Some time ago I was out with friends in the city of Katori in Chiba Prefecture entertaining a visitor to Japan. Our guest, Joshua Alexander, was in the country on layover as he made his way back to the States from Korea.

We spent an afternoon wandering around the historic areas of Sawara, a national preservation district in Katori that still retains a good portion of its traditional Japanese design and charm…

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.

The summers in Japan are always hot, humid, and near unbearable. If it weren't for the fact that Japanese summers are also filled with traditional festivals and celebrations, I would be hard pressed to find an excuse to leave the climate controlled comfort of the indoors.

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…

Japanese tea ceremony, known as sadō (茶道), or the Way of Tea, is essentially the ritualized act of preparing and offering green tea. It may not sound like much at first blush, but it is actually something quite interesting to witness and take part in. Every movement and every action in sadō is carefully choreographed, everything from the entrance and exit of the tea master, to the selection of sweets and the mixing of the green tea powder (matcha) into carefully heated water.

I regularly make the time for outings where I may simply go out and casually shoot as I please. It's time that I use to practice and make deliberate attempts at refining my photographic sense and further expanding my abilities. These outings are one means for me to think on my feet, play with various situations and camera settings, as well as experiment with different ideas; all things that assist me in creating and delivering better quality work when it counts.