Your Japanese word of the week is...

"hikari" 光 which means light or ray (of light).  And this being the Christmas season, festive lights are everywhere.  Such as the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver.  It's really a rather nice garden with a huge variety of plant life and every winter many of the plants are draped in lights to celebrate the holiday season.  This year, me and my dad braved the cold to check it out. 

As you can see, a lot of the setups are quite nice- like this tree with "balls" of LED's hanging off them like ornaments.

And then, posted along the various paths, are hot chocolate shacks and some tents with heaters for a brief respite from the cold.

They also had a neat model train display near the gift shop.  And, being a model, it lends itself to some more tilt-shift heh.....

Also, the new Windows Live Photo Gallery that comes with Windows 7 is actually quite good in terms of minor post processing of photos.  I was quite surprised when I fired it up because it really adds a lot of accessibility to a variety of changes you can make to your photos.

Lastly, being a night scene, I shot a few HDR's so when I get around to compiling and tone mapping them, they'll be up here.  Check back soon and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!