Me & My Shadow (& My Cellphone)

For some reason, shadows - especially on a day as sunny as today - are exceptionally interesting at UBC's Nitobe Memorial Garden (their Japanese garden tucked away in a back corner of the Vancouver campus). Is it that the air is clearer and the sunlight sharper? Are the mosses and gravels somehow an ideal field for a cast shadow? I have no idea, but the shadows everywhere in the garden are interesting - the shadows of the various shrubs, trimmed and re-ordered to the principles of Japanese gardening; the shadows of the bamboo fences and Japanese ornaments; the shadows of the trees and their branches; the sublime, hypnotic shadows of the leaves blowing in the wind: all are exceptionally interesting, though for anyone with even a slightly narcissistic streak (which I think means everyone), no shadow of course is quite so interesting as one's own. All of the photos below were taken today: all but one at Nitobe garden.