Kamogawa

Today we went into Kyoto, to the confluence of the Kamogawa and Takanogawa rivers. My sons wanted to paddle about in the river and try to catch some fish and I wanted to try taking some photos with  my new 50mm f1.8 lens to see what I could do with the small depth of field. While the boys caught a lot of small freshwater shrimp I saw a Great Egret fishing upstream temporarily gave up on the 50mm lens and switched to the 90-300mm. I am not sure what it has caught in the first shot, it does not look like a fish maybe a crayfish.

The Egret continued up and down the river seemingly oblivious to all the people paddling nearby.

After the Egret had gone I did try a shot with the 50mm lens of the stepping stones across the river. Several of these are turlte shaped.

When we were having lunch, one of the many pigeons stopped nearby on a bench.

Sports Day

Saturday was sports day at my son's school and as previous years it was baking hot with bright sunshine. With so much direct sunlight hand holding the camera with the 300mm lens was no problem as there was enough light for a fast shutter speeds even at ISO 100. But it does make for some harsh shadows and sitting in the sun all day was not much fun. It must have been worse for the children since they had no shade at all.

  The close up shots worked much better than I expected.

 

Here is an overview of the ground

Rice Fields

The rice in the fields near the station where I catch the train every morning is getting close to being ready to harvest. I have been wanting to get some shots of the large expanse of green so took advantage of the national holiday to take the following  pictures. I am not very happpy with them, they are not so interesting. There were not really any interesting backgrounds near the fields to give some interest to the photos.

Cosmos FLowers

We went on a short cycle ride today and spotted these cosmos flowers growing among the rice fields.

Climbing Katsuragi-san

Mount Katsuragi is a small mountain in the chain that divides Nara and Osaka prefectures. There is a ropeway almost to the top but we chose to climb up using the path through the wooded sides of the mountain.
Since most vistors seemed to be using the ropeway to get to the top there were not so many hikers on the path.

The path winds its way up the mountain beside a small stream with the occasional waterfall. Since this is Japan and this is a developed mountain complete with guest house on the top, there are also frequent concrete weirs and wooden bridges.