Celebrating the End of My Cold With Some Pretty Photos From 2008

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at an effective 202mm — 1/1000 sec, f/4, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

A Metaphor For Me

a dead sunflower and pretty flowers,

representing the cold I just got over, and the getting over of the cold

I'm finally over the nagging cold I had for the last two weeks. It had relented a bit early on enough
for me to write the posts on the gargoyle workshop,
then returned and stuck with me until I finally went to the doctor the other day. He gave me antibiotics, and I started feeling much felt better the next day.

やっと風邪が治った、二週間ぶり元気です。手当たり次第に２００８年の写真色々を見せます。

I couldn't concentrate on much while I had the cold, but to try to eek
out some productivity, I picked a year (2008) and started going through my
photo archive with and eye to delete cruft — stuff I no longer need,
or never needed but had been too lazy to go through and get rid of. I got through about 90% of the 14,299 photos that I still have for the year,
and identified a third as low-hanging-fruit that I can delete.

Wanting to post something now that I'm finally feeling better, here are
a few pretty-ish shots from 2008. They're all taken with a Nikon D200,
which was my first
dSLR.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 at an effective 25mm — 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO 400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Garden Lake

Heian Shrine, Kyoto Japan

平安神宮

From the same trip that produced “Snowy Gardens of the Heian Shrine”.

And a tree in the local park, during cherry-blossom peak:

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at an effective 240mm — 1/180 sec, f/4, ISO 500 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Weeping Cherry at Full Bloom

From the same day as Cherry-Blossom “Snow”.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 at an effective 300mm — 1/500 sec, f/3.5, ISO 640 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Kids Playing

I don't know who the kids are, but I like the feeling of action the shot captures. From this day.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 at an effective 127mm — 1/3000 sec, f/2.2, ISO 160 —
map & image data — nearby photos

A Pretty Sunset is a Pretty Sunset

from the day that started here








Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR at an effective 27mm — 1/160 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Wisteria Vertigo

from this outing

Nothing super great, and without the story that I normally like to write, but sometimes you just want to see colors.

Though here's a little story: after selecting the photos for today's
post, and while starting to write it up, I went back to my archive see what
other blog posts I'd written from the same outings these photos came from. It turns out that I'd already published a photo very similar to the one
that leads this post, with the same metaphor of the dead flower representing my having a cold. Six and a half
years ago, it was the lead photo on “Venting About My
(sort of) Cursed Vacation”.

If nothing else, I'm consistent.