While driving through the relatively remote mountains of northern Kiryu I turned a corner and suddenly found myself about to run over a group of four photographers standing near the side of the road and all very intently pointing their cameras at the same subject.
Now, I am always the last person to know when anything interesting is going on, so I figured they must know something I was missing out on. I stopped to ask what was going on and learned that they were out in search of something to photograph for an upcoming photo exhibition in a neighboring town.
They were all jostling and shoving to get a shot at the exact same あじさい flower (and every last one of them shooting into the sun, no less). I watched with amusement as they quite literally elbowed each other trying to get the exact same shot of the exact same subject. Standing there surrounded by mile upon mile of The Great Outdoors and nothing would do them but to all go out together and all come home with the exact same photo.
My thought was that they should have sent one person out to get the photo while the other three sat somewhere warm sipping tea and munching cookies. The guy who got the photo could make three extra prints and they could all four submit identical photos to the exhibition.
