In the 1880s at a time when most Europeans were denied access to the Japanese interior an Italian photographer managed to capture many images of Old Japan. These were then beautifully and realistically hand painted and serve as a remarkable record of a world long since disappeared.
Suggested by Presurfer, the site has several pictures and and a bio. Here is a wiki, and here are more pictures.
I found two downloads the photographers among you might like. Both are open source, stable, semi large, documented and petty easy to download. Sourceforge mirrors both as do several University sites. In the case of CHDK, Canon helps support the project and it doesn't void the warranty.
CHDK (Canon Hacker's Development Kit) is for several of the Canon point and shoot cameras. Its development is documented here. It resides on your SD card and only comes out to play if you call it up. It will allow you to save RAW files, extend your video time and have tighter control over your metering functions. If you don't enable it, your camera acts in its normal fashon, Point...Shoot.
GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program is what the name suggests, a photoshop style tool. If you download it, be sure to get the documentation as it's not very intuitive unless you've worked with similar programs. The development path and an overview are here
A trained and discriminatory eye is necessary, but hey, free tools are gravy.
