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"To photograph animals throughout their lifecycle, I moved my family to Africa."
On our way home from the Galapagos Islands, my father and I stopped off in Los Angeles. Before the trip, I'd been more excited about visiting Los Angeles than the Galapagos, but afterwards, I felt quite the opposite. I found the big city with its buildings and other manmade structures oppressive. It was as though the spouting Galapagos Blowhole had blown the city clean out of me. That was when I knew I wanted to be a wildlife photographer.
After graduating from university, I worked at my father's studio for a while. Then, when I was 26, a collection of coastline photos entitled "Letters from the Sea" that had been serialized in a graphic magazine for three years won the Kimura Ihei Award. This is basically what gave me the chance to become independent as a photographer.
After that, I traveled all over the world in search of wildlife. While continuously watching nature's endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, I became fascinated by the idea of lifecycles and the role of various animals in the food chain. So at the age of 32, I started thinking about staying in one location to photograph animal lifecycles and food chains in their entirety. And if you spread open a map of the world and look for a place that enables you to do that, surely one of the best is Africa's Serengeti National Park.
I was already very interested in Africa, and there aren't many other places on Earth where you can observe the food chain so clearly. It has a wide variety of large mammals, including both herbivores and carnivores, all in the same place. So with the idea of capturing this cycle of life and death as a dynamic narrative - a sort of visual poem or illustrated picture scroll - I moved to the area with my family. The end result was the collection of photos entitled "Senrengeti: Natural Order on the African Plain."
When I take wildlife photos, I don't just consider the ecology or rarity of a creature. I'm also very conscious of the surrounding atmosphere, wind, and light. Light is particularly important, of course. It has to feel just right for the image to work. Even amid clouds and rain, there is sometimes a delicate light like a gift from heaven, and I try to capture it whenever I can.
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