Blue Pond and Green Ravine

I travelled around the Northern Japan with a close friend of mine for a week.  I just got a new car, so I drove all the way up to Aomori and took a car ferry there, and then, landed in Hakodate. It was a lot of fun.

Yuga Kurita Biei Blue Pond Aoike_4E00036
Nikon D800E + SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM

After landed in Hokkaido, we visited the Lake Toya area and went to Muroran to join the Google+ 4 year anniversary photowalk. But it was heavily raining. I didn’t want to get soaked to take mediocre shots so we quickly left there and headed to Biei.

We eventually had a nice, photographic day in Biei on the third day in Hokkaido. In Biei, we of course visited the famous blue pond. Honestly speaking, I somewhat doubted that the colour was exaggerated by processing but it was actually very blue.

Yuga Kurita A Girl At The Blue Pond_4E00094
Nikon D800E + SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM

At the blue pond, I was surprised by the number of tourists visiting the place. A large parking lot was nearly full and there were dozens of buses parked there. The blue pond is now a major sightseeing spot.

According to what I heard, this pond hadn’t been famous at all and there had been absolutely no tourist until a photo of the pond taken by Kent Shiraishi won a prize in the National Geographic Photo Contest and adopted as a wallpaper by Apple. To put it rhetorically, the blue pond may be remembered as evidence that a photographer can change the world.

Yuga Kurita Green Ravine Dakikaeri Keikoku Akita
Nikon D800E + SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM

The weather report gave us a disappointing forecast that the rest of days in Hokkaido will always be rainy so we left the island earlier and stopped by at the northern Tohoku area. The weather wasn’t great either in the area but we found some nice shooting locations. One of which is the Dakikaeri Ravine (A.K.A. the Green Ravine). I want to visit the place again when the season and weather are right.

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Nikon D800E + SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM


Probably there are a number of colourful ponds and rivers in Japan and they’re just waiting to be found by a right photographer. It is fun to find such places and make them famous like the blue pond, rather than just visiting already famous places and copying famous compositions.

Nikon D800E + SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM