking the other way, you currently see only the big shell structure
protecting the main building while it undergoes a decade of
restoration.

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 125 —
map & image data — nearby photos

What I didn't realize before is that there's a whole other area tucked behind the main temple building, up a long flight of step:

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 65mm — 1/250 sec, f/4.8, ISO 5000 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Yet Another Area I Didn't Know About








Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 1600 —
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Looking Back Down







Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 95mm — 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 450 —
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Not a Bad View








Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 116mm — 1/500 sec, f/5.3, ISO 1400 —
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Roofs

more of the temple's buildings still awaiting my discovery

As high as the nice view suggests we are, we're only at the height of the shell-building roof:

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 240mm — 1/1000 sec, f/6, ISO 720 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Five Crows

This area had a couple of extra temple areas, including the main entrance to the “No Passage” temple
seen in yesterday's post. I saw Japanese tourists heading in, so I suspect I was right that the sign meant “don't use as a shortcut path” and not “no entrance”.

But my attention was brought to a little door leading to the mountain
that had another “closed 4pm - 6am” sign on it, and since it was 3:55, I decided to avail myself of the five minutes to see what was beyond the
door.

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/6.3, ISO 2500 —
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Where I Must Return

within five minutes or face a night on the mountain

I'll have to revisit this entire area when I have more time and more-appropriate lenses. It's really quite tastefully done,
but the nasty orange traffic cone pretty much destroys the scene, another example of the
aesthetic discord I find so often in Japan.

More steps, though increasingly rough and natural, lead to a spidery areas of little grave areas tucked here and there. One of the larger areas:

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Paths Not Taken

because my time was almost up

Descending to the more refined temple area, I could enjoy (as much as the lack of time allowed) uncommon from-above perspectives.

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Roof Detail

The whole temple would close soon, so I retraced my steps back toward
the main area, and was about to descend down to and through the temple's huge main
gate when I decided to see what was tucked around the other
unexplored side of the protective-shell building.

What I found was that the temple has a whole complex of buildings and gardens — the normal attraction of temples
for tourists like me — that I hadn't even known about. Lacking time, lenses, and reasonable attire (I was dressed for mountain hiking,
like this), I saved them for another day, but continued away from the main area to find
that there was another gate...

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North Gate

As evidence of how surprising this was to me, let me note that I lived
for a year with my living room 150 meters from here... 20 seconds if you
run quickly. I had no idea.

To be fair, this gate is not visible from the road, and, I think, not normally accessible except from the inside for use as an exit.

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 58mm — 1/250 sec, f/5, ISO 3200 —
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View From the Gate

down toward the road

To reach the road, I first had to go down a windy series of steps...

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... through a small passage under a building, until you finally come out at pavement...

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Finally at the Road?

Except, that's not the road, that's part of the driveway to the temple's back administrative offices.

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 58mm — 1/250 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1600 —
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View From the Road

This view I recognized, having gone by hundreds of times. It's right next to the Shoren'in Temple, and about 85 yards
from the entrance to where I used to live.

For the last decade I've lived much farther away — almost
half a mile — so I guess that's my excuse for not having more than
the most superficial understanding of the Chion'in Temple. It was such a
delight yesterday to discover not only so much more, but to also realize
that perhaps the best parts are still waiting to be discovered.

Heading back during the fall foliage season, perhaps in three weeks, is high on the agenda.

Rediscovering Kyoto’s Chion’in Temple via a Short Mountain Hike

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400 —
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Big Bell

70 metric tons of very big bell

at the Chion'in Temple, Kyoto Japan

知恩院の鈴
Desktop-Background Versions

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It's been a month since I sprained my ankle while on a mountain hike. It's been feeling mostly better for a while, so I finally decided to do a short hike
up to the Shogunzuka overlook just to test things out.

The hike is very simple (I've done it with a five-year-old in tow), and from home it
took only 10 minutes to the trailhead, and from there 20 minutes up.

It was a splendid day, but the view from the top was hazy and dull...

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/16, ISO 100 —
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Hazy Kyoto

not much to see today

The plane in the distance is Jetstar 615, half way on its run from Tokyo
to Kumamoto. Flying at an altitude of 11km, it's about 34km (21 miles) away
at this point.

There wasn't much else to see, so I turned around to try my luck going
back down, a direction that I tend to be injury proned.

A minute into the downhill portion I came across trail signposts, and on a whim decided
to take the trail down to the Chion'in Temple, a path I'd never taken.

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 —
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I Took a Left

These local signposts are much nicer than the official Kyoto City posts
like the one in the lower right of the photo (like this), which
indicates that the path to Chion'in doesn't even go there (or
anywhere).

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2800 —
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Anti-Ankle Trail

roots and rocks galore








Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/100 sec, f/4.5, ISO 6400 —
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More Signposts

with real information for a change

The sign above informs me that the trail's exit at the Chion'in Temple closes at 4pm. I had plenty of time.

Despite that I used to live about a minute's walk away from the Chion'in
Temple, I've never had much interest in it, other than its famous huge wooden
gate. When you walk through the gate and up the bazillion steps to the
temple proper, you're greeted mostly with a vast expanse of dusty gravel
and a common (but big) temple building. Not too interesting.

The temple building is currently undergoing its once-in-a-hundred-years
roof repair, which made for a great photo opportunity for the three
days it was open, but for the other years of the project, you get just a big ugly protection
shell.

So anyway, I was curious where among this stuff the trail came out of
the mountain, and with that in mind, I was a bit surprised to find the
trail exit the mountain near a dilapidated and apparently-abandoned
temple(ish) building I'd not known of...

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 2500 —
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Mountain Sign

like the kind commonly seen in Kyoto mountains

There was also a mini Stonehenge of monuments, including these two massive rocks:

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The carving on the one with the flowing writing is amazing...

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“... you too...”

(about the only thing I could understand)

Just off trail, spiders had set up their own monuments, with webs that reflected (refracted?) pretty colors...

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500mm — 1/100 sec, f/8, ISO 6400 —
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Then I came across an entrance to what I assume is a sub-temple of some sort, and a graveyard:

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2000 —
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“No Passage”

Normally if they don't want you to go in, the sign says “Entrance
Prohibited”, but this sign says “Passage Prohibited”. I took that to mean
that they didn't want you using it as a shortcut path to some destination
beyond, which meant that I probably could have gone in, but I didn't want
to take the chance that I misunderstood, so I didn't enter. After all, I'm just a guest.

Finally I came to the gate that closes at 4pm...

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210mm — 1/200 sec, f/8, ISO 6400 —
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Open 6am - 4pm

And then was stunned to see the biggest bell I'd ever seen:

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Absolutely Massive








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150,000 pounds · 378 years old

(the bell; I'm not sure about the guy)

I was now regretting that the one lens that I brought with me (the Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm)
didn't go nearly wide enough to do this bell justice. According to the sign
in the photo that leads this post, it was built in 1636 (378 years ago).
It's 3.3m (~11 ft) tall, 2.8m wide at the mouth, 30cm (about a foot) thick,
and about 70 metric tons (150,000 pounds).

Just wow.

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/30 sec, f/6.3, ISO 6400 —
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I'll Need to Come Back

with more-appropriate lenses

The bell is a designated “Important
Cultural Property of Japan”, which somehow made it more funny when a
newspaper delivery guy came whizzing by on his scooter, up the steps I had
just descended, and through the gate that was soon to be locked at
4pm...

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1100 —
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Looking Back at the Gate to the Trail

where the newspaper guy scootered up and through

He came back soon enough, so he probably didn't go up the mountain :-),
but instead to the sub-temple area I'd been hesitant to enter.

From the bell area, a short path went down to the aforementioned “vast expanse of dusty gravel” main area, so by now I
knew where I was, but I
felt silly for not having known about the bell or the
sub-temple(ish) area. (I didn't realize at the time that this was merely
the start of many feeling-silly-that-I-was-so-ignorant experiences for the day.)

Rather than go down to the main area, I took another path that lead, as
best I can tell, off the temple property to a very small little park that
was predominantly filled with big ugly “STAY OFF THE GRASS” signs, and this
little gazebo with an even uglier “CAMPING STRICTLY PROHIBITED” sign
sitting squarely in the one place in the park that anyone might want to
actually enjoy...

Nikon D4 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50mm — 1/200 sec, f/6.3, ISO 450 —
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Monumentally Ugly

This kind of discord (a pleasant/beautiful scene is totally marred by something ugly that really doesn't need to be there) is common in Japan. It's such a shame because the Japanese sense for beauty and harmony with nature is otherwise so nice.

In their defense, though, though the ugly sign does destroy the one nice area of the park someone might want to enjoy,
it's also the one area someone might want to camp in, so yeah, they have that going for them. /-:

Anyway, facing the park more or less next to the big bell area was another temple I'd not known existed:

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Anyoji Temple (安養寺)

entrance of many steps








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Small, Well-Tended Graveyard

I strolled around the area a bit and finally came across a place I'd been before,
a nice set of steps set in a mossy hillside,
just off a small road. I'd seen it just once, 2½ years ago, but recognized it instantly.

So with that point of reference in place, I returned to the big bell at
the Chion'in Temple, and headed down to the “vast expanse of dusty
gravel”... only to be surprised yet again by how much I hadn't realized
existed.

Continued here...

Oodles of Cheerful Little Men at the Sekisanzen-in Temple in North-East Kyoto

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 4000 —
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Cheerful Little Men

at the Sekisanzen-in Temple, Kyoto Japan

Nov 2012

赤山禅院(京都市左京区) 2012年11月

Still revisiting autumns past while we wait for the fall-foliage season to start here in Kyoto,
here are some genial little men at the Sekisanzen-in Temple in north-east Kyoto.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 4000 —
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Lotsa' Cheerful Little Men

I'm not sure what they're for, but I suspect they represent votive donations, such
as these statuettes at the Sanzen-in Temple.

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I stopped by with Damien prior to my first visit to Kyoto’s
Shugakuin Imperial Villa two years ago, because we had a few extra minutes and it's nearby.

The affable men were in front of a little sub building on the temple grounds...

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Though this was a short visit, photos from it have appeared incidentally on my blog before. One was in
“A Long But Photogenic November in Kyoto”:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/100 sec, f/1.4, ISO 180 —
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Another was in “A Post For Damien Douxchamps’ Parents in Belgium”:

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Pro Stance

They had a nice stone lantern in the garden, but I couldn't do much with it:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/100 sec, f/1.4, ISO 250 —
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Meh

( commenting about my photo, not the lantern! )

It reminds me of the one at the Enkouji Temple, which I think has come across nicely on my blog
here,
here,
here, and
here.

But I'm always a sucker for moss and colorful leaves...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — 1/100 sec, f/1.4, ISO 250 —
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Back at the cheerful little men, I noticed some stickers placed around the frame:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — 1/50 sec, f/1.4, ISO 220 —
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My initial thought was that they looked like geisha name stickers,
like these, but that makes no sense
at a temple like this, and then I recalled having seen name stickers of pilgrims
at a temple before, out in the middle of nowhere, here.
So yeah, they're probably names of pilgrims.