The Maiko photo sessions, organized by Photo Partner West, an organization regrouping several Photographer Associations of Western Japan, took place on March 21st in a private garden of the Heian Jingu Shrine. Almost 600 photographers attended the three separate sessions featuring five Maiko and one Geiko (geisha).
The sun was strong and the light hard. The extreme contrast made everything quite difficult to control. Instead of the few reflectors handled by the assistants, some diffusors would have been welcome. The garden was not all that large and accommodating a couple of hundreds photographers during each session was a nice demonstration of patience and courtesy. We had to take turn to position ourselves in one of the locations where the young Maiko and the geiko tried their best to pose and answer the various requests given by the few Japanese professional photographers managing the shoot.
Anyway, it has been fun and again a nice experience. Such photo shoots are a great opportunity to freely take photos of the beautiful maiko and geiko, one of Kyoto’s tradition.
Following this photo shoot, the Photo Partner West association organized a photo contest. 1.006 photos were received, and when the results were announced, I was quite surprised to learn that one of my photos had won a special prize, No. 7! Needless to say, I was happy and proud about the results!
The Award Ceremony took place at the Fuji Film Photo Salon in Osaka on July 3rd, and the exhibition will last up to July 7th.
The complete list of the winners as well as the selected photos can be seen on the PPWest web site at: http://www.ppwest.org/maiko_6th/contest/index.html (all in Japanese).
The next such photo session will take place on November 27th at the Chishaku-In Temple in Kyoto.
