It was early in the morning. It was dry and clear, and the stream was euphonious. The sunshine is dazzling, but the energy empowers my whole body. This image looks like the beginning of a fantastic trip from the reality and I may forget where and who I am.

This bay has a complicated coastline and the distance between the mouth to the furthest inland is about 200 kilometers. So, mostly it's filled by freshwater. Little fish gather around the sunny spot on the water surface and they are eating algae. Every time they change directions, they look silvery and beautiful. Are they little yellow perches?

I see many abandoned bars along country roads. I looked inside through the broken window, but I only found it was covered by overgrown weeds and didn't see anything that could tell how it was before. When I visited Kyoto before, I was surprised to know that the inside of an ordinary looking house was an accessory shop. It would be nice if this old barn has a stylish bar on the first floor, an Italian restaurant on the second and third floors, and some fancy hotel rooms on the attic. It must be sweet on a rainy day. I can't stop imagining how the rain on the grass sounds in this quiet atmosphere.

I take snapshots of what I like intuitively. It can by my interest in the person or the moment in his/her movement. Or, it can be the lighting, the beauty, the color, the composition, the shininess, the taste, and the emotion of the subject. But, I don't think about the concrete reasons for my shooting. I hope the views enjoy my photos and expand their imaginations in their own ways.

However, for a long time, I still feel unsure of my core notion for photography further inside the "intuition." I don't have a clear ism for photography, so I can't express the notion with my words. It's neither commemorative photography nor photography to record events. I don't have the journalistic point of view and I don't shoot documentaries, either.

But, after looking at a photography book "HUMANS OF NEW YORK," I felt I found the answer. Brandon Stanton is a photographer living in NY. He talks to people on the street and while photographing them, he asks about their identities, lives, dreams for the future. And, he publishes the photos with the content of his conversation on his blog after he got their permissions.

The photography book is a documentary of each person living or traveling in the metropolitan NY. It triggers viewers' interest in everyone on his photography and they feel happy or sad. His friendly way to approach the subjects gave me an impression which is different from the ones I get from other famous photographers.

In my case, I photograph people before they notice it and I'm not interested in their real lives. Instead, like a movie scene, I separate the scene from the reality and transform it to create my own images. So, my style is completely opposite to his and I'm trying to create false images.

By looking at "HUMANS OF NEW YORK," I realized the following. Even though images are real optically, what I'm trying to photograph are refracted images of the reality and it doesn't matter whether they are related to the reality or not. What I photograph is the real things and situations. But, to me, they exist only in my imagination.

I feel my imagination keeps growing further these years. And, sometimes I mix them up with the reality. For example, I suddenly feel rushed to go to the train station to pick up the thing I left there. Soon, I remember that there's no train station in my current life and I only drive a car. Then, I realize it was a dream I had in the previous night.

Few years ago, my older brother died from Alzheimer's disease and I heard he inherited it from my mother. Maybe, it won't be too long before the same thing will happen to me. So, these phenomena including my intention to shoot can be the beginning. And, if this is the case, I will naturally spend more time playing with my imagination. That's fine and even sounds fun, but even if I live a life removed from reality, I hope to become an impressionist rather than an abstractionist.

Stanton always faces at the reality and I seem to keep shooting the fictions of reality.