Autumn Layers

The Hakone Open-Air Museum unfolds across a wide landscape of sculptures, paths, and open space. Visitors move between large works, their attention drawn outward and forward. I found myself slowing down, looking not at the scale of the setting, but at what lay quietly within it.

Near one of the outdoor sculptures, a small cluster of trees marked the seasonÕs change. Leaves overlapped in layers of green, gold, and red, each stage of autumn held within a single frame. It was an easily missed corner, passed by hundreds during the day, yet rich with colour and movement.

I stepped closer and narrowed my focus. The wider context fell away. What remained was a study of form, colour, and transition. The landscape no longer needed distance to speak, a fragment was enough.

Earlier in my journey as a photographer, I was drawn to wide vistas and sweeping scenes. Over time, my attention shifted toward finding the essential within the expansive. In Japan, this way of seeing is known as kiritori, the act of cutting out a meaningful fragment from the whole.

Here, location mattered less than attention. The image became about selection rather than scale, about noticing instead of trying to hold everything at once. Autumn revealed itself not as a panorama, but as a quiet conversation between leaves.

Seen through Vertique, the composition gathers colour and texture vertically, allowing the eye to move through layers of change. It offers a pause within abundance, showing how restraint can reveal depth. It is a reminder that sometimes meaning emerges most clearly when we choose what to leave out.