Every year, during the beautiful flower season from spring to early summer, there tends to be a significant time lag between the changing seasons and the timing of my articles. I believe there are two reasons for this.
The first is a physical factor: my enthusiasm for photography increases, leading to a larger volume of photos, which in turn delays publication. The second is psychological: the blooming cycle of flowers like plum blossoms, peach blossoms, white magnolias, cherry blossoms, wisteria, and azaleas is so rapid that even a slight delay in capturing their peak bloom makes the photos feel less vibrant.
With that lengthy preamble as an excuse, I will now share photos taken half a month ago.
I visited Kameido Tenjin Shrine in Koto Ward, Tokyo. Here’s a photo that immediately sets the scene.
The grounds of Kameido Tenjin are surrounded by a moat and wisteria trellises (the area shown in this photo is about half of the grounds), and although the wisteria was in bloom, it was still a few days too early to be at its peak. Nevertheless, as one of Tokyo’s most famous spots, there were quite a few people there.
The main hall was under renovation, so it wasn’t ideal for photography, and I spent a lot of time trying to find a composition that didn’t include it. The equipment I brought was the LUMIX G9PROII and Leica DG12-60mm, Leica DG50-200mm, prioritizing portability while also preparing for the possibility of using a telephoto lens.
Many photographers were taking photos, so this must be a standard composition within the temple grounds. The scene of wisteria flowers and the drum bridge.
The roof of the shrine, seen through wisteria flowers from the top of the drum bridge in the shrine grounds.
A 50-200mm lens came in handy here.
Instead of the wisteria, I focused on the azaleas that were already in bloom.
There was a corner where many people were gathering with their smartphones to take pictures. When I got closer, I saw that they were trying to take pictures with the Tokyo Skytree in the background. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s what they’re doing,’ and joined in to take a picture too.
Kameido Tenjin is also famous for its plum blossoms, then some of the plum trees had cute little fruits on them in this season.
So, this was my second visit to Kameido Tenjin (I came here before to photograph plum blossoms) to photograph wisteria flowers.
I didn’t get any great photos, but I’m pretty satisfied with how the colors of the wisteria flowers turned out in the photos I did manage to take. Based on my experience, reproducing the purple color of wisteria flowers can be quite challenging, but using the LUMIX camera, lens, and PhotoLab for RAW processing, the colors turned out almost exactly as I remembered them. Well done!
The article ended up being quite long, but to wrap things up, here’s one photo taken outside the shrine grounds at Tenjin-sha, at the nearby famous sweets shop “Funabashi-ya.”
Here’s another stunning wisteria trellis. As expected of a popular spot, there’s a long line out front, but being able to admire such a beautiful wisteria trellis in this season makes the wait worthwhile, I thought.
I tried to wrap it up nicely, but no one was looking at the flowers.
