A significant part of Japan's appeal to me has always been its history and how much of it is still clearly visible in the modern era. In large part, this facet is what led me to begin a personal project photographing people involved in the traditional crafts of Japan...

Here we have another addition to a personal project. This time around I met with a woman who practices and teaches Japanese flower arrangement, or ikebana (生け花) as it is known in Japanese.

The location for this set of photos was an old house located on the quiet back streets of an older area of Tokyo. It was a fairly small home situated in the kind of area...

It was a random afternoon that I decided I would like to photograph some surfers out on the coast. I'm not sure what prompted it, but that's what I felt like doing and that's what I set out to do.

It didn't take very long to find a few surfers. As it turns out, some long time acquaintances of my wife are regulars to the waves of Chiba Prefecture's Pacific coast, and they were plenty eager to have some photos done.

A quintessential element of Japan, at least for me, is tatami. It's difficult for me to form in my mind a basic concept of Japan without also visualizing Japanese structures, new and old, that are filled with these simple woven straw mats…

A little while back I traveled into Tokyo to do a portrait shoot with a young aspiring actor named Shinji Yoshiyama. We were basically shooting for the purpose of creating a new set of photos that could be added to our respective portfolios.

We began our day and the shoot inside the architectural marvel that is the Tokyo International Forum…

In the late spring of a previous year, I spent the better part of a day out at a small Shinto shrine in rural Chiba Prefecture working on another addition to my personal project. Once again I was photographing people involved a certain cultural and traditional aspects of Japan. 

On this occasion I was photographing two women who had previously worked at Shinto shrines as miko. Miko, or shrine maidens, as they are called in English, fulfill a number of roles and responsibilities at the larger shrines that employ them…

While not a cultural aspect native to Japan, Buddhism nevertheless has a long history and very deep roots in Japan's culture. So naturally, the purveyors of Buddhism, Buddhist monks, fit well with my current and ongoing project to photograph people who are involved in or connected to the traditions of Japan.

Earlier in the year, in continuing with an ongoing series of portraits focused on the traditions and crafts of Japan, I spent a day with a few women who practice the art of Japanese tea ceremony and worked with them to create various photographs.

In recent months, I have been putting a fair amount of my time and efforts into a personal project in which I'm photographing people involved in some of the traditional arts and cultural trades of Japan. With several of these shoots already completed, and several more in the planning stages, I'm well along my way into creating a new collection of work.

One of the more recent shoots that I've finished was for a practitioner of kendo. Long a traditional activity of Japan, kendo is a type of martial art/sport derived from an extensive history of Japanese swordsmanship…