Well, what do you know. This blog is still dormant.
Actually, I'm planning to start a whole new blog next year, after I come back from Australia in January.

First °instance° sighted.

Today was the first time I've seen someone else use the °xyz° ... one of my Facebook °friends° had commented on one of his °friend's° photos, in a gallery entitled "°me° XD". Here (maybe) glamour photography.

°slow° progress

Well, I know it will take time, but I haven't seen anyone else °use° this system.
Mind you, I don't use it °very° often myself. I can understand that it's not easy to type, there being no specific ° key. How I get around it is I have it programmed into Shortkeys Lite, so all I have to do is type z and x and I get °.
The other way would be to use Alt+ 0176, like this °.

I wonder if °this° will catch on

Today, when I was writing in my little notebook, I meant to write double quotation marks. But it turned out to be a little circle... a degree mark, if you will °. So I wondered how typing would look if I used °these° inside of °regular° quotation marks, or °inverted° commas. Of course, I'm using °quite° a few here, more than would be sensibly °advised° by, well, just about °anyone°.


From now on, I shall use them in °forums° and whatnot, and just remember, this is where the °idea° started.

Magic Circles Fireworks

I've been trying this technique on some of my old fireworks photos.

Well, it's still here.

Does anyone take any notice of it?

Just to see something new, here's a photo I took last week in the pottery town Mashiko.

It's a pottery lamp with a price tag of ¥16800. very roughly, that's $170.

Shoninzawa in winter

I came here in August when it was all green, and came up to see what a difference four months makes. Huge.

Microlady

It's supposed to be a toy, but could be a useful photo prop. Made by Takara and sold by Toizarasu Japan. The Microlady comes in about eight different colours, and has four different bust sizes.

Tonight's Full Moon

The sky wasn't actually that black, and the moon wasn't that orange, but it's a 100% crop. f5.6, 1/125, ISO 200

The Fly on Yellow

Feeling good about the K10D... I tried some macro shots today and came across this fly.

New Camera!

I bought the new Pentax K10D on Thursday, the day it was released here in Japan. I'm still learning how to use it, but I haven't been able to take many pictures yet, due to other commitments. But I think it's great!

Tesselated Balloon

One of the Balloons from the 2006 World Championships.
So okay, it was from last Saturday. My camera battery power is getting low, so I haven't been taking pictures.
Anyway, in two days I will be able to pick up my new camera.

Infrarock

I haven't taken any photos for a couple of days, so I edited the colour version of the infrared shot I submitted for the Landscape in Portrait Mode challenge. I made a duplicate layer so I could make the sky a solid blue, otherwise it would have looked banded.

Balloons: modified

One of the events for the World Balloon Championships was held in my worktown this afternoon. he sky was blue but when I was playing around with Curves it turned like this, so I kept it.

I guess the reason for it being in my town is because it's so flat. I saw them this morning, too, as I was driving in. They were in the neighbouring town, which is hilly.

ARTistic?

Just a bit of fun for ART Roflmao over at dpchallenge.
Seedless persimmons, nice!

Forky star-burst seeds

I think this may be in the dandelion family, though it's a fairly tall plant (certainly compared to dandelions!). I have no idea what plant it is, really. Nice, eh.

OOB Cow

I meant to post this last night after I finished editing it for the Out Of Border look. It's one of cows from Cowparade in Tokyo during the summer.

Bee's Eye

I bought a really cheap multi-facet filter yesterday, all of ¥100. Actually, it's a toy. Not sure of the technical name for the equivalent filter because I'm too lazy to go look in the catalogue right now. I just shot off three shots, not even particularly worrying about focus. Just a sample with a hoopy hand-drawn frame.

Balloon

One of the Australian balloons that will be competing in the world championships next week. They were practising and came down in some rice fields near the school I go to on Tuesday afternoons.

Susuki

Susuki, or pampas grass, growing in a fine clump by the side of the road.
Looking into the sun.
Wonderful stuff to photograph when the seeds are fluffing out like this, but this part of the side of the road was a steep slope leading to a ditch.