If you're a parent with kids who attend school, you can surely sympathize with this. It's your son or daughter's big day, either a school play, a recital, a dance, a school festival, etc. You want to make sure you capture your kid on film or on video and do it right. In Japan, the opportunities for parents to take such pictures at official school events are limited to maybe a few times a year at best, and only once at worst. At the very least, there's the undokai, or Sports Day, that big once-a-year formal event that practically all Japanese schools carry out with fanfare every Spring or Autumn.

Whether it's choreographed dance numbers, organized cheering, individual and relay races, acrobatics, tug-of-war, piggy-back wars (chicken fights) or other activities, each class has a chance to shine and the official photographers on hand get a real work out trying to capture each kid at their best. Not to be outdone, the parents are also in on the action. However, some schools have very strict policies about where parents can stand to take photos or videos, and if your kid's school has a strict policy, you may end up quite far away from the field. In that case, you'll be lucky if you can barely make out your kid's face in the photos.

Proud parent, photo enthusiast and Twitter user @shingo_camera decided he was not taking any chances this year:

"Today is Sports Day. I'm just trying to stay low-key here but I hope I can get some cute shots of my daughter."

The contrast between his feigned modesty and his heavy-duty equipment created quite a sensation on Twitter, with nearly 40,000 likes and 18,000 retweets at the time of writing.

In case you didn't see it too well in that tweet, take a better look at the Nikon d750 paired with the impressive AF-S NIKKOR 400mm F2.8G ED VR super-telephoto lens, which he claims to have borrowed from a bird-watching friend for the occasion:

Here are some of the more interesting reactions on Twitter:

---"That equipment is so serious you must have intimidated the other parents around you lol"

---"There's nothing low-key about that!"

---"What a bazooka!"

In all fairness, he also had a monopod with him to support the extra weight. Nevertheless, it was quite an exhausting yet rewarding experience for him.

"The war is over. I'm relieved to have returned from the battlefield!"