I was perhaps a week or two late and off-peak color; thees things tend to be heavily weather-dependent and extremely difficult to time with any degree of reliability. Worse, when you’ve got to travel many thousand kilometres to get there. But I think few will complain. There’s something fundamentally unnatural about such intensely red leaves, but at the same time something hugely enthralling about watching the seasons change and mark the progression of time; more so for somebody who’s spent a large portion of their lives in the tropics, where the only seasons we have are ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ – often in the same day. If you have to find an ‘ideal’ location to view the leaves in Tokyo, I’d point you to Rikyugien and Nezu – the latter of which is much more intimate and a little less manicured/planned, which gives the place a much more natural feel. Being coupled with an exceptionally good cultural museum funded by the eponymous railway mogul Nezu-san and designed by Kengo Kuma doesn’t do any harm, either. MT

This series was shot with a Canon 100D, 24STM and an X1D-50c and 90mm. Post processing was completed using the techniques in the weekly workflow and PS Workflow III. Learn more about capturing the essence of a location with T1: Travel Photography; we also visit the Nezumuseum in How To See Ep.2: Tokyo.

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