From now until May 22nd, the Fujinohana Monogatari Ofuji Festival is taking place at the Ashikaga Flower Park, famous nationwide for its incredibly vibrant display of wisteria created by 350 trees and over 5,000 garlands densely stacked in shelves and draped down in beautiful curtains wherever visitors go. Most impressive is the 150-year-old massive Ofuji wisteria tree, which needs to be seen to believe.

As we introduced recently in grape Japan, the nighttime illumination is regarded as one of Three Greatest Illuminations in Japan, and shows off the floral wonder in a magnificent way.

One of the visitors who took advantage of this stunning nighttime display was the award-winning Japanese photographer Ryo Tajima (@ryovu), who specializes in flowers and Christmas-themed photorgraphy.

However, thanks to his skills and imagination, he found an unconventional way to photograph them. Instead of capturing the wisteria garlands with the camera relatively parallel to the ground or tilted slightly upwards to focus on the shelves of garlands the way many photos do, he stood directly under them and aimed his camera upwards at a 90-degree angle, creative this breathtaking shot:

Using a SIGMA fisheye lens on his Nikon camera and lowering the ISO as much as possible to avoid overexposure, his shot looks like a stunning purple fireworks display with wisteria garlands radiating outwards from a central point and garlands further away looking like sparks showering down to earth beneath.

The breathtaking photo went viral on Twitter, garnering over 161,000 likes and 23,400 retweets at the time of writing, while eliciting comments such as:

In fact, Tajima is no stranger to the Ashikaga Flower Park. He provided the photos for their official photobook, published by National Geographic, 「ふじのはな物語」 "Tales of Wisteria," which you can purchase on Amazon here (also on Kindle).

To enjoy more of his excellent photography, follow him on Twitter and Instagram.