Sakura Matsuri Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

So I was not entirely sure what to expect at the 30th annual Sakura Mastsuri festival. The programs listed throughout the day sounded fun (traditional drumming, cosplay caberet, and the art of Japanese karate to name a few) and I had been to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden before so I thought I would be able to get some beautiful shots of the cherry blossoms in full bloom; however, I did not expect the mob scene that it turned out to be.

The garden was so packed that one could not even hope to dream of getting an isolated shot of a row of trees, or even a single tree for that matter, so I focused on the characters, which turned out to be fantastically interesting:


May be my best shot of the day.


I can not explain to you how adorable this girl was.


This girl sang a bad ass version of the Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood theme song during the caberet.

This is cosplay.

Japan is big into animation and dressing up like your favorite characters from one's favorite series. What reason you ask? Fun, obviously. There are places here in the States that you can experience cosplay, like anime and comic conventions, but this was the first time I had ever experienced it in person.

It seemed like everybody attending had some DSLR on them and throughout the day I heard the rapid cycling of thousands of shutters as the photogs crowded and surrounded the people in costume, but I noted a few Leicas, a Contax, a TLR, a Pentax, a Minolta, and a Zeiss Ikon. I was happy to see that there were still a bunch of film users about.

Proudly I displayed the Bronica SQ-A to represent precision Japanese medium format photography, and let me tell you, every time I use this camera I fall more and more in love with it - even my subjects like being photographed by the elegant hulk!

I got all of these shots because I asked for them. If you want an up close and personal shot with someone do not be afraid to go up and ask the person - the worst they can say is no. There is so much more to gain if you actually engage a person.

I knew there would be lots of color during the day, so Fuji Velvia RVP 50 was the obvious choice, but to tell the truth, I was a little bit worried about the rendering of skin tones because of the proclamations from a certain well known reviewer.

Anxiously, I picked up my film after work yesterday because I was not sure what would develop; whether I had wasted money and such, but soon as I opened that cardboard cube box my heart skipped a beat: the slides were gorgeous. I can wholeheartedly recommend this film for color portraits. Even the clerk who ran the place came by to take a look at them with me. He was also surprised with the brilliant colors and neutral skin tones and even brought the slides over to the light table for a closer look with a lupe.

Once I got home I hurried to scan them, but for some reason (surprisingly) the scanner does not portray the images justly. They all scanned underexposed and I started freaking out that the Bronica's meter was incredibly off and that I would need to get something repaired, but I looked at the slides again today and clearly only a couple were under (most likely by human error). I am not sure why the usually excellent CanoScan 8800F crapped the bed, but maybe it does not handle Velvia well? The scanner always seems to work better with Kodak films; maybe therein lies is the mystery?

I did the best I could to salvage the photos last night, but these turned out less detailed and duller than the real thing.

You can check out the whole Sakura Matsuri set here:

And now you know that I love anime.

flickr photos