Author: travel67

On the bookshelf

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My fascination with photography  began  in 1999 when I arrived in Japan. I bought my first SLR camera, put in some film and started taking pictures. I didn’t have any photographer friends, know of any photography clubs or really have any clear idea of what I was doing. For the first few months my new camera remained in the auto everything mode, but slowly I started experimenting seeing what all the other buttons did and working my way through the camera’s manual. Taking more and more photographs is a great way to improve, but I still didn’t have anyone that could offer me advice on subjects like which lenses to use or the best way to shoot a portrait. It turned out however that there were hundreds of fantastic mentors out there who had distilled their wisdom into books. It didn’t matter that I was living in a snowdrift in northern Japan as those magical brown cardboard boxes from Amazon always managed to get through. And so in a country where I can’t even read the children’s …

New York Times assignment

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  In early September I took photographs of the Okinawan home of Japanese theater producer Amon Miyamoto for The New York Times. It was the first time I had worked for them and both a fascinating but challenging experience. Normally when doing travel photography I am happily working at my own pace and I can wait until the conditions are perfect. On this assignment I had only a couple of hours to shoot five rolls of 220 film and get a decent selection of shots of the house’s interior, exterior and some portraits of Amon Miyamoto. The house was constructed from concrete and had a minimalist design. The photos are now online at the New York Times website you can see them here:   The New York Times – In Okinawa, Staging the View

Connect Magazine assignment

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Most of the articles I have written about Japan have been based on a particular city or region. However recently I did a feature titled “Ultimate Guide: Japan” for CONNECT the business travel magazine of Carlson Wagonlit Travel. It was interesting trying to condense a whole county into just a few pages, but it meant that many great places to visit had to be left unmentioned.  You can see the article here: Ultimate Guide: Japan I also wrote the city guides for Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto and Fukuoka that are later on in the magazine. One of the interesting things I learned while writing the piece was that since my last visit a year ago Osaka’s most famous restaurant Kuiadore has closed down however Kuidaore’s iconic clown figure that used to stand outside the restaurant will continue to live on albeit at a new location outside the C’est la vie SQUARE Nakaza Building.