First and foremost Happy New Year to all my esteemed readers.

Sorry for the silence on here but even Tokyo-based assignment photographers need to take a break sometime, if the profits allow, and if there’s been a few crumbs left over after paying tax bills and servicing the equipment that gets knocked about in the daily grind of portrait photography and reportage here in Japan. (I’d just been to Canon to get my cameras cleaned, and now after holidays in exotic, dustier climes I badly need to revisit for another cleaning…)

So, my shop is now open again for business, bring on 2012 I say. This year is going to be busy, I know it already, I can feel it in my bones. I’m excited about the year ahead.

This week I’m off out of Tokyo,  to photograph a two day editorial magazine job down on an island in the Inland Sea, then very conveniently followed by another 2 day photo assignment in Kyoto. It’s good to start the year with some nice assignments. And of course there’s a shed load of editing to be done from the trip I did over the festive season, but that is not so urgent.

Opening the office mail this morning I find a bunch of tear sheets awaiting me. Always good to see them, to see how the art directors have used, or abused, your images. I included one or two here, and I’ll put some more up later. Until then best wishes for the new year, and all it brings you.

(above) From the No.1 Shimbun magazine of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, a re-write of my ‘In My Camera Bag’ piece that I posted here previously, now gracing the column known as ‘The Hack’s Tool Box’. You can download the No.1 Shimbun issue here, and read at your leisure. There are also many good articles about North Korea, and one by ex-Tokyo photographer and correspondent Sonia Katchian.

And below, two pages from an American magazine, featuring portraits of lawyers I photographed in Tokyo, back in November I think. The great thing about being a an assignment photographer is the variety of people I get to meet and photograph, and these lawyers were no exception. It’s always fascinating to get glimpses into others careers and occupations, and businesses, see how it all works.

This above image nearly didn’t happen. As I waited in the busy Shibuya street, in central Tokyo, me with my cameras, and my assistant hand holding a light and umbrella the local security patrol old guys approached. The usual debate about photographing in a public street took place, they wandered off, I shot my portrait when the subject arrived. And just as I packed up, the security came back…phew, Job was done, pics in the camera. Time to say sorry, smile. And leave.

The below pic was another street pic obviously, but no hassles this time, even though it took place near the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence, in a Tokyo district crawling with police on every corner and intersection. Only trouble that day was the utter-greyness of the weather and the day, and the wind blowing. If ever I’d needed a warm up filter and a hairdresser with some hair spray for the subject it was that day. Still, got the photograph, all worked out in the end and appears in the mag as a half page.

There’s a few more tear sheets to come, I only have the actual magazines, I’m awaiting the pdf’s… PDf’s a far easier way to keep tear sheets, they don’t fade and go yellow, and they’re not a fire hazard in the office.