Jes Visits! - Monkey Park - Forgotten Pano

Somehow, I forgot to post the pano shot I took that shows the view of Kyoto from the monkey park. Here it is.

Jes Visits! - Monkey Park

On the 20th of December, last year - yes, I'm actually this far behind on posting - we went to the monkey park in Arashiyama, a touristy area near here.

I've been to the park before, but not since the beginning of my stay here.

We bicycled to the entrance, paid the five-dollar admission fee, and... spent ten minutes taking turns in the bathroom. During this time, we noticed a rack of shoes that is apparently there so that you can have something decent to wear to walk in. The idea is that you would use these if you came to the park in high heels or something, not knowing that there are somewhat significant slopes involved that would probably be dangerous in heels. I guess I didn't take a picture of it, but I think it's noteworthy, and pretty nifty.

We walked up to the top, and we made it about halfway before Jes and Roxanne start freaking out over the half-seen monkeys near the top, the better part of 100 meters away. Having already had my chance to do that, they thought I was a bit of a spoilsport:"Stop being so grumpy!" Thanks, Jes, I'll try.

Looks like I took one picture on the way up that came out, which you can see to the left.

Some other photographers were around, and SLRs were in no short supply. I saw at least ten different people with various SLRs, and all but three(if you count Roxanne's D40) were in the advanced (eg, Nikon's D300 - $1,600, body only) or pro (eg, Nikon's D3 - $5,000, body only) range. For reference, all the camera gear that I own costs about $1,500. That's about how much the lens the lady in red is using costs. You can say "It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it", but that's not going to make me want that lens any less.

At left, two random pictures of monkeys being monkeys. I think the second one looks kind of evil, even if he's just chewing a chestnut.

One of the funniest things I saw was a little monkey who angered another one, and was rescued by his mother (I assume). The coolest thing is that they had this really cool interception pickup thing going on. See my amazing MSPaint diagram of the action? It was like that, but with monkeys. Action shot at left. You can just see the Chibi Monkey on the stomach. It was pretty awesome to watch. Here's him and his parental monkeys (again, I assume) taunting the pursuer afterwards.

Right:As dirty as this could be to the right minds - you know who you are - I imagine the picture at right was the end of a similar pursuit.

I think the part that Jes enjoyed the most was, by far, getting to feed the monkeys. The feeling of their hands is really strange, and it's very fun. Having fed them plenty already, I resigned myself to taking pictures. Jes has a knack for never looking at the camera when I'm taking pictures, but I did manage to get a few of her that I rather like. She found this really small monkey that kept getting chased off by others, and she would wander back and forth, feeding him. She fed the others as well, but she really seemed to like chibi monkey. I even got Jes and Roxanne to pose at very nearly the same time, for once. This is by far the best picture I've taken of the two of them.


I'm not certain how this scene came about. I want to think she engineered it and isn't just that lucky, but I don't know how she would go about doing that, so...

On that note, I was barely lucky enough to get this shot, which is one of my favorites.


After that, I even had the luck to get Jes to turn around and for her not to notice I was taking her picture until it was too late for her to put on her dour stop-taking-pictures face. Instead she was wearing her "Squee! Monkeys!" face.

We got to the park a little later than we had hoped and they were closing an hour early, but we managed to get our fill of monkeyness before the monkeys left for the mountain and the parkkeepers rounded us up. I got Jes and Roxanne to pose once again before we left, as you can see from this shot next shot of them by the feeding house. This is composed of six or so pictures.
The first time I was putting these pictures together, I was trying to perform other operations on them while that ran. Bad idea, and the mess at right was the result.

Oh, and there's this slide at the end of the whole thing, if stairs are just not your style. It... didn't work so well. Sure, she may look like she's having way too much fun with the slide, but she was bemoaning the kiddy slide's tiny width.

Now, it's 2:45AM and I've got to get some sleep before I head to Osaka tomorrow.

Post-Processing

Here's a great example of what a little post-processing work can do for you.

I'm sure there are people who disagree, but I think it's pretty easy to tell which picture is more pleasing. If you're going for something other than "generic nature picture", though, I can imagine why you might go with the left-hand picture.

The picture on the left is very cool (as in, blue-ish) because the day was very overcast. Lots of clouds.

Belated Adventuring Pictures

I mentioned yesterday that I had gone to Arashiyama to do some hiking, but never actually found the place. This was due to a couple of reasons, not the least of which were map failure and a late start - 3PM. On the bright side, I totally headed over to the monkey park, where I got some nice pictures of monkeys, a couple people-monkeys, and a few great panoramas I'll stitch together at some point. Anyway, here's some monkey picture spam.

These first two pictures are of the first monkey I saw. I had to switch to my telephoto lens, 'cause he was about thirty feet away and my 18-55mm just wouldn't cut it at the range without serious cropping, to say nothing about bokeh. The DOF came out nicely with the telephoto lens, I think.

The female hanging through the fencing is sitting at the feeding area. They had decent-sized bags of food that you could buy for a dollar and feed to the monkeys by hand. I eventually ended up buying one and I really think it was worth it. I mean, for that sort of thing, I'd expect they'd charge you a bunch of money, just because it's touristy and it's what usually happens with stuff like that. Anyway, I fed most of the bag two or three of them and discovered they have quite sharp claws. I mean, I guess I would too if I didn't clip my fingernails, but it hadn't occurred to me before. One of the weirdest things to me was their size, which ranged from the size of a small cat to a medium-sized dog.

This guy with the munchies at the right was fed an acorn outside so this guy could get a picture of it, and I took the opportunity as well. This was still up by the feeding area, which doubles as an observation area, and you can see the entire city of Kyoto. Well, a lot of city, in any case.

At left is the panorama, though it's not that impressive as it would appear that I didn't line up my shots right, so I had to crop a lot out. I'll dig around later and see if I can get something close to a 360. I took two sets of shots for that, so I should be able to.


Alright, then. This is right after the resting area, where there's a drinking pond that I saw a couple using. This pose was too good not to pass up, and even with how nicely it came out, I got it on accident trying to get a different pose that makes this one look lame. I was too slow on the camera draw, though.

Oh, and monkey snuggles. I saw a couple monkeys sleeping together and the phrase "monkey snuggles" just stuck in my mind. I know a kitten for whom the monkey snuggles pictures are for, but she's not greedy, so everybody gets some monkey snuggles.

Seriously, who can resist the monkey snuggles?


Here's a monkey in a tree. It seemed odd that monkeys are basically thought of as hanging out in trees all the time, but this area had plenty and they all kind of walked around. This guy with the cute expression just watched one of his buddies fall ten feet through a bunch of branches 'cause the branches in another tree snapped. Nothing like hearing a snap followed by a serious of fwooshes as a monkey discovers gravity does indeed apply when you're in a tree.

Right before I took this shot, I had pissed off a monkey apparently. I think I was taking pictures of it cleaning its mate, or maybe just one of its friends. Who knows. In any case, he/she got all pissy and ran at me and growled. Next time I go, I'll be wearing my nice, big desert boots, in the event that a monkey finds my feet to need some gnawing or something.

Segue.

A monkey licking the handrail of a slide. Go figure.
There was a sign posted saying "Don't run down the slide. Please only slide down the slide." I have to wonder who first ran down the slide and broke something.
In any case, the slide was pretty cool. It had about 15 feet of drop and about 20 feet of horizontal displacement. And a monkey licking it.


Here's the last picture from the monkey park, and I felt it suitably ironic that, inside the monkey park was a small human park, where the monkeys could sit and watch the humans play. Is that really irony?