Hashimuki Makoto: Mount Fuji Photographer Par Excellence

Hashimuki setting up his camera at dawn. (© Nippon.com)

The mountain silhouetted against the sunrise. Hashimuki took this photo from Nihondaira and uploaded it immediately to social media.

Hashimuki sends live feeds to Instagram direct from his shooting location. His followers include people from all over the world, who may comment in languages ranging from English to Arabic. He uses the second camera for time-lapse videography.

Hashimuki continued to shoot even as he was packing up his gear after livestreaming. He took this photo just before he finally left.

Hashimuki uses a smartphone app to retouch shots on the spot. A thoroughly modern-day photographer, he rarely uses a computer, generally relying on his phone to upload photos for printing or sending to publishers. (© Nippon.com)

The shot that went viral. It was taken at a superb angle that gives viewers a glimpse of the underside of the giant lens-shaped cloud.

He posted this photo with the comment “It looks just like a fortress.” On the right is a series of lenticular clouds.

This photo of a “flying saucer” cloud garnered comments from all sorts of people—weather researchers and aficionados of the occult, as well as devotees of shugendō ascetic mountain practice.

A stack of lenticular clouds atop the mountain in summer, with a sea of clouds at Shimizu Yoshiwara in the foreground.

Shizuoka is famous not just for Mount Fuji but for green tea too. This shot was taken from a spot where the tea bushes were illuminated by street lights, with the cloud-surrounded mountain in the background.

Hashimuki’s nighttime photos are also renowned for their beauty. Here the mountain, the Milky Way, and a sea of clouds underlit by city lights create a breathtaking harmony.

Seasonal touches also feature in Hashimuki’s photos. Always searching for the perfect location, he composes his shots with care.

This 2016 photo of summer fireworks with Mount Fuji silhouetted in the background was selected for the Tokyo Camera Club’s Top 10 of the year.

One of the most iconic angles of Fuji, cherry blossoms, and a five-story pagoda, viewed from Arakurayama Sengen Park, in the city of Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi Prefecture. Visitors flock here to get a perfect shot, but Hashimuki takes it to a different level entirely.

Hashimuki muses that without social media, he might not have continued taking photos. (© Nippon.com)

Hashimuki and fellow photographers pooled funds to charter a Cessna aircraft, from which this atmospheric shot of Fuji’s crater was taken.

Many social media followers wondered whether Mount Fuji had been struck by a plague of locusts. In fact, it’s a shot of the mountain’s upside-down reflection in a rice paddy. Hashimuki also tries to take unusual photos of the mountain, to pique the interest of people other than Fuji aficionados.

While “Diamond Fuji,” where the sun is juxtaposed over the mountain’s peak, is a well-known view, Hashimuki created “Pearl Fuji,” showing the moon directly over the mountain.