a big ship

Super literal, I know, but now they’re off the queue and on the blog.

looking around with the 15mm

Yeah, I know, I haven’t posted in two months. Some things happened, and I was a bit distracted from blogging for a while. Things just keep on happening, as they say, but it’s no longer a satisfactory excuse for neglecting the blog. The backlog continues to grow, since no matter what I do, I’m still always shooting. So, here’s the top of the backlog, as it is.

I have some more from Japan in the pipeline, but I’m going to save those for a bit; I’d like to make some improvements to my slideshow before I do any more posts with more than 10 images. I’m also thinking of changing the format of these a bit, so every post is a slideshow (this is mostly about improving page load time so you don’t have to wait forever or only have 4 posts on a page).

May also get some repeats from my Insta; as I’ve said over there repeatedly, they make you do weird crops, and strongly favor verticals. The upside to this is that it’s gotten me looking for and shooting verticals; the downside is I still hate cropping after the fact. Many strong images it doesn’t hurt too much, but it doesn’t feel right.

Now I have to go pass out.

Fushimi Inari Shrine

This post was kind of hard to write, because I edited and edited, but had a lot of trouble cutting it down to the required number of images. If I put more than about 10 in a given post, the page takes forever to load. So instead, I did something I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while. I made an embedded slideshow. It’s meant to have some animations, and captions, and I need to write the script that will atuo-generate one of these, and maybe I’ll get around to adding those eventually, but I don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of done here. It’s just a blog after all. Hand-rolled artisanal slideshow.

So. If you recall the previous post, we crashed out early and woke up early due to jet lag, and so did our friends we were travelling with, and they suggested we try to get to this shrine for the morning golden hour. Half an hour cab ride plus 5am sunrise meant we sort of just had to drop everything and go, so we did.

We got there early enough that there wasn’t really that many people there. None of the vendors were open. We got coffees from a vending machine on the way. If you haven’t had the experience, it’s a little like one of those starbucks double shot cans, but available black and hot. So, thusly energized, we started up the hill.

When we started, I didn’t really grasp the extent of this place. I was thinking of the golden temple we’d seen the day before, which was spectacular, but small, and figured this would be something on the same scale. But no, this is a whole complex of shrines and sub-shrines, sprawled out on the side of a mountain. The hike to the top is about 2 hours of stairs, what with the constant stopping to take photos.

But/and, there are gates the whole way. Some ancient stone ones, but too many orange wooden ones to count. They’re on different scales, at different spacings, and in various states of repair the whole way. At one point, we came across a spot with just a hole in the ground where a gate was going to be planted later that day. The mental state that all the repetition and variation and physical exertion produces is very strange. Or maybe it was from hiking on an empty stomach. Disorientation, along with a sense of wonder.

So: definitely go. Definitely do it at dawn, before all the other assholes wake up (remember you’re an asshole too, in this scenario). Maybe bring snacks and water, although as you leave the temple mid morning, there are street food vendors that will sell you food that has no business being that good.

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golden temple

End of day 2. I thought, for some reason, going to this temple, that the ‘golden’ part was a figure of speech. I was wrong. The crowds were pretty prodigious, but the whole thing is sort of a visual non-sequitur.

NB: the one picture of it across the lake is nice, but it would be nicer if I’d had a long lens, or been able to move better, but the crowds made that difficult. I almost posted a picture of it obscured by other people out of spite, but eventually decided that this isn’t a blog for spite (most of the time).

We walked around the temple, taking our time along the path, and then ended up taking a taxi back to our place and crashing early. Which meant we woke up very early the next morning…