This afternoon I decided to do a little neighborhood walking and concentrate on hitting the Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. A little work with Google maps revealed a part of town particularly crammed solid with them, so I printed out the page and off I went. In about two and a half hours of casual and unhurried waddling I managed to visit four temples and two shrines.

A few pics from the walk:

All photos SMC-A 35-105/3.5

[roentarre]

Mike, they are all very nice. Love the contrast and the surreal mood from these shots

[Fritz]

The contrast and textures are outstanding!

[vievetrick]

All very well done!!!!!

[channeler]

Great shots Mike. I especially like the texture and contrast of lighting on the first.

Paul

[weatherwise2]

I like how your were able to use the light to get the grain of the stone. My favorite was the 1st. One of my landmark trips about 10 years ago was to go around the temples of Kamakura. Still have the photographs from the statues and structures in that beautiful land.

[Snowcat]

I like these shots very much! Amazing IQ and fantastic feeling, like peeking into the ancient legend!

[borno]

Nice pics Mike, I really like the first one That last dude is crazy looking, hard to tell if he's mad or in pain

[lost]

Nice shots! I'll have to see if my dad still has his old pics from when we lived in Okinawa in
'72-3. He used to have a lot of these type of pictures. Of course as a little kid then I didn't care for walking past many of the statues alone

[Workingdog]

I really like the first and third. Great shadows to set the mood.

[dantuyhoa]

Nice series indeed. Great textute !

[Mike Cash]

Thanks, everyone.

The contrast enhancement came from some further experimentation of methods I have described elsewhere using two color layers, inspired by the split-tone process for black and white images.

I was especially pleased with how the first one came out. This is the original, unprocessed version of the photo:

The highlight contrast mask was done with orange and the shadow contrast mask was done with black. I then applied a very light vignette mask, light USM, and bump map to finish it off.

I have to give most credit to the great SMC-A 35-105/3.5 lens, although after about an hour or so I was wishing I had followed my original instinct to leave the overweight son of a gun at home.