The last few weeks, I’ve been home, sitting with ideas that refused to settle, waiting for inspiration to click. October is around the corner, and so is my landscape exhibition at Island Gallery. But creativity, like everything else, doesn’t always show up on command. So, I did what I knew would clear my head—packed up my cameras, rented a campervan, and hit the road with no real plan.

1,000 kilometers from Tokyo to Toyama. No itinerary, just the freedom to stop wherever felt right, shoot what called to me, and sleep when it got dark. It was exactly what I needed. Four days of pure mental space, surrounded by the kind of Japanese landscapes that remind me how beautiful nature in this country can be.

When you travel with no agenda, you stop chasing. The places I ended up weren’t about the destination; I knew some of them, but I was not concerned about the time, the season.. and such. I’d pull over when a scene grabbed me, take out the Leica, and shoot without overthinking it. Or maybe the Sigma FPL, if more “up to the task“. Some photos come when you’re not trying so hard.

There’s a clarity that comes from being out in nature with no expectations. It’s not always peaceful—some days were rainy, some nights colder than expected—but that’s the point. It’s real, and it makes you pay attention. These landscapes weren’t waiting for me to find them; they were just there, as they’ve always been, and I just had to show up.

I’m sharing a few shots from the first leg of trip here. They’re not pictures that will be at my next exhibition (you’ll see those soon enough in here), but they’re pieces of the process. The kind of images that happen when you give yourself room to breathe.

No problem though. Just a little more driving got me to the northern coast of Niigata, where the fog was gone and the beautiful costal road brought on to the remaining of the trip.