明治神宮 (Meiji Jingu) – Part 1
This was my first time back to 明治神宮 since New Year’s Day of 1989. It was much warmer and much less crowded on this day. One of these days I’ll head down there early in the morning when there are few people around to really enjoy the atmosphere.
Lest the above photo doesn’t impress (since you can’t tell how large this torii and these trees are without some sort of frame of reference) I’ll also present another angle, taken from six feet off of the ground looking upwards.
The sky was a photographer’s dream on this day. So far the sky in Japan this time of year has been mostly white. Completely blue can get a bit boring too. But this contrast of white and blue with the green of the trees and brown of the structures was heaven sent.
The photo above is of the gate to the inner sanctuary where the Meiji Emperor is enshrined. The picture below is of the inner sanctuary (内拝殿) itself. I didn’t see the sign saying you can’t take pictures of the inner sanctuary until after I snapped this one. Oops. If you look closely (perhaps after clicking on the image to make it larger) you can see the Shinto priest in white.
August 20th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
al – i just arrived in tokyo (for an 18-month assignment) and i am sitting in my hotel reading your blog at 5 in the morning. hope my jet lag ends soon.
vincent
August 20th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Hey Vincent,
I slept until 6 a.m. two mornings in a row now! You’ll be fine soon. Before the jet lag wears off be sure to head down to Tsukiji. You need to get there before 5:45 if you want to see the live auctions.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Beautiful pictures, the combination of white, blue and green is really great.
They are HDR photos, right? Did you take a tripod with you or do you have steady hands? 🙂
August 26th, 2009 at 6:07 am
My hands aren’t so steady, and I don’t have a tripod. They aren’t HDR. The sky was just really, really perfect on this day.
August 26th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Ah, ok, that’s quite amazing. 🙂 I thought that they were HDR because of the halos that are visible around the edges of the sky in some areas.
August 26th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
I haven’t done any HDR since January. Here is the last of my HDRs: http://traveljapanblog.com/wordpress/2009/01/crooked-postcard/ HDR took too much processing time and the results, although sometimes cool looking, appeared too fake and artificial to me.