Giant Ginkgo

I figured I should post some of my favorite pictures that I've posted on Flickr here, so that I can talk about them some more, and provide an alternative outlet for them - plus I can show them larger than the small size that Flickr defaults to. So here we go with the first, which really looks better bigger....

First up is this shot from the Sanja Festival, which I attended last year in Tokyo at the Sens�-ji temple . It is a very well attended event, with somewhere near a million people visiting it each year, over a couple of days. When the floats are paraded, the crowd really gathers tightly along the path up to the main temple.

I took up residence in the main temple, trying to get a good look at the parade of the Mikoshis, but I was foiled by the packed crowd around me, which cut off the view. I ended up having to just hold the camera over the crowd, and aim in the general direction of the parade to get this shot... Something I wouldn't have even tried to do with a film camera, considering the high potential failure rate. I ended up with a number of useless shots, and a couple that came out even if they weren't exactly what I was trying to capture. This one, did come out, so it was worth the hustle and hassle.