Hiroshi Yamazaki was born in Nagano Prefecture in 1946 and studied photography in the Department of Art at Nihon University. In 1969 he became a freelance photographer, and in 1973 started making 16mm movies. The Photographic Society of Japan awarded him first prize in 1983 for a series of time-exposed photographs of the sun over the sea. One of his interests is pursuing the role light plays in photography, rather than just reproducing scenic beauty. He has recently introduced a series on cherry blossoms, capturing them against the sun with a super-telephoto lens, and another of cherry blossoms reproduced in photograms. In 2001, he was awarded the Ina Nobuo Award. In addition to an excellent career as a Japanese photographer, he became a full-time professor at Tohoku University of Art and Design in 1993 and also taught at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Princeton University Art Museum; the International Center of Photography in New York; and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.