After traveling 17 hours to Japan and taking a day to rest, I’m finally able to do another post. Traveling really takes it out of me, I don’t know how people do it constantly.
One really cool thing about my wife being Japanese is when we go to Japan we get to go to all the amazing places that your typical traveler doesn’t get to see. I think when most people visit Japan they usually only get the Tokyo and Kyoto experience. But once you leave those big cities, places quickly no longer include English in anything. So building names, restaurant menus and street signs will all mostly only be in Japanese. So not only do you have to learn some words to get by, but you also have to learn the characters so you can read what you’re looking at.
This photo is from Yutoku Inari Shrine. Located in the Southern part of Japan in Kashima City. What’s really cool is this is a rice-farming country. The landscape around here is amazing. Rice fields are surrounded by volcanic mountains covered by lush forests.
I don’t know much about this Shrine other than what I looked up on Wikipedia. It was built sometime around 1688 in the Edo Era style but it’s been continuously updated and expanded.
To process this photo of the Yutoku Inari Shrine I used a couple of techniques. First I shot it HDR with three shots bracketed. Then combined them in Photomatix and did a bunch of Color Efex Pro filters. Finally, I threw it over to  Photoshop where I applied some texture and the High Pass sharpening techniques. If you’re wondering what is, you just take your photo. Duplicate it then on the top layer apply the High Pass filter at around 2%. Then set that layer to overlay and you’re done.
