GLOBAL PRO GALLERY
Takafumi Kojo
Takafumi KojoJapan
Born in Tokyo in 1962. Mr Kojo began his career in an advertising photo studio, which he left and discovered as passion for ”representing sports in photos” and began covering American Major League Baseball for a period that lasted 13 years. Additionally, he has a great deal of experience covering other professional sports including soccer, tennis and basketball both in Japan and overseas. More recently he has been appearing in many camera magazines working as a writer and editor of publications for photography enthusiasts and including the instructional magazine, Lightroom. Mr Kojo is a member of the Japan Professional Photographers Society (JPS), the Society of Photography and Imaging of Japan (SPIJ), Association Japonaise de la Presse Sportive (AJPS) and Association International de la Presse Sportive (AIPS).
For me sport is ”Drama without a plot”. However, for most people this is not what would normally come to mind but to me it is a testimony to the unexpected events that often happen when people ”meet head on” with the aim of winning. Despite this, the fruit of victory means that people don’t want to quit playing because simply ”there is no other substitute”. Once you are have experienced it, the allure of sport is captivating, it is difficult to lose interest in it; and I think its attraction transcends beyond cultures and nations to attract many people.
Time has moved so quickly that 20 years has passed since I began capturing this ”meeting of people head on” in photos. It is no simple task to capture this in a single photo however as sporting pursuits have flourished across the world the movement of sports photography has done likewise. Just as athletes endure rigorous training to achieve victory at the elite level, it can be said that photographers are also aiming to capture sports at a high level thus it is natural that they adopt new techniques and equipment. Those seeking high performance will no doubt continue to forever do so.
The Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, released in 2016, became popular with enthusiasts in no time at all due to its high performance that broke the mold of previous mirrorless cameras. It allowed you to capture the world in ways that was not possible with previous system and make it visible to the human eye. Two years have now passed and the OM-D E-M1X is the long awaited release by Olympus which achieves an even higher level of reliability, and will expand the world of sports photography. It is exciting to think of the new world that awaits to captured by this camera; and something that only owners of this camera will have the privilege to do so. I would like to invite you to experience the world through the E-M1X.
