One of the things I love most about photography is that you never quite know where a photograph might end up.
Sometimes images are delivered to a client, shared online, and that’s the end of their story. Other times they take on a life of their own. That’s exactly what happened recently, when a message turned up out of nowhere from a photo editor on the other side of the world.
An unexpected email from Japan
Hatano, an editor at KATEIGAHO (家庭画報) had discovered my blog post about pumpkin hunting at Farmer Copleys Farm while researching photographs for the magazine’s autumn issue. Published since 1958, KATEIGAHO is one of Japan’s most respected luxury lifestyle magazines, a large-format, beautifully produced title built around travel, food, interiors and culture, and read as much for its sense of seasonality as anything else.
Every issue opens with a feature showcasing uplifting scenery and seasonal moments from around the world. They were looking for photographs that captured the atmosphere of pumpkin picking in Britain, and somehow a blog post I’d written several years earlier about a day at Farmer Copleys Farm had found its way onto their desk in Tokyo.
They asked whether I had any more photographs from the shoot, so I dug back through the archive and sent over a wider selection of images showing the pumpkin fields, autumn colours and families enjoying the experience.
A six page feature spread
Over the following few weeks we worked through the image selection together, sorted releases and the feature gradually grew. By the time everything was finalised, the magazine had licensed seven photographs across six pages, including one image that opens the feature as a full double-page spread.
From Yorkshire to Tokyo, and back again…
I’d already been sent the finished spreads to review, so I knew roughly how the pages would look. Even so, I had a genuinely pleasant surprise yesterday when a copy of the printed magazine turned up on my doorstep, having travelled all the way from Tokyo.
KATEIGAHO isn’t a typical magazine. At around 300 pages, it’s beautifully printed, much larger and heavier than a standard UK magazine, and has a real coffee-table quality to it. It’s also slightly unusual in that Japanese magazines read back to front. It’s always a treat to see your work published in print but holding this particular magazine and seeing my photographs reproduced across six page feature was one of those moments that reminds you that when you take photographs, you have no idea where they might eventually lead.
Why this one means so much
Perhaps the most satisfying part of the whole experience is how it came about.
Some of the photographs were from my my own personal collection, taken during time spent with my family. A few others came from a family session I’d photographed on commission the following year, which the family were kind enough to let me share more widely. None of them were submitted to a competition or uploaded to a stock library. They simply existed on my own website, and an editor in Tokyo found them there. It’s a nice thought that they somehow found their way from Yorkshire to Japan.
With thanks to Kateigaho
I’d like to thank Hatano and everyone at KATEIGAHO for the opportunity to be part of such a beautiful publication. The whole process, from the initial enquiry through to receiving my copy from Japan, has been a pleasure, and it’s something I’ll always be proud of.
It’s a reminder that you never quite know where a photograph might lead. Sometimes the images you make close to home end up travelling much further than you ever do.
