School Trip Portrait – Kurashiki, Japan
While I was roaming the historic streets of Kurashiki, I came upon a number of tourists, many were Japanese school kids on a field trip. While I’m all for foreign tourists taking in Japan, it was an extra treat to photograph native Japanese, which seems to give an additional level of authenticity.
Here, I’m guessing that their teacher was photographing his middle school students. As is characteristic with Japanese posing for photos, they are all sporting their “peace” hand gestures. It’s a strange custom, one of many in Japan. Kids and grown-ups, male and female all like their “peace poses”.
Talking cameras for a second, the teacher is using a mirrorless camera, which I think was a Sony, if memory served. It was a student’s camera. You can also see that the teacher had his own, a Canon DSLR. I of course, was using my Olympus mirrorless, the OM-D E-M5 Mark II with the 14-150mm lens. I was shooting wide at 28mm equivalent.
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FYI, in Japan as well as in Korea, V sign means a victory as opposed to peace. Especially, girls like to pose victory for a photo shoot..
Thanks for your visit and comment, The Life.
The history and meaning of the V sign is actually quite complex, as I learned. There is a big write up in Wikipedia about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_sign
From Wikipedia:
In Japan
The V sign, primarily palm-outwards, is very commonly made by Japanese people, especially younger people, when posing for informal photographs, and is known as pīsu sain (ピースサイン, peace sign), or more commonly simply pīsu (ピース, peace). As the name reflects, this dates to the Vietnam War era and anti-war activists, though the precise origin is disputed. The V sign was known in Japan from the post-World War II Allied occupation of Japan, but did not acquire the use in photographs until later.
Thanks for the clarification. That definition from Wikipeida seems very different than I know and people around me both in Japan and Korea. Anyhow, good to know! Thanks again.
I’ll take the V sign over the American duck faced selfie. 🙂