Nakajima sits quietly in the centre of Lake Toya, a dominant presence that has drawn me back repeatedly since my first visit to Hokkaido in 2018. It appears in the background of many of my photographs from the lake, yet it never feels the same. Its shape shifts dramatically as you circumnavigate Toya, revealing new relationships with light, water, and distance.
On this particular morning, I studied the weather over breakfast, debating whether to travel to Lake Toya or Otaru. Both looked promising, but the forecast of zero wind at Toya was irresistible. It proved to be the right decision—the air was perfectly still and filled with a soft haze.
I photographed the scene with the sun positioned to the right of the scene, allowing the island to fall into a gentle silhouette against the background. The haze softened the contrast just enough to retain detail in the snow-covered landmass and the fine lines of trees. To help balance the light across the frame, I positioned a graduated filter on the right-hand side.
Because reflections are unforgiving, I always work with the shortest exposure that achieves the effect I want. Even the slightest breath of wind can disturb the surface. Here, the exposure was two seconds.
The final image is created using a stitching technique I have developed, combining 13 individual frames into a single high-resolution panorama. With each exposure lasting two seconds and a two- second delay between frames, the entire sequence takes roughly a minute to capture—time during which the conditions must remain absolutely stable.
Once stitched, the file has a natural print size of approximately 100 × 80 cm without any upscaling, preserving exceptional detail and tonal depth.
In processing, I carefully balanced the tones from left to right to enhance the island’s sense of floating, subtly abstracting the scene. I also use a custom in-camera white balance technique, setting either the water or the sky as white. This gives me an almost white background at the point of capture, rather than relying on desaturation later in post-production.
It was a magical morning—one that remains vivid in my memory. I made three photographs that day, all of which I still cherish, and every return to Lake Toya brings that moment back to me.
