Bitten By The Lotus Bug

Lotus Flower/ Shinobazu Pond Tokyo

View Photos (15) Image © 2009 Robert George

Actually this happened some time ago while I was still living in Japan. I really can't remember what brought me to Ueno's Shinobazu Pond but certainly I had a feel for the Lotus flower as I had taken some shots of them while traveling in Bali,Thailand and China. Certainly my interest had at least been tweaked, if not somewhat forgotten as time passed.

Once I reached Shinobazu Pond  in Tokyo's Ueno Park on a hot humid summer day I realized that I had struck gold, as here in front of me were literally hundreds of Lotus Flowers. You could walk around the pond and in many cases literally reach out and touch the Lotus flowers. As I lived in Tokyo it was relatively easy to come back repeatedly and shoot  these beauties at my leisure. Which is important as this really allows you to take your time and shoot them as you like. When I came across them in my other travels I thought they were spectacular, but never really had time to shoot them properly. Now all of a sudden it came to my realization that these things were all over Japan too; duh! Still hoping to get back and shoot these beauties in other parts of Japan, where they can be found on Shrine or Temple grounds which can add an extra dimension to the flowers shots when shot within this context. Sad to think that I had already been in Japan for several years when this realization struck.

Once I honed in on this fact I made many trips over a period of a few years to enjoy and shoot these lovely flowers. I also found out from other like photographers that if you paid to go into Ueno Zoo (adjacent to and part of Shinobazu Pond) you could walk along an elevated wooden walkway through the pond and really get up close and personal with the flowers. This allowed for a lot more creative possibilities as sometimes you couldn't get as close as you wanted on the part of the pond that you had free access to. This definitely added to the experience and I always paid to go into the Zoo area after shooting in the open area for a couple of hours (Zoo didn't open until 9am).  

As many of you know half the battle of shooting these flowers is the fact that they are seasonal and can be quite hard to find. They definitely like hot humid tropical climates. Indeed if one looks they can be found quite easily in Japan,Thailand,China,Bali and throughout Asia. Unless you live there though you can begin to see the problem this creates, you can of course find them at select gardens across the states or in other countries but someone had to make the effort to grow them and they are not that easy to grow. Once I left Japan and returned to California to live you can imagine my glee after a couple of years of living there that I found a relatively large Chinese Lotus Garden about a hour and a half drive from my house. I enjoyed this for several years, and it was great as you could get very close to these flowers and they had about  15 to 20 different varieties. In fact this became one of the highlights of my summer waiting for the flowers to bloom and the many subsequent trips down there every summer. Much to my dismay and many others they have been closed for the last couple of summers. Hopefully they will reopen at some stage.

This last summer my family and I made a return trip to Japan to visit my wife's family and after a couple of weeks at the mother in laws  house we finally headed to the Sister in Laws house which was within an easy train ride to Tokyo and ultimately Ueno's Shinobazu Pond. Although it was a grey wet day (rainy season still on) I crept out of the house just after 5am and headed for the park. After fueling up at Mac Donald's and swearing about the persistent light rain I headed over to the pond to see what the flowers looked like this season( one nice thing about Lotus Flowers is that every season the growth pattern is different). The Lotus flowers looked divine in the soft overcast light and wet with rain, this soon brought a smile to my face and I felt like I was home again. After chatting with a couple of other  photographers I realized that the light rain and overcast day was a blessing and not a curse. In all the times I had shot Lotus Flowers I realized it was always in full bright sun, which brings its own set of headaches as these flowers are highly reflective. This is fine as you can always find ways to shoot them as they can really sparkle and glow in these conditions if shot correctly. The reflectivity can can pose problems for blown highlights of which these flowers have many. In the full cover of clouds and mist this problem is eliminated and allows the flowers full depth of colors and dynamic range to be brought out. One other point it was also quite windy and as everyone knows shooting flowers in these conditions requires a lot of patience, but with this headache also came a blessing. As Lotus petals are large and heavy they twist and contort into crazy shapes when blown about on a blustery day which can make for some unusual shots. So although my time was limited I was able to get to the Park and Zoo twice and was lucky enough to have rain,wind and overcast conditions both times. Hope you enjoy these shots and are lucky enough to live near a pond or come across them in your travels as they are a real delight to photograph. Just remember if the weather is miserable and you have access to some Lotus Flowers, take a chance as I think you'll love the results.

©Robert George

Published on 12/26/09