Maruyama Koen

Cherry blossom season in Japan means enjoying sitting under the cherry blossom trees, so when the season comes around, stalls selling everything you need to enjoy yourself appear in parks. This is of the ones at Maruyama Koen in Kyoto.

Osaka Castle

We're back from our trip to Japan, so here is a very Japanese-looking photo, a little later than promised. I took this at Osaka Castle; not shown is the crowd of other photographers who were also taking photos around this spot. At that time of day this was the best place to take a photo to get back-lighting on the cherry blossoms, but that left the castle itself partly in the shade. If I was really dedicated I would have come earlier and stayed longer to get a better shot, but there was plenty of interesting stuff to do!

While I was taking photographs near this spot a fellow cameraman came up to me and asked to see the photo I had just taken. He said, not bad, but if you frame less tightly you get more of a 3-D feeling in the photo, and showed me his. I felt a sense of accomplishment that my knowledge of Japanese photography jargon is just good enough to understand the phrase "3-D feeling".