It’s a funny ol’ job sometimes, funny ol’ life.

So it was, funny that is, earlier this year. I’d been on assignment up to Yoichi in Hokkaido, northern Japan, to visit and photograph the Yoichi distillery of the award winning Nikka single malt whisky distillers. Whilst there I’d toured their very interesting museum and read the story of their founder, Masataka Taketsuru, and how he’d toured distilleries in Scotland in the 1920′s, learning how to make malt whiskies, and how he’d married a Scottish woman, Rita, who came to Japan to live with him. A great romance and story, and I was later to discover it’s written about in the book ‘Japanese Whisky, Scottish Blend- The story of Masataka Taketsuru and his Scottish wife, and the Japanese Whisky Industry’ by Olive Checkland. I came back from Hokkaido, sourced the book and enjoyed the story.

A month or three later fate played her hand. I got an assignment for a whisky magazine, “Can you photograph Takeshi Taketsuru, son of Nikka whisky founder Masataka Taketsuru ?” It’s all about timing, like so many things in life. I see the museum, drink the product, read the book, and then a short while later in downtown Aoyama, Tokyo, I get to meet the elderly son and take his portrait.

It was a tricky shoot, the ol’ boy was a little slow on his feet. He wasn’t quite up to the ideas I had in mind for the double portrait I had to shoot. The Nikka bar where I had to shoot it was dark, bad lighting, not “curious/luxurious/quirky” (my buzzwords/ keywords/ brief-words for the day). It was a bit tricky, I had to think fast. A single malt might have inspired me more but no one offered. In the end there wasn’t much I could do, take them outside, hope Taketsuru-san didn’t mind ascending the stairs, standing outside. He did it, I shot it. Not the best picture or portrait I ever shot, but tonight, couple of months later, I see a pdf of the magazine spread for the first time, and to my surprise it looks quite nice, in a formal, studious, both men have hands clasped sort of way.