About the photographer

Brian Minami is a photojournalist and commercial photographer based in the Los Angeles area since 1988 — currently living in Gardena, California, a town in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. Brian shoots photojournalism, commercial photography, landscapes, street photography, headshots for actors and business, portraits, 3d stereo photography, community events and more.

Brian started taking pictures in high school, learning the zone system from Ansel Adams' books and using a 4x5 field camera in the tradition of the California landscape photographers. After going to school at UCLA (B.A., Study of Religion, 1993) and becoming more socially conscious, he began turning his camera toward people — his friends and neighbors in Venice, California. Around that time, he exchanged the old, wooden large format camera for the speed and portability of the legendary Nikon F 35mm camera.

In the late nineties, Brian joined the staff of the Rafu Shimpo [Los Angeles Japanese Daily News], a small, bilingual, community newspaper based in the Little Tokyo section of downtown Los Angeles. He covered news and community events, Japanese athletes, Los Angeles politics and Asian American culture. He also helped transition the paper from the old school lithographic halftone printing process to a digital workflow.

When the image quality of digital cameras largely surpassed that of film around 2005, Brian finally retired his manual Nikons and started using digital cameras for professional work. He opened his own studio and continues to shoot photojournalistic pictures. He works commercially for a diverse group of companies around the Los Angeles area including clothing companies, contractors, manufacturers and industrial clients. He produces headshots for actors, model portfolios, portraits and photos for the occasional wedding and quinceñera.

Other work

Brian is an amateur historian of Japanese American history with an interest in the World War II concentration camps for Japanese civilians in Lordsburg and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Please visit his web site documenting poetry created in Santa Fe, Many Mountains Surrounding. He is scheduled to speak about the issei imprisoned at Santa Fe at a conference to be held at the Palace of the Governors on April 21, 2012.

Also, Brian operates a web design and marketing company that specializes in creating search engine optimization and content strategies for business web sites.