I grew up in Japan, but the world kept calling.

I left home not to escape it, but to explore and experience what life is about — through distance, through strangers, through landscapes that had nothing to do with anywhere I'd ever been. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a camera. Not just to document the journey, but to return the favour — to share my luck with people through the moments I saw through the finder.

Every photograph I take is a kind of gratitude. To the people who let me in. To the light that showed up at the right moment. To the animals living their lives indifferent to mine. To the cities that hummed with stories I was only passing through.

I shoot the way I move through the world — quietly, curiously, always a little closer to the edges than the centre. I'm drawn to what's honest over what's perfect: the crease in someone's smile, the chaos of a street market at dusk, a herd moving through golden grass, two people standing at the beginning of the rest of their lives.

My work takes me across travel and street, portraits, wildlife and wild places. Different subjects, but the same instinct — find the moment before it closes, and hold it open a little longer.

I believe a photograph does its best work when it moves someone. When it takes them somewhere they haven't been, or back to somewhere they were afraid to forget. When it makes them care about a species, a place, a person they'd never otherwise meet.

That's why I do this. That's always been why.

If you've read this far, you probably already understand what photography means to me.