peaceful tokyo

Couple of weeks ago I've posted few shots from Tokyo - full of architectural curves and lines...
The very same day and in the same Shinjuku district I've walked into a quiet oasis in the middle of hyper busy center of Tokyo - Shinjuku Gyoen Park.

You are required to pay (reasonable) entry fee to enter and chill out from the outside world - but it's definitely worth it. Then you can walk few miles, lay down on your own blanket or amazingly green grass, have a family picnic or - take a few shots. Landscape photography - here I come! ;)

Oh, BTW - all pictures in this post have been processed with HDR enhancement, so if HDR is not your cup of tea... well, wait for something else (yes Branok, I mean you! ;)

Picture below has been taken with my mobile phone camera in the other hand - and is meant as an example to my "how-to" collection. Just to illustrate how can you take steady shots even without a tripod. This tree and the bottom-up view fascinated me, but in a given strong contrast difference of the dark tree and too bright sky, it become clear I would need to take at least three pictures to create HDR shot. While I had my tripod with me, even after few minutes of the manipulation I wasn't able to set up an angle I envisioned to have - so my super wide 11-16mm lens would be "laying" on the tree and all the details and texture of its beautiful "skin" would be leading into an image. Handholding wasn't option either: overcast, late sunset time and "story-telling aperture of f/16" to get the details of the foremost skin and the branches in the background itself required shutter speed between half to two seconds. So I've tried to created tripod of the camera and the lens itself. With live view on I've found an angle which I liked and where the side of the camera and the hood of the lens where touching the tree with a large portion of the surface - at the same time I've pushed hard (imagine trying to squeeze camera into a tree) and while trying not to move a bit I've fired the shutter three times in a row. Voilà - and as you can see on the very first picture in the post - it worked out quite nicely, right?