Tokyo skyline
Mori Tower, Roppongi Hills
I've often wondered when looking at panoramas and epic vistas, do they really convey a sense of scale to the viewer, especially an unfamiliar scene. My own thoughts are they do not unless there are recognisable points of reference that we might personally know to bridge that void.
To re-iterate my point, we've all seen images of the Grand Canyon, but to my mind these never live up to the reality, after all you are looking at a limited image size, maybe in a book, magazine or computer screen. Nothing ever conveys the scale until you visit these places for yourself and I've been lucky enough to stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon as well as on top of Uluru and wonder at my own insignificance within those landscapes, so I feel this will have little effect on most of you but let me try and explain.
My lasting impression of Tokyo is the overwhelming size of this city and that nearly 40m people can function and live in harmony there. I had hoped that the view from the Skytree would convey this point but as I mentioned in a previous post a decent panorama is hard to shoot on account of the windows and framework.
However, the Sky Deck at Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills does its damndest to compensate and is by far the better view in my opinion. This was originally an 8 frame panorama that actually stitched together very well but I've cut it down to just 6. The view is just the north west quadrant of Tokyo with the dominant and most recognisable structure in the city - the Tokyo Tower (a communication and observation tower painted white and international orange) in the middle. However, if you look to the left on the skyline you can make out the Skytree - the second tallest structure in the world, second only to the Burj Khalifa. To give you some sense of scale, from where I am standing on top of the Mori Tower the Tokyo Tower is 1.5km away and from there to the Skytree is another 8.2km measured directly. Both these structures are deemed to be within the inner city of Tokyo but the accompanying image will hopefully give you an idea of just how big metropolitan Tokyo is.
Tokyo skyline
Mori Tower, Roppongi Hills
I've often wondered when looking at panoramas and epic vistas, do they really convey a sense of scale to the viewer, especially an unfamiliar scene. My own thoughts are they do not unless there are recognisable points of reference that we might personally know to bridge that void.
To re-iterate my point, we've all seen images of the Grand Canyon, but to my mind these never live up to the reality, after all you are looking at a limited image size, maybe in a book, magazine or computer screen. Nothing ever conveys the scale until you visit these places for yourself and I've been lucky enough to stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon as well as on top of Uluru and wonder at my own insignificance within those landscapes, so I feel this will have little effect on most of you but let me try and explain.
My lasting impression of Tokyo is the overwhelming size of this city and that nearly 40m people can function and live in harmony there. I had hoped that the view from the Skytree would convey this point but as I mentioned in a previous post a decent panorama is hard to shoot on account of the windows and framework.
However, the Sky Deck at Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills does its damndest to compensate and is by far the better view in my opinion. This was originally an 8 frame panorama that actually stitched together very well but I've cut it down to just 6. The view is just the north west quadrant of Tokyo with the dominant and most recognisable structure in the city - the Tokyo Tower (a communication and observation tower painted white and international orange) in the middle. However, if you look to the left on the skyline you can make out the Skytree - the second tallest structure in the world, second only to the Burj Khalifa. To give you some sense of scale, from where I am standing on top of the Mori Tower the Tokyo Tower is 1.5km away and from there to the Skytree is another 8.2km measured directly. Both these structures are deemed to be within the inner city of Tokyo but the accompanying image will hopefully give you an idea of just how big metropolitan Tokyo is.