The Why of Who Am I

I’m T. Mellon —

I am a Seattle-born, forest-raised being, who still remembers the world of film cameras. My father was a casual photographer with an eye for composition, and I used to run around in my high school and college years with his Pentax SP500 (a very cool classic camera) with very little know how, somehow getting some nice photos.

My childhood was spent running through the Pacific Northwest forest that was literally my back yard, connecting to the backyards of other children and extending into what felt like an endless forest at that time. With hidden tunnels through the thick underbrush sometimes hiding hidden cathedrals of nature which I realize now for most would feel like a magical place out of a fantasy book, and honestly it was something like that, but to us it was normal, a normal hidden world that the world outside would never enter. We would talk quieter, share secrets and be entranced with the light shining through the little windows between the leaves and branches — hidden ponds, moss-covered trees, and the story of the bear and the old woman up the street from us getting her mail, both looking at each other, screaming and running in opposite directions were all just daily life for us. Summers seemed endless, and I was rarely inside except for maybe lunch time, and to come in before dark. That was my introduction to the world, and those earliest moments deeply imprinted my need to be in nature and look for the hidden places, and special moments of light and color for the rest of my life. Essentially I am still a kid running through the forest, only now I have a camera and the skill to share what I see with the world. Even when I am shooting cityscapes, or other urban scenes, I still think that sense of natures beauty is always pulling on me, looking for the light beauty, and hidden places where few roam, often leading me to hidden hill tops over looking the city or just little district below. This site represents only a tiny fraction of my works because I did not just arrive in Japan yesterday..

I arrived in Japan in 2011, 10 days after the tsunami which caused the nuclear melt downs. I never knew how long I would stay. At that time there was the genuine possibility of Tokyo simply shutting down if the Radiation continued to rise. It has since been downplayed.. . I quickly picked up the best camera I could afford with a focus on video at that time, as I’ve always secretly wanted to make films. After working several months, I bought a beautiful Voightlander lens with it’s wonderful F/0.95 Aperture to replace the standard lens and my eyes were opened once again to still photography — I still did mostly video for several years but I was slowly focussing more and more on photography.

By 2018 I felt a strong desire for more detail and was seeing the limits of my current camera, after months of research and debate, and seeing Nikon had just released it’s first mirrorless camera’s, I went with a Nikon Z6 full-frame mirrorless camera. It was the right choice! Again I got away from the kit lens quickly to something that could create the same bokeh and focal length I was used to, and my skills progressed quickly as I literally saw the light of full frame for the first time since using my fathers Pentax. I started wanting more and more to capture the beautiful birds like the king fisher, heron and egrets that frequent the waterways near my home in west Tokyo. So, I bought the amazing and legendary Nikkor 200-400mm lens, It not only worked wonderfully for bird photography, but I soon found myself using that bohemoth for portraits, landscapes and even chasing dragon flies if you can believe it. Finally a sad fall of my Nikon Z6 to the pavement gave me time to think about what I really wanted going forward with my photography. The resounding answer was, I wanted a system that got as close as possible to the look and detail of film and which would allow me to print my works large, because at the end of the day I was always reaching for the truest representation of the light and detail I saw in nature. 2023 brought me to Fujifilm medium-format digital and that is what I shoot 95% of my works on Today. It’s a system that sees the world the way my childhood forests taught me to see it — capturing light almost impercievable to th naked eye, with detail and color depth that only truly reveals itself when printed large and hung on a well lit wall.

Why Fujifilm? Beyond the detail and film like color, it’s because of my rainforest youth, and tendency to seek out the extreme weather and endless ancient paths through Japan, my camera has to survive everything I survive and Nikon and Fujifilm seem to be two of the very best at surviving the wet, cold, snowy, salty sea, typhoon blown rain world I embrace.

My work exists for collectors who refuse ordinary — who want to stand in front of a print and discover new secrets months or years after they first hung it.

私の「なぜ」

T. メロン——シアトル生まれ、森で育った写真家です。誰も気づかない光を追いかけて海を渡りました。

子供時代は、別世界への入り口のような北西の森を駆け回っていました。苔むした巨木、妖精の粉のような光の筋、隠れ里——その記憶が、私を質感と一瞬の光の狩人にしたのです。

2011年、津波の直後に日本へ。生きるためではなく、記録するためカメラを手にしました。最初は動画でしたが、レンズを通して見えた静止画の世界に抗えず、戻れなくなりました。

2018年にフルサイズへ。2023年に中判デジタルへ。今、私が世に送るすべてのプリントは、子供時代の森が教えてくれた「見え方」で生まれています——壁に飾って初めてわかる、馬鹿みたいに深いディテールと色。

私は天気を避けません。シアトルの嵐、アラスカの吹雪、デスバレーの灼熱、ハワイの塩風、そして日本の深雪——それらを耐え抜いたカメラでしか撮れない写真がある。

私の作品は「普通」で満足しない人のためにあります。数年後にまた新しい発見がある——そんなプリントを求める人のために。