Visiting Fushimi Inari Taisha

I’ve been to Fushimi Inari Taisha in south east Kyoto several times. I took one of my most popular images there, a simple geometric photograph of the orange torii gates winding up the mountain.

Fushimi Inari Shrine (Pentax 67II Film Camera)

On my recent trip I wanted to get some new images, this time showing a Japanese person visiting the shrine. Of course I could just photograph tourists milling around, but I decided to be a little more proactive. I met up with model Mari and photographer Keith at Kyoto Station, and we took the local train to Fushimi Inari.

Visiting Fushimi Inari Shrine

It was fortunate I wasn’t even attempting a shot similar to the one I’d taken before because the shrine was packed with people. Luckily we could find gaps in the crowds to get some decent images. The image stabilization function on the new 90mm lens added an extra bit of stability which was useful, and the wide aperture gave a nice limited depth of field in the portraits.

Visiting Fushimi Inari Shrine

Fushimi Inari shrine is dedicated to a fox god so there are numerous fox statues, fox shaped ema (prayer tablets), and of course souvenirs. The ema were particularly interesting as visitors were able to sketch features on the fox heads. Clearly some foxes had been drawn by anime fans.