Journalist Paul Murray was slightly thrown when his photographic teacher told him to forget using a macro lens. "He said the best photographers technically were Japanese, so I might as well give up before I started."
There was also the matter of his build -- tall and gangling with (it has to be said) enormous hands and feet. Hardly easy to get down close to the earth to shoot the tiniest flower, or lean in close and still to record a quivering raindrop on a leaf.
Yet Paul puts every doubting Thomas to flight this month, exhibiting remarkable photographs in the Las Chicas restaurant complex in Tokyo's Omotesando.