After the National Park, I decided to take a little break. Big Mac’s were on sale for some kind of 40th year anniversary promotion, so I ate at McDonald’s for lunch. Not the healthiest, but it was close and I would be able to get back to the showroom fairly quickly. Had a nice 40 minute break and then I went back to get another lens. Back in November, a 35mm lens came out. It is currently one of the cheapest lenses they make and I wanted to try it out. It was funny because the guy at the table was telling me “how bad it was, would I like this better lens, would I like to try this other lens, are you sure you want this one?” It was very funny. But I assured him that I’ve been wanting to try this lens out and see what it can do.
Decided to go to Shinjuku’s Central Park. It is a small park. Populated by homeless people. It is actually quite a depressing place. But I figured there might be some interesting stuff to photograph over here. I came to this park back in November as well. Then there were guys doing tricks on bicycles. I reasoned they might be there and I could get pictures of them jumping up on their bikes in the air or something.
On my way to the park I took some photos of the buildingscape of Shinjuku.
Once I got into the park I just walked around. There were tons of homeless people, but taking pictures of homeless is sort of unethical in my opinion. There were instead tons of flowers in bloom though.
As I walked around I even stumbled upon a shrine in the back of the park.
I love koma inu. These are statues and carvings of koma inu which are guardian lion dogs at most Shinto shrines and some Buddhist temples. Whenever I got to a shrine I always take pictures of these dogs.
As I was making my way around the park I noticed there was a 50 year old couple walking around the park with a big cooler. They were handing out rice balls to all the homeless in the park. I thought that was rather nice of them. Then my mind suddenly turned to murder and intrigue. What if this old couple was handing out rice balls with poison in them? What if tomorrow morning I see the papers saying “Central Park Homeless All Murdered!”? I was reminded of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The premise of the play was two old ladies poison lonely old men because they feel sad for men, being better off dead. What if this old couple felt same way? I thought I should get a picture of this couple for proof and helping the police track down the killers. But I didn’t take a picture. Instead I realized I was crazy and decided to go find something to photograph.
There were some people practicing dancing. There was a guy practicing a juggling/ball balancing routine. Then there was a skateboarder. I didn’t feel comfortable asking the girls if I could take pictures of them dancing. Also their dancing wasn’t that interesting. Not many tricks and stuff. I thought the most interesting person was the skateboarder and decided to ask him if I could photograph him. He said sure and I thought I got some cool pictures.
For the last image I tried getting on the ground and pointing the camera up as he skated by. I thought it came out pretty good. Would definitely like to try photographing other sports as well. Afterwards we talked for about a half hour. Then I realized the time and had to go return the lens. Too bad cause I would have like to have hanged out a little longer.
