One of the things I appreciate about Japanese culture is all the symbolism that can be found, and this is especially true in the gardens and various memorials that can be found around. For example, it is common to find lots of bamboo planted around shrines. The knocking of the bamboo trees together in the wind is supposed to ward off evil spirits (it does sound like people fighting with sticks!), but the bamboo trees themselves are symbols of good luck and prosperity. To me, these walkways through the bamboo forests were a great opportunity for reflection – and they are fun to photograph to boot, assuming of course you can find some without a bazillion people (there is one bamboo forest in particular that is overly popular). For this particular image, I shot it in infrared, but rather than flipping it completely to black and white, I preferred leaving it in a somewhat desaturated state. After showing this image to a few people, I realized that the way I shot it is a bit disorienting, so if you weren’t sure, this is looking up hill. 😉
Speaking of time to reflect. I hope you all have a nice Memorial Day weekend, but do take time to reflect on the meaning of this holiday.
More next week!
–Dan Thompson