Nikon D700. 1/8 at f40, 220mm, ISO 800.

Rainy weekends sometimes seem like a disappointment: there are no bright sunrises, no light streaming through the trees, no mountain peaks reaching up into the sky. But grey skies make colours more vibrant. Startlingly bright greens come out of usually dull mosses, and everything shines with moisture. The background fades to grey in the misting rain.
I’ve been out exploring, driving around Nagano on wet days, my camera wrapped up against the weather. Last weekend I went back to Komagane for the first time in years. The river was swollen with the steady downpour of rains, rushing down over water-tumbled rocks out of the invisible mountains. All night the sound of rain and of running rivers, the summer field smell of tatami, and hot baths in the onsen at a hotel out of another era.
In the morning the rain continued. We drank hot coffee from a roadside vending machine, and discovered a temple I’d never visited before: Kozenji, famous for the legendary dog Hayataro and for it’s weeping cherry trees, still in bud. Umbrellas in hand we explored the temple grounds, and found these statues tucked away in a grove of giant sugi trees. The mist, the rain, the green moss, and the red all came together, perfectly.

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I’d also like to thank again everyone who helped me support charities in the Tohoku by sharing my link and by buying prints. Every little helps and it means so much to be able to help make a difference.  Thank you.

Taken with my trusty old Nikon D700 just after sunrise at Myoshin-ji Temple in Kyoto last weekend. 1/60 at f11, 35mm, ISO400. We’d spent the night at Torin-ji, one of the sub-temples at Myoshin-ji, and woke early enough to explore the temple grounds just as the sun was rising over the complex. While I stopped to make this photograph morning prayers were being chanted in the hall behind me, and everything seemed heightened and extra-real. Very Zen, really.

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Buy art and help me to help Japan.


the Road Onward – for the Tohoku – Images by Skye Hohmann
In addition, 10% of proceeds of print sales of my other photographs will be donated to the same cause, from March 11 to April 11 2012.

Thank you, once again, all of you who have helped support the Tohoku, here or elsewhere.

It’s been a pretty eventful year.

I’m hoping for big things for the next one, too.

Almost 9 months after the tsuami devastated the town, I was offered the chance to visit  Minami Sanriku (or Minamisanriku-cho, depending on how you choose to transliterate it) to participate in their “revival market”. The market is an amazing monthly event, designed to raise funds to re-build shops and factories and generally rebuild the heart of the town that was so tragically obliterated on March 11. The market was full of optimism and shining smiles, and the town seems to be in the process of getting back on its feet, though the destruction is still evident on the flat land. I’m still processing the experience, but in the meantime, I’ve put up some of my photographs over on flickr.

I’ve also been busy. I’ll try to keep writing here when I can, but tomorrow I’m off to the mountains once again.

They have a magnetic pull.

Sorry I’m a little slow on the uptake here, I’ve been in the mountains. All this beautiful scenery is very distracting.

A few years ago, Aleks and I took a hike together. A story I wrote about the trip came out in the Japan Times a couple of weeks ago.