Michael Yamashita
Michael Yamashita is an American photographer who was born in 1949 in San Francisco, California, but grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. In 1971 he graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in Asian studies. He traveled to Japan to teach English as a second language after college. He began working for the National Geographic in 1979 and since then traveled to places as diverse as Somalia, Sudan, England, Ireland, and Papua New Guinea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. For the past thirty years he has specialized in Asia, including Japan, China and Tibet.
He is also an author of more than sixteen photographic books, including "Shangri-La ", Zheng He: Tracing the Epic Voyages of China’s Greatest Explorer, Japan: The Soul of a Nation, Marco Polo: A Photographer’s Journey, and many others. Michael has also done two documentaries that went along with his books on Marco Polo and Zheng He. He has won numerous awards from the National Press Photographers Association and the Asian American Journalists Association. He is also a frequent lecturer and conducts photo workshops across Asia and the United States. He now works as an ambassador for Sony Cameras and is known as a Sony Shooter. He has amassed over 1.5 million followers on Instagram. His website contains prints, books, and dvds for sale.
