Photobook

On the left, at the sidebar there's this photobook widget. it's a book that i made. CD size. waiting for the print copy to reach me next week or so. i do hope the print quality will be good though. feel free to look at it.

Autumn in Kyoto :Part 3

after a pretty heavy breakfast at sukiya at about 530am, i was on my way to toufuku ji. i came here 2 years ago and i liked the place. i was the first to reach, just before the sun came up. but photographers were soon coming minutes later. the sunrise was somewhat disappointing, this was what i salvaged with photoshop and filters.
the leaves were great though. it was only about 730am but i was pretty tired by then. and the queue going into toufuku was starting to build already. since ive been here before, i decided to skip it.
my next destination was a 10min ride to to-ji. i liked the place for one reason and one reason only. it was quiet and peaceful. it was probably cause the leaves werent that great but its nice to get away from the crowd.

the garden while not the best , was still pretty okay. thats the famous pagoda at the temple grounds.
reflections.

it was 9 sth by the time i finished. i was exhausted and my muscles started to hurt. my foot was sore. i wanted to go kiyomizu actually but decided to skip and head back instead. that's the end of my trip and probably the last time i see kyoto. thats unless it snows at the end of december. then i might just wanna capture the temples in white, it's something ive always wanted to do but unlike sakuras and autumn leaves, its so unpredictable making it hard to plan.

Autumn trip to Kyoto Part 2

i then headed to nison-in. finally a place that allows tripod!to be fair, there was ample space to walk about. a 3 sec exposure to capture the crowd.

the sun was shinning from behind giving it a nice glow.

a 10 minute exposure! i wanted everyone gone but some guy was just in the frame for too long, sigh. kinda looks like a wandering spirit though :P

a multiple exposure shot. thought i tried something with the post processing this time. i used the water color filter to get this effect.
another shot of it.
the famous bamboo gardens at arashiyama. i've been here twice before and it usually wasn't that crowded. but it was so blardy packed this time round. it was like people were queueing up for a concert or something.

after that i took a few more pictures , then i decided to go to the city centre. the trains were ff-ing packed again! by the time i reached karawamachi, i was tired as hell. so i decided to call it a day and rest in a cyber cafe. i took a 4 hr package deal which was until 11+ cos i wanted to watch the arsenal match. but when i settled down in the cc, i felt so tired, so i went to ask if i could change it to a 10 hr package but the guy said no!wtf!blah. so i slept about an hour or so,and did this and that and was out by 11. i went to an irish pub where they were showing footie. at first it was the chelsea match cause the bartender said there were quite a few of its supporters that night. the match was dull n boring...by 2nd half alot of people went back, so i asked whether he could change it, which he did. the moment he did it, i regretted my decision, 2-0 down! #@$@!$
our season is over man... the match ended, and i decided to go back to the cc but to my dismay it was full! and so was another one not too far away. i gave up on finding one and decided to go to mcD!bought a cup of coffee,sat down while playing with my ds. i then noticed that alot of people were sleepin!! i finally gave in too and decided to do so before being woken up by the waiter. unsurprisingly he only woke the guys without waking the girls :P and that was how i spent my night in kyoto! more pics for the following day up on the next post.

Autumn trip to Kyoto Part 1

My last year here in this area and this is probably my last visit to kyoto. this year's foilage has been great, the best in my 3 years here. and kyoto was no disappointment (in that aspect) as well. i was expecting a crowd, since virtually every hostel was booked out(will tell u how i got through the night later on/next post) here's a pic of my bike and my bag and tripod. i think i overdid it. bike was like 10kgs but my bag must have felt like 15kgs. i seriously don't know why it felt that heavy. it was just the normal gear. 1body,4lenses,flash,tripod, filters,etc.. the only difference from other trips was the card reader,charger and abit of snacks(how heavy can chocs be right?) i took an early train(655) so the crowd wasn't bad at all.However, when i reached kyoto, it was crazy! Especially with my first destination which was to Arashiyama. sardine packed train like those in tokyo. i had to wait for the next one cause of my gear.
this would be the gardens at tenryuji. ive been here twice but never actually went inside( no one was willing to pay then). the gardens are quite nice. i didn't go to the main building.. hard to take pictures as well :P this pic sure looked like there wasn't anyone around but there were, trust me!
the crowd at the far end.
blazing in red.
RGB-red green blue!
the gardens.
this monk was outside tenryuji.. i think i took pictures of these before when i came here with kelly and her family.
this was at some garden/temple deeper inside. the wonders of cycling. i could never have walked that far. cycling is great in kyoto, the crowd aside at this time of year. anyways, this garden was small and obscure but yet there was quite a number of people there! and like tenryuji (and many other places) tripods aren't allowed. autumn in kyoto is very photography unfriendly. most temples don't allow tripods, some wouldnt even allow monopods. the worst was this small temple here in arashiyama. no tripods/monopods/large and medium format cameras. taking photos for photographic purposes is not allowed. only snapshots!WTF. the tripod banning is quite understandable with the crowd but it really makes photography much harder.
fallen leaves on fern.

i'm pretty tired, from all the editing and lack of sleep. will post more soon!

Hot Deal!!!!

For those thts staying in japan and looking for an mp3 player, amazon has an amazing deal for the Toshiba 401 4gb player. 6000yen for a 4gb player is pretty damn cheap ! available in black or white.

link is here

as ive mentioned early in the year, this is one sweet sounding player. its easy to use and its a great alternative to the overpopulated ipod.

long exposure at tanigumi

highly photoshopped pictures.
some pictures went up to abt 4-5 minutes.

Gujo Hachiman

Went with the photography club. nothing much to say, typical tourist place and nothing much of interest. gujo hachiman is famous for its plastic food, literally. they make alot of plastic food for displays ( all of u living in japan should know what i mean, the plastic food outside the shop for display purposes) its quite amazing how they make it, especially tempura, they have this bater like thing and just pour it into water and thats it! so simple! hehei like this picture... guess whats so different about it?

old houses

gujo hachiman castle, too sick of castles d, so i didnt enter.

the river
and the river

A Sweet Sweet week

Arsenal's performance of late has been quite bad but they've really put on a show this week. winning 2-1 against Manure was amazing. For once, luck was on our side, maybe cause we took half-assed chances. We should be doing more of this in the future! Our defence is still horrible nonetheless.

The young guns then thumped Wigan 3-0! A team with an average age of 19 years! Wilshere, Vela, Ramsay, Simpson were all amazing. While Wilshere gets MOM, the Vela goal was just sublime. Why is Wenger not starting him?! Having played in La Liga, I would expect him to able to play at the highest level. At current form, he should be ahead of Bentdner as well. I can just imagine him, Walcott and Nasri wrecking havoc opening spaces with Fabregas pulling the strings from the middle. Wenger oh Wenger, please start him this weekend!

And for dessert, Chelsea lost! wahahahahaha.. it became even sweeter when their idiotic assistant coach criticised us for playing youngsters and disrecpecting the Carling Cup. Chelsea fielded a pretty strong team with Drogba,Deco , all definitely 1st team players and then lost to lowly Burnley(no disrecpect here) I bet they're going to say that the Carling Cup was never on top of their list anyways, not that's disrecpect!

It's always nice to brag, especially in a season with so many lows but i think we should keep our heads down. Winning the league remains difficult. Our time has changed the tide but it remains to be seen whether they can ride and sustain it.

my friend's works

my friend from the art club and some of his works using dry plasticine

Part 3

nothing much to say, just enjoy the pictures

dances


unhook the bra contest, surprisingly, out of 3 guys and 1 girl, the girl was the last.




brass band