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"My photographic adventure began with Ansel Adams."
I was a primary school student when I first got my hands on a camera. It was my father’s, but when I was in sixth grade, I bought an Olympus OM-10 with money I’d saved up. As a child, I was simply mad about cameras.
Later on, when I was at high school, I saw some photographs by the American photographer Ansel Adams, and they really impressed me. Although they were monochromes, they had a strong emotional impact.
Driven by a growing desire to take the same kind of photos, I went on to study photography at the Art Department of Nihon University. After graduating, I worked in a photo studio for about two and a half years, and then went to the United States to study Adams’ work in greater depth.
Retracing his footsteps, I spent a year and a half going around the national parks in Utah looking for subjects to shoot. Impressed by the stoic beauty of his work, I, too, shot everything in black & white. For me, Ansel Adams was the starting point of absolutely everything.
After returning to Japan, a friend from university helped me find work taking photos for cookery books and other publications for a while. But it was a part-time thing, and I knew it wouldn't help me become a truly professional photographer. It wasn’t until I turned 28 and got married that I began to think of photography as a career. Fortunately, I did remember the studio techniques I'd learned shooting portraits and food, but I had to put my heart and soul into learning everything else.
I started working with Olympus in 1999 when they asked me to help promote the E-10 at camera shows in Tokyo and Osaka. Following that, I was given the opportunity to give lectures about the E-10 and E-20 at Olympus photography workshops across the country. I've primarily used Olympus cameras ever since. I used one when I was in primary school, and later at university, when I had an OM-2 — it seems there's always been a kind of mysterious bond between Olympus and me.
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