Many experienced photographers know that viewing and photographing the perfect Japan cherry blossoms on a cherry blossom photo workshop, especially the widely cultivated somei yoshino (Prunus yedoensis), can be frustratingly fickle, especially for first time visiting photographers to Japan. Especially so, when these photographers join a run of the mill photo workshop, which have a set time and date for every sakura viewing on their photo workshop, and that schedule cannot be deviated from. Each participant has the same amount of time, and the guide mostly waits by the bus or walks around waving a flag reading from cards about the location participants are visiting, just in case they need to answer any questions. Then when the time is up, the guide like clockwork, quickly collects the stragglers running past the time. People pay thousands of dollars, for a once in a lifetime photo of cherry blossoms, only to go home with average or even subpar photos because the blossoms had already fallen or were not yet in full bloom. If you happen to join a spring cherry blossoms photo workshop as I mentioned above, and you do get gallery hanging images of the perfect cherry blossoms, I suggest you quickly go and buy a lottery, because you will never have a luckier day.
My Japan spring cherry blossoms workshops are crafted with over 25 years experience chasing the perfect cherry blossoms, and I always provide. I have created a 12-day Cherry Blossom Photo Workshop that is a roundtrip journey from the Pacific Ocean side of Japan through the interior of Japan’s main island, Honshu, and then back to Tokyo. This photography cherry blossom workshop of lifetime includes, UNESCO Mt.Fuji and the Fuji five lakes, Hakone, Nagano, Niigata, and Yamanashi among other prefectures and we mainly follow ancient pilgrimage routes through hamlets that seem almost untouched since the Edo period, which include Zen Buddhist sanctuaries, Shinto Shrines and temples, plus the perfect scenes that are synonymous with Japans lovely sumi’e paintings. The pilgrimage routes I follow are ones that samurai, geisha, daimyos, artisans such as Katsushika Hokusai, who is best known for the woodblock print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes the iconic print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. And my annual Japan cherry blossom photo workshop is in the top 3 throughout Japan. And when we d find the perfect blossom, participants and I spend the necessary time to fill our memory cards with gallery quality images before going to the next location on my cross-country sakura photo workshop tour of a lifetime.