While exploring a Japanese garden on my vacation in Florida, I came across what to me looked like a Japanese bamboo waterfall. After taking a few shots with my Leica X1, I was able to focus directly on the spot of the bamboo where the water poured into it. In my post processing I felt that the green foliage and pennies all over the ground was a distraction so I went the black and white route and adjusted the tonality, contrast and exposure to my liking in Lightroom.

Once I finished editing this photo, I was interested in what this really was because I knew it was no ordinary man-made waterfall or fountain, and I was right. After doing some research and going through several images across the internet, I finally discovered that this is a Shishi Odoshi, or “Deer Chaser”. It’s design consists of a bamboo arm that fills up with water and then after a few minutes swings downward striking a stone basin and rises back up to repeat. The function of it was to create a distinct resonance that would startle any animals near the garden when the bamboo arm collided with the stone on the ground.