[Ed. Note: This article is part of a special section entitled “Japan-Adjacent: In Praise of Creative Expression within Japan’s Shadow,” edited by Laura Hein.]
Laura Hein: Bruce, how do you think about your choices as a photographer and how do your many decades of interaction with Japanese society affect those choices?
Well, those are big questions whose answers will become clear, I hope, over the course of the essay. I’d like to start off with something more manageable, by describing what I hoped to achieve here and how I approached the task. My goals were, in order of importance, to share some of my favorite photographs, provide commentary on them, and describe how my hobby relates (or does not relate) to my professional activities.
Composing the essay itself was relatively easy. This is my first time to write about photography in a public forum, but over the years I have spent a great deal of time thinking about it. As a result, there were a lot of things just waiting to be said—low hanging fruit, so to speak.
But choosing the photographs to showcase turned out to be quite difficult, mostly because there were so many candidates; even my “short-listed” catalogue of favorites contains over 20,000 images.1 I have rated all of them on a scale of one to five, so my initial thought was to look at just the “fives” and pick the best of those. But that proved impractical because there were still nearly a thousand. My next idea was to identify a few favorite subjects and choose the best photo in each category. This seemed like an easy solution because in addition to rating all my photographs, I also label them with keywords. But it was also a nonstarter because there were just too many categories. I finally realized that many of my favorite images were taken at just a few locations, places for which I had a special affinity. Although there were still many five-star images from each, the number was manageable this time.
In the end, I chose twenty photos from eight locations, all in Japan. In what follows, I have arranged the photos and accompanying descriptions in order of increasing distance from my house. Locations relatively close to home are places I have been to countless times. As a result, I know exactly what to expect: where to take the best photos of what, in which season and time of day. Relatively distant locations are places I go to infrequently but still know well and treasure. Incidentally, arranging the locations in order of distance satisfies the strong sense of place that also informs my work as a historian. Both in my research on the early history of Kyushu Island and in that on Japan’s environmental history, I have always been keenly aware of the influence of geography on historical events and processes. One needs to know a place intimately to do justice to its history—or, perhaps, to make the most of its photographic potential.
LH: Could we pause here to acknowledge that you have just argued that deep knowledge about a specific geographic location—including familiarity with it through the rhythms of the seasons, across many years, is the way to get consistently beautiful images. One can get randomly lucky now and again, of course, but you are making the case that the intimate engagement that comes from showing up over the long haul and carefully observing one specific spot on the globe is the best path to capturing and showing others what is special about that place. Sounds a lot like the way talent is imagined in Japan, which is much more about perseverance and less about either self-confidence or an innate gift than is usually imagined in the USA.
As will soon become apparent, most of my favorite images fall into the category of nature photography. My fondness for this genre stems from my life experiences. I began taking photographs when I was a teenager living in Oregon, USA, a state justly known for its natural beauty. My mother, a physician, was an excellent amateur photographer who taught me how to take, develop, and print photos. She also collected photographs, and the walls of our house were decorated with original prints by Ansel Adams and other masters, which also stimulated my interest in photography and influenced my tastes. Later in life I also learned much from my mother’s younger brother, likewise an avid photographer. My uncle was a professor of accounting at the University of Washington in Seattle; he specialized in photos of its beautiful campus, often with the iconic Mt. Rainier (known to local Japanese Americans as “Tacoma Fuji,” after the nearby city of Tacoma) in the background.
Dōnosaka Park, 300 m
I currently live in Machida City, Tokyo. Machida is located 30 km southwest of Shinjuku in central Tokyo, via the Odakyū Electric Railway, and a similar distance west of downtown Yokohama, via the Japan Railways Yokohama Line. The city is built up near the intersection of the two railway lines at Machida Station, but is otherwise suburban, dominated by apartment buildings, houses, and small businesses. The area constituting Machida today was rural for most of Japan’s history. In the postwar period, it began to function as a “bedtown” for workers commuting to jobs in downtown Tokyo; it was incorporated as a city in 1958, the year I was born. Machida’s population in 2024 was about 400,000: quite a bit larger than Salem or Eugene (two places I lived in Oregon, both now with around 175,000 people) but only half the size of Seattle or San Francisco (750,000 and 800,000, respectively).
Dōnosaka Park is a five-minute walk from my house in eastern Machida, near the border with Yokohama. The park is quite small, occupying just one city block. The chief features are trees, a grass lawn (quite uncommon in Japan), and two small wooden structures resembling teahouses, where park visitors can rest. The trees include plums—more accurately, Japanese Apricots (Prunus mume), which bloom every year in February through early March. When the flowers come out, they are visited by birds seeking nectar. The most striking species is the Japanese White-eye (Zosterops japonicus). (The reason for the name should be evident from the picture.) Although quite common, White-eyes move around quickly, often behind twigs or blossoms, making it difficult to obtain unobscured, well-focused images. In practice, the only way to get good pictures is to take a large number in rapid bursts and hope that at least some of them turn out well. The first image presented here is one that did. It was taken in early March 2022.
LH: were you thinking at all about the genre of birds-and-flowers paintings when you took this series of photos? Or other East Asian visual art conventions?
Actually, until you mentioned it, I failed to notice that this photograph (like countless others I have taken at Dōnosaka Park and elsewhere) was evocative of the birds-and-flowers genre. Presumably I had such images in the back of my mind and replicated them without thinking when the opportunity arose. (I imagine that many instances of plagiarism in scholarship as well as art arise in the same way.) In my defense, in the right season and at the right place, birds and flowers are quite noticeable in Japan and juxtaposing them is an obvious artistic choice. Two pretty things are often better than one, and the difficulty of capturing an aesthetically pleasing, technically impeccable combination also adds a lot of value, in my view. The theme of difficulty of execution contributing to perceived value will appear repeatedly in the remainder of this essay.
Before leaving this location, let me note that some of my photos from Dōnosaka Park stretch the boundaries of the elegant birds-and-flowers tradition. This one, from April 2020, is of Japanese Sparrowhawks (Accipiter gularis) mating. The female, underneath, clutches the bloody carcass of a smaller bird in her talons. For three consecutive years, 2019 through 2021, a female sparrowhawk (I presume the same one) came to Dōnosaka to nest. I obtained many good photographs, including others featuring half-consumed prey, but this was the only occasion when I was able to document sparrowhawk sex. The act was over so quickly that I doubted my eyes until I saw the result on my computer monitor.
LH: There is so much drama here! Death and sex both! And the fierce look on her face is extraordinary too—what, we wonder, is she thinking about right now? His wings and stance make him look like a king in full regalia. These are beings with complex lives. A poet or a novelist could write an opus starting from this image alone. You have given us a peek into an entire world here.
Onda River, 400 m
Onda River is a minor waterway located about five minutes from my house by bicycle—just on the other side of Dōnosaka Park, in fact. I began going there in earnest during the pandemic, when I worked exclusively from home. Biking to the river to shoot photos for thirty minutes or an hour was not only good exercise but also added a welcome element of variety to my day. My routine was, and is, as follows: I put a camera with a big zoom lens in my backpack, hop on my bicycle, and ride up and down on the path that borders the river. While doing so I keep an eye out for waterbirds, and if I see one that looks promising, I stop to photograph it—not always successfully; all too often, the intended target will fly away in the time it takes me to dismount, take off the pack, pull out the camera, and aim it.
Onda River is home to various species of birds. My favorite is the exquisitely colored Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis). But I have better kingfisher photos from the next location, so here I will introduce the Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea), a species somewhat uncommon at Onda River. I have chosen two photos.
The first, from 2021, is of two herons seemingly fighting over territory. I don’t know whether that’s what they were really doing or whether something else was going on, but I have never seen this behavior before or since.
LH: One of the things that I find most striking about your images of individual birds is that they simultaneously invite and reject speculation about their intentions and states of mind. One part of me thinks it would be fun to invent dialogue for these two characters as if they were humans, while another part is admiring their liveliness as animate beings who are not human, and yet a third part of my brain just wants to look at the shapes and the sense of arrested motion in the frame. Now I realize that you were doing something similar at the time and once again, being guided by a long trajectory of careful observation. Is your private definition of a “good picture” one that sets off and sustains several simultaneous thought trajectories?
Yes, that’s certainly part of it. To me, a good photo should have depth, by which I mean not depth of field but of content. Does the image have enough to “say” to viewers that they will return again and again and notice something different each time?
The second picture is of a Grey Heron in flight, just about to alight on the surface of the river. The original photo was in color, but it looks a lot better in black and white, so that’s how I present it here. Birds in flight are both difficult to focus on and difficult to frame in the camera’s viewfinder. The first problem is somewhat alleviated by the high-performance autofocus found on recent mirrorless cameras. The second can be mitigated by shooting wide and cropping the result in post-processing. (To “post-process” an image means to improve it by cropping or adjusting contrast, saturation, etc.) Unfortunately, in the field I usually forget and shoot at the greatest possible magnification, resulting in poorly framed photos.
Probably this is as good a place as any to say something about equipment. Over the years, my lineup has changed considerably, but the current one consists of a mirrorless camera, two DSLRs, three fixed-lens compact cameras, and an iPhone. (I know that sounds like a lot, but each device has its own particular strengths and weaknesses.) All but the iPhone and one of the compact cameras (a Sony) are Nikons, as are most of the lenses I use with the mirrorless camera and the DSLRs. (One exception is my favorite birding lens, an old 50–500 mm Sigma.) Many people have strong opinions about the relative merits of one camera brand as opposed to another. I have no desire to enter that debate here, but I have been using Nikon cameras for many years, am familiar and comfortable with their operation, and have no intention of switching.
Before leaving Onda River, let me note that it is a good place to photograph not only birds but also flowers and insects. The banks of the river are lined with Yoshino Cherries, which bloom in late March, attracting hordes of people. Although photo opportunities abound, I usually stay away at that time, mostly because it is difficult to ride a bicycle without hitting someone. In September and October there are Cosmos flowers, which attract insects such as the Asian Swallowtail (Papilio xuthus) and the Pellucid Hawk Moth (Cephonodes hylas), captured, respectively, in September 2023 and October 2024. As is the case with birds, it is difficult to take photographs of insects in flight. In fact, it is even more difficult: birds tend to fly predictably in a straight line, whereas insects flit around at random. The best photographic strategy, however, is the same: shoot in bursts and hope for a good result.
LH: So for you a good photograph seems to be one that captures movement and encodes narrative drama, and also required technical skill to pull off. What else do you think about?
One of my primary goals is always to create beautiful images. The Onda River location provides eloquent testimony that whatever beauty is found in the photographs is indeed created, and not just captured or recorded. Not to put too fine a point on it, Onda River is remarkably ugly for about fifty weeks of the year. (The exception comes in late March, when the cherries are in bloom.) The river’s banks, and in places the riverbed itself, are enclosed in concrete. Flotsam and jetsam abound and will mar almost any wide-angle photograph. For photographs of birds, insects, or flowers, this is not such a problem because ideally the subject fills a good portion of the frame, making it relatively easy to exclude garbage. But by doing so, my photographs create an unwarranted illusion of beauty. To that extent, they are “fake.”
LH: Does this way of thinking about what you are doing bother you? It is not that it is fake to you—so this concern is about the impression you leave with the viewer. And so I’m not sure I agree. A professional artist I have written about extensively, Tomiyama Taeko, early in her career made a special point of painting slag heaps and blasted mine landscapes in order to render beautiful spaces that were generally considered ugly. In other words, she saw this transmutation as an act of reparation rather than fakery. One could also say that you are giving your viewers the chance to enjoy something through your actions that they most likely would have missed if they were actually at the spot where you snapped the shutter because it is so easy to be distracted by the garbage strewn around.
You are correct and, no, it doesn’t bother me at all. Any image reflects the creator’s intent just as much as, or even more than, what is objectively “there.”
Yakushiike Park, 6 km
Yakushiike Park is also located in Machida, not too far from J. F. Oberlin University, where I taught from 1989 to 2019. While employed there, I would often drive to the park to take pictures, either in the morning on the way to school, or in the late afternoon on the way home. Just as at Onda River, the main attractions are birds, flowers, and insects. Here I will limit the discussion to birds.
First are two more photos of Grey Herons. While at Onda River these birds are only seen from a distance, at Yakushiike Park one can sometimes get very close, especially when the herons are searching for prey in one of the park’s several ponds. The first photograph, from May 2019, was taken at such close quarters that the bird’s eye seems to bulge out from its head. I felt grateful that the heron allowed me to photograph it at such proximity; more typically, birds fly away when they sense movement or see someone with a big lens pointed at them. The second photo, from April 2021, is of a heron that has just captured a Louisiana Crayfish (Procambarus clarkii), an invasive species that is very common in the ponds at Yakushiike Park. The action was over in an instant, but thanks to my strategy of shooting in bursts I was able to capture the decisive moment.
LH: I love this one because the bird just seems to exude satisfaction! I doubt the crayfish is enjoying the moment, but my sympathies are already captured by the heron!
Next is the abovementioned Common Kingfisher. True to its name, this bird is indeed fairly common, but many people have never seen one because kingfishers are small, fast, and avoid humans. These traits also make them difficult to photograph. If I spend an hour or so at Yakushiike Park (or Onda River, for that matter), chances are good that I will see a kingfisher, but few such visits (perhaps one in ten?) yield what I would consider an acceptable photograph. The ones shown here, from January 2025, are more than acceptable. This bird (the same one in both pictures) let me approach to within about 2 m and take photographs for several minutes; I was astounded at the time and remain astounded today because kingfishers always fly away when they sense human movement. The white shape to the right of the kingfisher in the first shot is a Greater Egret (Ardea alba), another very beautiful bird, although that is not evident from the out-of-focus blob in the photo.
Kingfishers were among the first birds I tried to photograph. I originally went to Yakushiike Park to take pictures of flowers—plums/apricots, azaleas, irises, and lotuses, among others. It didn’t take long, however, for me to notice the many older men with big cameras and long telephoto lenses. They turned out to be bird photographers whose favorite target was the kingfishers inhabiting the park. From this experience I learned an important lesson: The easiest way to find a kingfisher is not to search for one directly but to go to a park with a river or pond and look for older men with expensive camera equipment. (Why mostly older men? One reason is that in Japan it is still more acceptable for men than for women to have hobbies outside the home. Another is that, as some of the photographers openly confess, retired Japanese men sometimes feel unwelcome, or at least uncomfortable, in their own houses.)
Incidentally, the “cameramen” at Yakushiike Park are all after the same shots: kingfishers perched atop lotus blossoms (July–August); kingfishers amidst red autumn foliage (November–December); and kingfishers with prey in their beaks (any time of year). I enjoy chatting with these photographers when I have the chance, but I try not to compete. Some of them get much better results than me, as evidenced by their social media feeds. I console myself with the fact that, as retirees, they have more time on their hands than me to take kingfisher photos.
Minato Mirai, 17 km
I currently work at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies. The IUC is situated within Yokohama’s Minato Mirai district, the subject of the next two photos. Minato Mirai is located on the water and reminds me of other port towns such as San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver.
The first photo provides an unusual view of Minato Mirai taken from a boat, specifically the “Sea Bass,” a pedestrian ferry. (In Japanese “Bass” and “Bus” have the same pronunciation, so “Sea Bass” is a somewhat silly play on words.) Prior to the pandemic, I would occasionally take the Sea Bass in the late afternoon on my way home from the IUC, hoping to take photos of the sunset. Most of the resulting pictures were mediocre, but I got lucky in November 2019 with this dramatic scene. It was taken with a compact camera because I did not have a DSLR with me at the time. The unusual light conditions lasted only a few minutes, and I have seen nothing similar since—mostly because I rarely ride the Sea Bass anymore. During the pandemic, I stayed at home and never went to work; after it was over, I was too busy to ride the ferry; and now, to rub salt into the wound, it no longer makes a stop near my workplace.
LH: Here is another very Japanese emotion . . . . regret at lost opportunity because all is fleeting.
The second photo is of the same area taken from the “Sky Garden” observation deck on the sixty-ninth floor of Landmark Tower, at 296.3 m once Japan’s tallest building. (The current record-holder is the 325.5 m Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower.) It costs ¥1000 to take the high-speed elevator to the Sky Garden, but in my opinion, it is money well spent—the view is wonderful. Unlike many observation decks in Japan, this one allows tripods, which are necessary to get good photographs of night scenery. The main difficulty in taking night pictures at Sky Garden is finding a spot where the view from the windows is not marred by reflections from inside. I’ve gone back several times, but I think this photo, from February 2018, is about the best I can do.
My Minato Mirai photos are a rare (for me) example of convergence between work and play, public and private. The IUC is part of Pacifico Yokohama, the convention and exhibition center best known for the InterContinental Yokohama Grand hotel (the fin-shaped building visible in both photographs). I supply photos of the area to the IUC for use in its PR materials and website. Other examples of convergence can be found in some of my publications, particularly my 2006 book on Hakata (Fukuoka), which contains various photographs of that part of Japan.2 However, they were chosen for purely illustrative purposes, unlike the photos (including those of Minato Mirai) that I highlight in this essay, which were mostly intended as art.
Haneda Airport, 27 km
I like flying and always have. When I worked for J. F. Oberlin University, I managed the school’s international affairs and frequently traveled abroad on business. My current job offers fewer such opportunities, but I still travel several times a year, sometimes overseas, and sometimes within Japan.
Probably because I like flying, I also enjoy taking pictures of airplanes, and a convenient place to do so is Haneda Airport. The airport features three observation decks, one for each terminal. For photos of airplanes, Terminal 2 is best. The view from the deck is to the east over Tokyo Bay, and in mid- to late afternoon, the sun in the west directly illuminates airplanes as they touch down or take off. This January 2015 photograph of a Lufthansa Boeing 747-830 taking off is a case in point. To be honest, I’m not sure how the photo stacks up as “art”; anyone with good equipment, sufficient perseverance, and a bit of luck could probably get a similar shot at this location. But I still really like the picture, not least because of the tack-sharp focus and the bright colors.
Not many people realize that Haneda is also an excellent place to take pictures of Mt. Fuji. The observation deck of Terminal 1 faces west and offers a good view of Terminal 3 and, in the distance, Mt. Fuji. The distance to the mountain is 100 km, however, so visibility can be an issue. The best season for taking photographs is winter, when humidity is low, skies are clear, and Mt. Fuji is covered in snow. The best time of day is early morning, when the mountain is illuminated by the rising sun. In my opinion, the most interesting pictures are those that feature planes taking off or landing in the foreground, because they add activity to an otherwise static scene—and because such photographs are relatively hard to take; another example of how the difficulty of obtaining a given result contributes to its aesthetic appeal for those in the know.
This photograph was taken in February 2015, shortly before I boarded a flight for Fukuoka to give a talk at Kyushu University. I lived in Fukuoka for a total of four years, two as an English teacher just after I graduated from college and two as a PhD student doing research for my dissertation on the early history of northern Kyushu. I love Fukuoka and will take advantage of any opportunity to go there. On this occasion, getting the early morning shots of Mt. Fuji before departure was the perfect start to what was already looking to be a great day.
So this has personal meaning because you happened to get the great picture on the day that you were hoping would be special for an entirely different reason . . . so it was a good omen for you. And we do live our lives this way, don’t we? Little tiny bargains that we hope will generate energy and optimism from those happy convergences. It is a private way to generate the strength to deal with the inevitable disappointments and frustrations of adult life.
Tateishi Park, 34 km
Tateishi Park in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, is named for the “standing stone” that rises out of the ocean just offshore. There is also an iconic pine tree and, on clear days, a view of Mt. Fuji to the west. The location seems to have been famous for its scenery even during the Edo period, and several woodblock prints survive. The best season for photography is winter, for reasons mentioned above. As at Haneda Airport, early morning is a good time to take pictures. But so is 30–50 minutes after sunset, when Mt. Fuji appears in dramatic silhouette. This location is quite popular, so it is sometimes difficult to find a parking place, particularly around sunset. However, most casual visitors leave immediately after the sun disappears, not realizing that the best views come later. Here are two examples, a wide-angle view from November 2016 and a more tightly composed one from December 2008. The second photo was taken with a Nikon D200, whose sensor had a relatively small number of pixels by today’s standards. I would like to go back to replicate this shot with a higher-resolution camera—but that would probably be difficult or impossible, because light conditions never repeat themselves.
One reason I like this location is simply that it is beautiful, but while writing this essay I realized that there is another reason: it subliminally reminds me of the Pacific coast of the US. Specifically, the “standing stone” is the spitting image of a similar monolith at Ruby Beach on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Long ago, when my Seattle-based uncle was alive, we would visit Ruby Beach nearly every year to take photographs. My young children also came along on these trips—their first exposure to the US and to their American relatives. No wonder I feel a vague sense of nostalgia whenever I go to Tateishi Park.
LH: Nostalgia is also something that is celebrated much more explicitly in Japan than in the USA, which is my first thought. But my second is that, especially for people in international families, it takes a lot of energy to merge bifurcated lives and things that psychically do that are especially precious.
Southern Alps, 125 km
The next images are from Nagano Prefecture in Japan’s “Southern Alps,” to which I drive once or twice every year in late May or early June to photograph wild orchids. When I was a teenager, I used to make similar “pilgrimages” in Oregon—an outgrowth of an interest in botany sparked by two gifted teachers I encountered in elementary school. I was, and am, especially fond of Lady’s Slippers (Cypripedium sp.) and Fairy Slippers (Calypso bulbosa). I love these flowers partly because of their exotic appearance but also—in what is now a recurring trope—because of their rarity.
Lady’s Slippers and Fairy Slippers are even more uncommon in Japan than in Oregon, so it took a great deal of searching on the Internet to learn where they grew and when they were likely to bloom. I eventually found what I was looking for, but even for the knowledgeable, going to photograph orchids is a hit-or-miss proposition. For one thing, their period of bloom is difficult to predict because it varies from year to year according to the weather. Another issue is that early June is the rainy season in Japan. It is possible to take orchid photos in rain, if one uses a flash. But rain makes the hike (or at one location, ski lift ride) from the parking lot to the orchids rather unpleasant. If the weather report on the date of my intended pilgrimage is too dismal, I will generally call it off—reluctantly, because my schedule is usually completely full and if I can’t go on the day I planned, I will have to wait another year. That is a big deal when you are in your sixties! Once during the pandemic, I made the mistake of driving to Nagano (a six-hour round trip) despite a forecast of rain. When I was just a few kilometers short of my destination, the road took me up into a rain cloud, resulting in impenetrable fog that forced me to turn around and drive back to Tokyo.
LH: This story evokes that horrible pandemic feeling of being bored and trapped, feeling as though life is slipping by. And then trying to break out of that with some effort that failed miserably because the outer world did not cooperate and because we all became worse at planning things during those years. It really was soul-crushing.
In order shown, these photographs are of Yatabe’s Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium yatabeanum), from 2021; Large-Flowered Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium macranthos), also from 2021; and Fairy Slipper, from 2024. (All three were taken in June.) The Fairy Slipper is quite an unusual plant in being circumboreal: the very same species is found at northern latitudes throughout the world. Although not shown here, I have several good photos of Fairy Slippers that I took in Oregon during the 1970s.
I used to make the trip to Nagano by myself. However, a few years ago, my daughter suggested that it was perhaps not such a great idea for someone my age to drive all the way to the Southern Alps and wander around alone in the mountains without telling anyone where he had gone. So now I take her along.
Aerial
“Aerial” is not really a place, but I very much enjoy taking photographs from airplane windows (and reserve a window seat whenever I fly for that purpose). I took this photograph in October 2017 on a morning flight from Haneda Airport to Chubu Centrair International Airport—the first leg of a trip to Tianjin, China, to participate in an environmental history conference at Nankai University. The original color image was passable, but not outstanding. Converting it to black and white made a big difference for the better. Partly so I could keep the geography straight, I labeled the most important features using Adobe Photoshop. I have found that the easiest way to identify features visible in aerial shots is to use Google Earth and try to align the viewpoint in the application with that in the photograph. This is one of the most three-dimensional shots I have seen of Mt. Fuji and vicinity. For some reason the vast expanse on view also seems a lot smaller than it really is, reminding me somehow of a diorama.
In Conclusion
A proper conclusion is perhaps too much to ask of such a rambling essay as this. But on reviewing what I have written I see two obvious themes. One is nostalgia. I obviously enjoy activities and places that remind me of my youth in Oregon. Although the essay was about my “now” as a photographer, it seems to me that my penchant for nostalgia grows with age. The other lesson is that, for me at least, the harder something is to accomplish, the more pleasure it can confer. I can think of another example of this from my work as a historian. Readers of this essay will be able to attest from their own experience just how difficult and time-consuming it is to write a book, and how wonderful it feels to see the fruits of one’s labor finally published. Hard work pays off.
That thought encourages me to speculate about the relationship between my work as a photographer and my career as a historian and a higher education administrator. To me, it is important to have an activity one really enjoys as a counterweight to “work,” defined as something one does for a living but does not necessarily enjoy on its own merits. I know that for academics the boundary between vocation and avocation is a fluid one and that, ideally, we are paid for doing what we like to do. But in practice there is a lot not to be liked (although of course I am grateful to have had good jobs!). As a professor, I loved research, but at my university I was never really rewarded for it. Teaching was sometimes enjoyable but also sometimes burdensome and stressful. The same was and is true of administration, which now constitutes, if not the entirety of my job, at least most of it (the rest consists of student mentoring, which I find both enjoyable and rewarding). Photography is the respite that helps me navigate my professional duties by putting them into perspective and providing me with needed intermissions and a (somewhat) healthy work-life balance.
Finally, thanks to Laura Hein for suggesting I write this essay and shepherding me through the process from start to finish.
LH: My pleasure!
Notes:
- In case anyone is interested, here is a description of my workflow. Non-photographers may be surprised to learn that taking a photograph—clicking the shutter—is only the tip of the iceberg. After taking photographs, I download them to my computer and file them. I create a folder for each photo session and label it with the date, to enable chronological sorting, and location or occasion. The next step is to rate the photos on a zero-to-five scale. I use Adobe Lightroom for this, but other applications would also work. Rating is a simple, if somewhat time-consuming, process. First, I eyeball the photos and divide them into “good” ones and “not-so-good” ones, based on both objective and subjective criteria. Are they technically sound, e.g., in focus and properly exposed? Are they aesthetically pleasing, e.g., well composed and sufficiently interesting that the viewer will want to return for another look? Good photos are given a rating of “one” and not-so-good ones a rating of “zero.” Then I look at all the “ones,” choose the best, and upgrade their rating to “two”—and so on and so forth. (When I was a professor, I used a similar iterative process to grade student papers.) Once all the photos are rated, I trash those with relatively low ratings (to save disk space and reduce clutter), saving no more than 5% or 10% of the original batch. I also make sure that all the pictures are geotagged, either automatically by the camera itself (if it has built-in GPS) or manually using the “maps” module in Lightroom.
- Bruce L. Batten, Gateway to Japan: Hakata in War and Peace, 500–1300 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006).
