Shihori Watanabe

"More than taking pictures, what matters first is to cherish the time itself." Those are the words of Shihori Watanabe ( @shihori_watanabe ), who continues to capture life through her lens while traveling the world with her family of four.
Rather than dramatic landscapes, it is the small things that move her — her child's sleeping face in the morning light, a single beam streaming through a window. What is it, then, that she is truly looking at on this journey?
We spoke with her about her approach to photography and the gear she has chosen to take along.

What I value most in daily life isn't the act of taking a photograph — it's cherishing the time itself first.
While I'm with my children or my family, a feeling will quietly rise in me: "Ah, this is a beautiful moment." It's as a natural extension of that feeling that I press the shutter.
I often shoot from a slightly removed distance, sensing the conversation and the atmosphere of the place. And it isn't only the children — the morning light, the wind, the landscape of the field — whatever moves my heart in that moment, I try to keep.

For me, a photograph isn't so much "something to help me remember" — it's closer to "something that holds a time that truly existed."
We forget, inevitably. But even when something slips from memory, I feel the photograph still remembers that time for us.
And photographs aren't only about preserving the past. They weave themselves into our conversations now, letting those moments overlap with the present again and again. That's why I want to keep not only the special moments, but also the ordinary days — carefully, with care.

It isn't really that I'm doing anything special. It's more that when I find a place or a time where I feel "this light is beautiful," my heart responds honestly to it.
Of course the morning and evening light are wonderful, but even in the middle of the day I'm often drawn to the light filtering through a curtain, or the gentle light reflected off something.
Rather than trying to direct the subject, simply being in light that feels comfortable to me, with the people I love just existing within it — that already feels like enough. Those are the moments I keep in my photographs.

With my client work, I try to sense — carefully and attentively — the invisible love that flows within each family, and hold that in a photograph.
They say love cannot be seen, but when you're there in that space, there are moments when you can feel, certainly, that it exists. I try to scoop up, like water, the small warmth and preciousness that live in everyone's ordinary life — those delicate, fleeting moments.
When I photograph my own family, on the other hand, I let go of that tension a little. I place myself inside the time, and press the shutter when something moves me. "Taking a photograph" and "cherishing the moment" begin to overlap naturally — and I find a quiet beauty in that kind of time itself.

On the road, it's not the grand landscapes of the world that move me, but the expressions my children show me without thinking, the small gestures they don't even notice.
The famous views are beautiful too, of course. But what draws me more deeply is the sight of my family living within those views — moments that feel like a natural extension of daily life.
Even now, as we travel across America in an RV, it's the unchanging sight of my children's sleeping faces in the morning sun, or the quiet moment when light pours in through the window, that I want to keep above everything else.
Rather than where we've been, I want to hold onto who I was with, and what kind of time we shared.

I shoot with the FUJIFILM X-T5. For lenses, I used to carry the XF23mm F1.4 and the XF35mm F1.4.
For this journey around the world, I wanted to travel light — but I also wanted to keep the same way of seeing that I had back home in Japan. So I welcomed the NOKTON 23mm F1.2 into my kit, and now I carry only two lenses: the NOKTON and the XF35mm F1.4.
Taking photographs isn't the purpose in itself for me, so I need something light enough not to be a burden. And I love that these lenses render the world in a way that feels close to what my own eyes see — close to the air I'm standing in.

With the OPF 550-S, I feel that the softness of the light and the gentleness of the air are captured more naturally. I especially love how, in backlight, the light doesn't become harsh — instead, it takes on this quality of wrapping around the subject tenderly.
And more than anything, what moves me is the moment I look through the viewfinder and see the beauty of the world itself. That quiet "oh, it's beautiful" that rises in me the instant I look — the temperature and humidity of the place, the small thrill of that moment — it all feels as though it's preserved in the photograph, just as it was.

At the moment, I'm traveling the world with my family of four, photographing what feels like an extension of our ordinary days.
We're currently crossing the United States in an RV, and from here we plan to head to Iceland, and then on to Europe.
What I'm feeling along the way, the kinds of light I'm meeting — the warmth of each day that doesn't quite fit inside a photograph, and the quieter thoughts behind the journey — I write about all of it in my note membership, "めぐる。くらす。つづる。" ("Meguru. Kurasu. Tsuzuru." — To wander, to live, to write).
It would make me very happy if you'd join me on a journey that cares less about where we've been, and more about who we were with, and the time we shared.