While exploring Niigata and honing my birding photographic skills for my upcoming Hokkaido wildlife photo tour workshop adventure, I always find myself drawn to Yahiko and it’s autumn charms, and a bonus for me its a historical vortex power spot, with it’s Shinto and Buddhist shrine complex. The founding date is lost to history, but even in the Nara period, which spanned the years 710 - 784, the shrine was referred to as "ancient" in a poem called the Man'yōshū. Samurai, artisans, geisha, craftsmen, and Japanese people seeking purification have pilgrimaged to the shrine for guidance for thousands of year, some say even back to the Kofun period, during the time of the ancients. Speaking of the Kofun period, there are over 160,000 Kofun sites, including villages, places of worship, and burial mounds spread across the country, and thousands of them can be found in Niigata. I know the locations of hundreds, and as an amateur historian, I have made it my job to research the origins and learn the history surrounding these fascinating archaeological phenomena. Only a handful of the mounds are officially recognized by the caretakers, the Imperial family, so there is exploring and adventure to be had, and I always rise to the challenge. The landscape around Yahiko is veritably overflowing with Kofun mounds, and as a Niigata resident, I am frequently exploring these areas and making the unknown known.
A large part of my annual Hokkaido Photo Tour is birding photography, so before going to photograph Steller’s Sea Eagles and White-tailed Eagles battling on pack ice, I spend a month honing my birding photographic skills practicing with long lenses, such as the Nikon 800mm f5.6 fixed, and the Sigma 120-300mm f2.8 with a 2x teleconverter. Mainly, I photograph smaller birds such as the Japanese and Grey Wagtail, the Eurasian Tree Sparrow, the Kingfisher, the Little Grebe, the Water Rail, the Daurian Redstart, the Brown-headed Thrush, the Mute Swan, the Rustic Bunting and the Brown-eared Bulbul. Birds that I am particularly interested in are the Bull-headed Shrike - the butcher, the Black Kite, and Mejiro, or Japanese White-eye. Around January, I go out for approximately four days a week and concentrate around waterways and difficult to photograph locations. These birds are fast, and I polish my skills to make sure my photography is on point. I am a multi-themed visual artist, and I’m sure my birder colleagues would agree, birding is a demanding photographic theme. Without practice, anyone would be rusty in field, and that’s fact. My participants join my Hokkaido wildlife photography workshops for an all-inclusive business class experience, so it is my responsibility to provide for them and go above and beyond whenever possible to make their Japan photo tour a once in a lifetime experience, and they take home those once in a lifetime gallery worthy shots, that they hang in their homes and offices. Part of providing that level of service is precision photography, so I spend about three months a year birding. With the myriad themes I have integrated into my 30 plus years of photography experience, three months is about the time I can allot each year for birding photography.
While leading friends, colleagues, or participants on Japan photo tours, I emphasize having the beginner’s mindset. Having the beginner’s mindset means approaching the same location or theme and photographing, as if I am laying eyes on my subject the first time. A camera, for me, is simply an extension of my perspective. While researching Japanese history and culture, I came upon D.T. Suzuki’s teachings and the beginner’s mindset; his philosophy regenerated my perspective back to the moment when I first picked up a camera. I then understood I had been living his teachings since my youth. Mentors guided me from an early age to respect my environment, my surroundings and to treat all sentient and spiritual beings as my family. With out a beginner’s mindset, an adventure chasing the light will only show people with preconceived notions the fallacy of their perceptions and opinions. Authentic Japan is a beautiful and zen filled land where it took me 7-10 years to stop calling myself a visitor, and each time I learned something new, I would blend it into my subconscious, creating a deeper understanding. This practice rewards me sharpening my senses and constantly recalls me to the beginner’s mindset as each day brings me one more learning opportunity. 2021 has been a year of social distancing and few excursions beyond Niigata, but I count myself lucky that my 100-year old kominka home is so close to Yahiko, especially in autumn, so I can enjoy photographing autumn leaves. The season started late, and I am thinking ahead to my Hokkaido Photo Tour, but I’m happy to scout locations around Yahiko and explore around Yahiko with the beginner’s mindset and capture some of Niigata’s breathtaking natural beauty, while uncovering new locations and perspectives while I travel the entire city, especially Yahiko Shrine.
I photograph maples every year, and people ask me, “Don’t you get bored? I mean a maple is a maple, right? Isn’t it the same view every year?” I respond with an emphatic ‘no’. I then begin to explain the significance of each experience filtered through the zen lens. The hues, saturations, contrast, and sharpness are ever-changing and essentially infinite, so my perspective stays fresh. Returning to the zen master D.T. Suzuki’s teaching, he said, “I like zen because everything is zen.” A beginner sees endless possibilities in each theme and pursuit, so that is the mindset I bring to each project I participate in, and I hope for the same from other visual artists that I work with. For my students, however, I understand that the paradoxes created by the Beginner’s Mindset requires time to fully grasp. Many colleagues and fellow photographers feverishly hold onto their pride and feel that because they are “professional” photographers, they know the best expression of a theme and therefore limit the potential of the photographic subject.
Another photographic subject that colleagues and friends ask me about are my numerous trips to Mt. Fuji. For 25 years, I have photographed Mt. Fuji as much as my schedule would allow me to, and every time I see it, I do so with fresh eyes. Most people don’t practice The Beginner’s Mindset or comprehend its value in their daily lives, sadly especially the visual artist. People living next to a well-known photographic subject become desensitized, and the photographic impact seems to decrease in their perceptions because they are exposed to it often. Mt. Fuji is in my backyard, and I have photographed it at least 1,000 times. On each visit to Mt. Fuji, my aspiration is always to return to the wonderment I experienced when I first laid eyes on Japan’s largest active volcano during the golden hour as the sun rose in a pool of crimson and gold, spilling light over the peak, then enveloping magnificent Mt. Fuji. I know that Mt. Fuji will never appear exactly the same due to how the light projected from the sun interacts with the particulate matter at different levels of atmosphere surrounding the earth, from the Exosphere all the way to the Troposphere.
Returning to the siren that is Yahiko Shrine, it calls me and other photographers who visit Niigata on a Japan photo tour, sometimes from hours outside the city and even from international locations to photograph its majesty. From the moment you pass through the torii, or outer temple grounds gate, a sense of calm washes over you. Torii are usually placed at the entrance of Shinto shrines, and Yahiko is no exception. Yahiko’s enormous fire red gate serves as a the separation point from the everyday world and the spiritual, a marker for entering a power spot vortex. Another of Yahiko Shrine’s appeals is the extended path leading to the shrine’s main hall. In any season, the path is an extravaganza of photo worthy locations for you to enjoy. Each November, when the autumn leaves are especially breathtaking, people from all over the world bring their iPhones and handy cameras, while the more serious photographers bring their DSLRs or mirrorless cameras, especially for the annual evening lighting event to capture images and witness the majestic Japanese maples in red, gold, and orange, and after a long day of photography, I like to take our clients to their ryokan, and we can all enjoy a pleasant Japanese authentic meal, and generally before dinner it’s customary to cleans yourself in the healing onsen.