Home > Culture > Mentor Showcase > The 2007 Best-of Series: Michael Yamashita
The 2007 'Best Of' Series
We have now produced an annual Best Of issue of the ASMP Bulletin for the third year in a row. As before, we selected twenty projects for our issue — but this year, we had nearly 200 excellent submissions! It was a tough decision, and we thank all those who submitted their work. We hope you will enjoy reading about these projects.
Michael Yamashita, Chester, NJ
Web site: www.michaelyamashita.com
Project: New York Flying High book project
The tight deadline for a book project on New York City aerials afforded National Geographic shooter Michael Yamashita the opportunity he had been waiting for-a chance to try out his digital wings. Money saved on film and processing went to extra helicopter time in the skies. Yamashita came away with an encyclopedic portrait of Manhattan by air that has been described by the press as “Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie come to life.”
All images © Michael Yamashita
ASMP: How long have you been in business?
30 years.
ASMP: How long have you been an ASMP member?
About the same.
ASMP: What are your photographic specialties?
I’m a photographer for National Geographic Magazine specializing in Asian topics.
ASMP: Please describe the processes and techniques central to the making of this work.
Digital camera with zoom lenses, a good helicopter pilot.
ASMP: What do you consider your most valuable piece of equipment?
Canon image stabilizer zoom lenses.
ASMP: What is unique about your style/approach, or what sets you and your work apart from other photographers?
Experience has taught me what to point the camera at. Aerials are a stock in trade for Geographic shooters who need to show geography as part of their coverage.
ASMP: How did you find the particular pilot you worked with?
By word of mouth, thru recommendations of my aerial specialist colleagues.
ASMP: Are there specific questions you ask or issues that are important to discuss with a pilot before beginning an aerial shoot?
Have you done aerial shoots before? How low can you go? How early or late can you fly?
ASMP: What kind of logistics and clearances are involved in planning an aerial shoot in and around Manhattan?
Pilots work with air traffic control from both Newark and La Guardia airports. Also, they called NYPD police — “on aerial shoot”.
ASMP: Did you formulate a specific plan for areas to cover or neighborhoods to focus on during each flight?
Yes, I flew 8 times, early AM and late afternoon. On the first flights, I just followed my nose looking for pictures according to the light; up and down East River and Hudson and crisscrossing. After seeing results, we honed in to fill the holes.
ASMP: You mention that this was the first project you shot totally digitally. What was the most difficult aspect of the learning curve in making this switch?
I’ve owned a digital SLR camera ever since Canon started making them, not to be left behind, but only used them for my personal work and family as a snapshot camera. It took the pressure of a big assignment in my backyard to get me to make the switch. It is not the shooting, which is actually much easier with digital, but the workflow of downloading cards, adding metadata and saving files on hard drivers and DVDs that was most difficult for me. I resented spending all that time at the computer. Of course, the more I did it, the faster I got, and now it has become second nature to me.
ASMP: Has working digitally changed the way you shoot?
Yes. I never skimped on film, but now I shoot even more.
ASMP: What is your digital workflow? Do you do your own PhotoShop work?
No, after downloading, some captioning and saving to 3 hard drives, I send them back to my office where my digital assistant downloads and saves everything into my studio computer and hard drives, after which I erase and reuse the portable drives I have saved to in the field. My assistant does PhotoShop.
ASMP: Are you completely digital now or are there certain subjects/situations where you still prefer to shoot film? Please elaborate.
I continue to shoot film panoramics with a Hasselblad PanX.
ASMP: Your wife wrote the text to accompany your photos. Is this your first collaboration with your wife? Describe others.
No, my wife edits the text of all my books — Mekong: A Journey on the Mother of Waters; Marco Polo: A Photographer’s Journey; Zheng He: Tracing the Epic Voyages of China’s Greatest Explorer; Great Wall: From Beginning to End — and wrote the text for In the Japanese Garden.
ASMP: How does that personal relationship influence your shooting? Editing? Other aspects of the book process?
We work together, but separately. I shoot, she writes. In the case of the New York, Flying High book, she had the tougher job of writing captions for all those 300-some pictures! What can you find new to say on several different angles of the same scene? It was a huge job to ID all the buildings and then find something of interest to say about them. She came up with the concept of how to structure the book, dividing the city into sections.
ASMP: Given your background as primarily an editorial photographer, what place do you assign book projects in relation to your overall business plan?
Books are very important. Making a living as an editorial photographer is becoming increasingly difficult with fewer outlets to publish pictures. You need to have many revenue streams, and books are a big one for me. Books are also my best portfolios.
ASMP: What is your perspective on the future of the fields of book and magazine publishing? Are you doing anything in particular to educate yourself or strategize for future developments?
There are fewer magazines and all are paying less than when I started. I’ve been fortunate to have had a long relationship with the Geographic, which I intend to continue. I have also been doing quite a bit of work for National Geographic Channel with two documentary films based on my stories for the magazine — Marco Polo and Zheng He.
