The Laymans' Family Session at Yoyogi Park and Meiji Shrine, Tokyo

Jasmin and her family spent an April afternoon with me in Tokyo, moving between Yoyogi Park and the wooded approach to Meiji Shrine for a session that mixed editorial portraits with candid, unposed moments.

Jasmin got in touch wanting something in between: real photographs of her family's time in Tokyo, not a stiff formal sitting, but with an editorial eye behind the camera all the same. That balance is what took us to Yoyogi Park and Meiji Shrine rather than a studio. Both sit inside the same green stretch of Shibuya, the park open and easy, the shrine grounds shaded by a forest planted a century ago, and April gave us the last of the season's soft light before Tokyo's early summer humidity sets in.

We spent the afternoon moving between the two: open lawn and skyline in the park, the hush of the torii gate and gravel paths leading into the shrine. That contrast, city park to sacred forest within a few minutes' walk, is one of the reasons I keep bringing families and couples back to this corner of Tokyo. It gives a session room to breathe between the posed frames and the ones where everyone just forgets the camera is there.

I work as a bilingual, Japan-based photographer, shooting on film and digital, and sessions like this one, built around a family simply being together in a city they're visiting, are some of the quieter, more personal work I do here.

Vendor credits‍

• Photography: Sofia Hiramatsu Photography

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If you're dreaming of the same

A relaxed afternoon in two of Tokyo's greenest corners, the kind of session that turns a family trip into something worth hanging on the wall. If you're visiting Tokyo and would love a session like this for your own family, I'd be glad to hear from you: inquire here.