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"I shared food and shelter with Masai warriors who gave me the Masai name of Melbo."
I was alone, sleeping in a tent and photographing Kilimanjaro, when I had a completely unexpected encounter near the border between Kenya and Tanzania. One day, a Masai warrior came up to my tent and asked me what I was doing there, and I told him I was taking photos of Kilimanjaro. He told me it was a dangerous place to be because of the elephants and hyenas in the area, and invited me to stay with him and his fellow Masai. That marked the start of my life sharing food and shelter with them.
Their nomadic way of life was completely different from life in Japan. I found it fascinating, with every day bringing new surprises and discoveries. They let me take lots of photos of them. It's customary for the Masai to give a brave man who has killed a lion a special name. They decided to give me such a name - Melbo. However, since I hadn't actually killed a lion, my Masai friends referred to me as Melbo Junior. Coming and going between Kenya and Tanzania while traveling around the foot of Kilimanjaro, I spent an entire year taking photos of landscapes and the local people.
I started using digital cameras in 2002, when I participated in the "A Day in the Life of Africa" project sponsored by Olympus, and photographed Kilimanjaro from the air using an E-20. I was very impressed by the camera's build quality, and by how easy it was to use. Since then, I don't go anywhere without an Olympus digital camera.
This July, as a photo fieldwork lecturer for my alma mater, my student and I took a tour with other tourists to a desert area on the outskirts of Dunhuang, China, along the old Silk Road. By the evening of our first day in the desert, though, other tourist's cameras were rendered useless by the dust, and they seemed quite surprised that my Olympus E-1 and µ770SW continued to function perfectly under the same conditions.
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| Olympus ZUIKO DIGITAL Lenses - A Tradition of Craftsmanship Refined
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