I am sorry to ignore the season in the middle of Golden Week. Due to the order of publication, I finally got around to uploading this year’s cherry blossom photos after walking around Gotenyama in my previous article.
A small garden has been set up at the foot of the two high-rise towers of Shinagawa-Gotenyama Hills. It is not large, but it is skillfully constructed with a forest surrounding a waterfront at the bottom of a valley, and once inside, you can enjoy the feeling of being in a dense forest, which is hard to believe in the heart of the city. It is one of my favorite spots in the Jonan area where you can enjoy cherry blossoms in spring and autumn leaves in fall.
On this day, I did not go down to the valley to take pictures looking down at the flowers from above because of the limited time I had during my “100 Famous Views of Edo” excursion. The cherry blossoms would have been in full if I had waited one more day, but this level of blooming is also good because it gives the feeling of an “encounter without artifice.”
The skies were so heavy that I wouldn’t be surprised if rain fell at any moment, so I attached the HD DA16-50mm F2.8 ED PLM AW, a heavy all-weather star lens that I usually don’t take out with me, to my K-3III. Thanks to that, the image quality is better than ever (lol).
In that kind of weather, how to take pictures without capturing the dull, cloudy, tasteless white sky is also an important point. In that respect, this garden, where you can look down on the valley from the surroundings, is rather easy to photograph, and it may be that it was unexpectedly perfect for this day.
It is not only about looking down and shooting from a distance. There were also several trees with branches in full bloom that were close by, so I took advantage of the opportunity to get a closer look and take pictures.
Every year I take the same pictures of the same flowers in the same way, with no ingenuity or progress. However, even with such simple reproduction, these spring flowers contribute greatly to the self-satisfaction and mental health of the perpetual beginner.
As we leave, let’s take another shot of the overhead cherry blossoms from above.
With my skill level, no matter how many more pictures I take, they will all be the same work, so I’ll leave it at that. I still have three more cherry blossom-related photos to take that day.
