Looking back on 2025...
A compilation of all my work over the course of 2025; all in one place.
Hello again,
I hope you’ve settled into the holiday season and are enjoying your time with your loved ones and friends!
I know I said I would be taking a break from Explore & Photograph for a while—and I intend to—but there’s been a large influx of new readers over the last few months, so I thought it might be nice to compile everything I published throughout this year for anyone who would like to take a look at what they may have missed.
For those new to this newsletter, my name is James Rainsford, and I’m a high school teacher, photographer, and writer living in Japan. I originally started E&P in 2023 as a way to combine my love for street photography and writing. But I only published four pieces before abandoning it to focus on video projects for my now-defunct YouTube channel. Although the time I spent learning to make videos was fun, I eventually recognized that I was struggling to convey what I really wanted to share. I also hated speaking to a camera, especially in public. By contrast, writing has always been something I loved doing since I was a kid, when I used to doodle and write short stories for fun, long before I ever picked up a camera.
So at the start of this year, after growing bored of making YouTube videos, I picked things back up where I left off on Substack and have been publishing letters about once or twice a month about my travels and the places and events I’ve had the opportunity to photograph. And it’s rekindled my passion for writing that had been dormant for a few years after getting burned doing freelance writing for a brief stint post-university.
I think when I started things back up this year, there were maybe about 30 or so readers, mostly family and friends, so to now see several hundred people reading my letters every month is quite astonishing, to say the least.
So thank you for being here. It means a lot :)
Now that that’s out of the way, here’s my collection of letters I published this year! I hope you enjoy!
The Philippines
Between December, 2024 and January, I had the opportunity to visit the Philippines for the first time in about 10 years. This was about the time I was feeling motivated to start doing something creative again after quitting YouTube earlier that summer, and I settled on restarting my Substack. The following is a collection of thoughts and photos from my trip.
The Abandoned
After being enamored with the work of others for a long time, this year marked my first time photographing abandoned places in the countryside. My interest was first piqued in 2023 when I revisited Fukushima and saw many abandoned homes—I had done a lot of volunteer work in 2011 and 2012 following the earthquake and tsunami—but it wasn’t until this past winter that I finally went out with some friends to places out in deep, rural Chiba, where hardly anyone lives. I had thought to do more this year, but plans stalled, and it’s been a while since I last did any of this kind of photography. But here are a few places I did shoot this year!
The Matsuri
During my YouTube days, I started several documentary projects centered on Japanese Matsuri that have carried over into this year of writing on Substack. While many of them, like Narita Gion and Fukagawa Hachiman, are festivals I’ve been to a few times, there were a few that I visited for the first time, with the most notable being Kanamara Matsuri in Kawasaki City. While I didn’t write a letter for every festival I visited, I did cover several of the major ones I attended, which you can find below.
Life and the City
The following letters are one-off pieces that don’t belong to a series like some of the others I’ve written this year. Instead, they are a collection of personal observations, reflections, and thoughts from doing street photography and traveling in Japan over the past year. Maybe you’ll resonate with something, or at the very least, enjoy some of the photos!
And that wraps up 2025 for Explore and Photograph!
I was pretty rusty when I got back into the swing of things, but I think the quality of my writing has gradually improved over the past year as I got back into rhythm. Writing is a perishable skill that you have to keep developing to maintain, and like with photography or any other craft, there’s always more room for continual growth.
I’ll be back sometime next year in Q1, so until then, have a happy holiday!
enjoy the holidays and your time away! I’m new here but very much looking forward to all that’s to come!