Kiyomizu Temple

Kiyomizu Temple is one of three places I need to visit during my short trip to Kyoto (Fushimi Inari and Kinkakuji are the other two). I've seen some night illumination, sunset, and blue hour shots of the temple and they were all jaw dropping. So my expectations were a little bit high when I came here. It was too cloudy that even my -2 exposure was not ble to capture some detail of the sky.

Textures to the rescue. ^_^

The Bamboo Forest

Finally, I made it to Kyoto just before my 1 year mark in Japan. I've been living in Yokohama since December 2009 and the farthest I was able to visit was only Nikko. There were only 3 places in mind that I'd love to visit and completely forgot about this place. Good thing I didn't arrange my own itinerary. I would have probably missed this place.

Also I am about to create my own tutorial on HDR. A lot of people are now getting hooked at it. Although Trey Ratcliff's tutorial is available, it is a little bit complicated for beginners. So, I'd like to create my own simple work-flow on how to make the images look more HDR realistic. Hopefully I can finish the tutorial over the weekend.

Autumn Colors

Still trying to crack that editor's pick in www.hdrspotting.com. Most of my pictures that I thought would make it to the Editor's Pick or at least the Featured section ended up in the Latest section of the site (where the rejects are!). Ouch!

Anyways, this one made it to the Featured section. What's strange is that my picture in HDR spotting is linked to my Flickr. I get thousands of views in HDR spotting while I get only 10-20 view referrals in my Flickr account. Weird huh? Well I guess the only winner in this site is the one who created it. He is probably getting a lot of dough because of the advertisements in the site.

Shibuya Ghosts

I've read somewhere that a journalist shot a picture of the Shibuya crossing, published it into a magazine and then got sued for invasion of privacy because he was able to capture a man and his mistress kissing. So, good thing this was a night shot and it is almost impossible for me to get a non-blurred shot of the people.

Edo Wonderland: Grand Ninja Theater

When you were a kid and you have tried to wear a t-shirt on your face to look like a Ninja, then you definitely need to visit Edo Wonderland in Nikko. This place draws out your childishness just like when you visit Disneyland for the first time.

Edo Wonderland is a theme park that was made to look like it was a village during the Edo era. This also means that all of the theme park staff are dressed old school (samurais, ninjas, geishas, etc..). As an added treat, they provide costumes as well so you can literally feel and enjoy the atmosphere of Edo Wonderland.