Stormy Reef

Hiroike is inspired by Japanese painting, which has been done in Japan since ancient times. He expresses Japanese landscapes, with their uniquely complex topography and climate and four distinct seasons, in the medium of photography with a unique aesthetic sense of "wabi" and "sabi" that is uniquely Japanese. Among his works, his black-and-white photographs inspired by "Suiboku-ga" (ink painting) are the ultimate in minimalism. He chooses landscapes with minimalistic beauty, expresses the form of the subject and the relationship between light and shadow by removing color, and further emphasizes minimalism with long exposures and other techniques.

This is a photograph of a reef taken on the Sanin Coast on a stormy day. The main subject is the violent waves that you see with your eyes, but because the photo was taken with a long exposure using an ND filter, the waves disappear as fog, and instead the motionless rocks take center stage in the image.