Last Saturday, a group of us gathered together with the challenge of shooting each of the stations along the JR Yamanote line.  We were each assigned a station (or, in the case of larger stations, 2 or more people to a station) and had to upload a single photo to Google+ at 13:30, 14:00, 15:00, and 16:00.

There was no specific theme, our only direction was to try and capture the image and feel of each station.

It was hard!

It was extremely challenging because how do you capture the "feel" of a place?  Especially considering the time limitations – I honestly felt that most of my shots were junk, and despaired of getting anything interesting to post.  However… despite my frustration… I really enjoyed it.  It made me realize my limitations, and pushed me to try to overcome them.  

I can't say that I was particularly successful, but I still feel that it was a great learning experience.  🙂

For those who are not familiar with Ikebukuro station – it is a massively sprawling area.  In fact, I only covered the east side.  This presented another challenge for me, because the east of Ikebukuro is the more… "seedy"/grungy part of the station (the west side of Ikebukuro is much prettier).   I wanted my shots to try to capture some of the oddness and grubbiness of my assigned area, while still being tasteful.

You can see the individual shots I took on the day if you browse through my previous posts, while the 5 in this album are more of timeline of our day, starting at Yurakucho, and ending at Ikebukuro.

Thanks to +Takahiro Yamamoto and #Nikon  for organizing this – it was a great experience!  🙂

#YamanotePW  #PW_Ikebukuro ?