Inabuchi Terraced Rice Fields and Kashihara Insectarium
2022-11-11 I went to see the terraced rice fields in Inabuchi, Asuka, Nara prefecture before getting too cold. The rice harvest was done and could not see the shining rice plants, but it was the calm place to be able to feel very clean air. I dropped by the Kashihara city insectarium on the way […]
Todai-ji Nigatsu-do
2022-11-07 I went Nigatsu-do, one of the Buddha halls of Todai-ji temple in Nara city. I released the shutter on the interesting things that caught my eyes. map
Muro Ryuketsu Shrine
2022-10-28 Muro Ryuketsu Shrine is located about 1 km behind the famous Murouji Temple. Very many people would visit Murouji Temple, but I think only small number of people out of that temple visitors reach this shrine. Ryuketsu means dragon hole in Japanese. Dragon is the god of water. There is a dragon hole in […]
Image area selection by intensity (code included)
I went Fujiwara Palace ruins the other day as I heard a large cosmos flower field appears during autumn. I could take nice photos of cosmos flowers, and thought I'd try to make it into a watercolor painting like the following free material, by computing. Target: watercolor painting of cosmos flowers (the picture below is […]
Soni Plateau again
2022-10-26 On a fine day of the end of October, I again visited Soni Plateau, the place covered by wild pampas grass on the border of Nara and Mie prefectures. In September last time, it was covered with very green grass, but this time it became brownish overall. (The photos last time can be seen […]
Hachiman-bori Canal
2022-10-21 I visited Hachiman-bori canal located in Omihachiman City, Shiga prefecture where I had been interested in for a long time, as it was a waste of time to stay at home during the beautiful autumn day. Tourists were visiting to see the well-preserved old merchant town. I got several photos with typical red colors […]
Akame 48 Waterfalls
2022-10-14 I visited the walking route of Akame 48 waterfalls in Mie Prefecture in a fine autumn day. It was my first visit. It was relatively easy to access by motorcycle, but it was much larger scale and much more rocky and steep than I imagined. When I arrived just after 9am in the morning, […]
Aburahi Shrine
2022-10-11 Last time, I visited a wooden building built around 90 years ago, but this time I visited Aburahi Shrine in Koka City, Shiga Prefecture. The shrine has much longer history; the building was built in 1493. (over 500 years ago!) The torii gate of the shrine The dragon that gives us clean water to […]
Former Elementary School in Uda City
2022-10-01 I visited a former elementary school preserved without demolished in a village surrounded by forests. (Built in 1935, so 87-year-old heavily-used wooden building!) The area was extremely quiet. It was a Saturday morning, but there were only 6 people including me. I took photos of the entire school building using a wide conversion lens. […]
CartoonGAN
One or two years ago, I tried CartoonGAN to convert photos into anime like pictures. “GAN” is an abbreviation for “Generative Adversarial Network”, a deep learning technology that learns features from prepared images and generates new pseudo images. When I saw my recent photos of black dragonflies, I wondered what would happen to them, then […]