After 30 years, Takashi Iwahashi hasn't lost any enthusiasm for his work. Even at age 57, he spends an average of 120 days a year on the world's mountain peaks and ridges, capturing their beauty on film.

Such devotion has made him one of Japan's leading mountain photographers, famed for such works as the 80-page "Mount Tanigawa" (1975), the 144-page "The Rockies" (1992) and the 112-page "Yari, Hotaka" (1999), which focused on the highest peaks of Japan's Northern Alps.

In Tokyo in early April after two weeks in the mountains of Tateyama, Toyama Prefecture, a tanned Iwahashi spoke to The Japan Times about his career.