Watch the great man, National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita himself in this video where he shares tips on photography and his thoughts on travel and adventure.
Photography, Travel and Adventure
Apart from Steve McCurry, the next most influential photographer for me during my photographic formative years getting lost amidst the pages of National Geographic magazines is photographer Michael Yamashita.
His photos offered me a window into the world outside my door as a kid and instilled a great love of travel and exploration I hold close to my heart to this day. Photos of people in exotic dress, in lands as far away and different to my own as I could possibly imagine, and yet with a humanity I could always relate to.
My house is filled with hundreds upon hundreds of copies of National Geographic magazines, they were my passport to the world when travel wasn’t possible. I remember spending hours at second-hand bookstores reading and searching out back issues of National Geographic magazines and spending a significant portion of my pocket-money to buy them.
About Michael Yamashita
A specialist in Asia coverage, Michael Yamashita has for 25 years, been producing stunning, insightful and importantly, humanist pictures everywhere from Vietnam and the Mekong River, Marco Polo’s voyage into China, the Great Wall, the DMZ at the border of North and South Korea and everything to do with Japan.
Numerous books of this photography has been published over the years, amongst them, In the Japanese Garden, Mekong: Mother of Waters, and Marco Polo: A Photographer’s Journey. His story of Marco Polo was also made into an award-winning National Geographic Channel documentary, Marco Polo: The China Mystery Revealed, in which the steps of the legendary Venetian merchant to China were retraced.
Michael is a lectures and teaches at workshops around the world, and holds international exhibitions of his work periodically.
