Johnny Hymas was born in Yorkshire in 1934. He moved to Malvern with his parents when he was three years old and spent his childhood on his family farm until he was drafted to fight in the Korean War when he was eighteen. Thanks to his physical strength and agility, he was nominated to be a member of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps and was one of seven students out of 220 enrollees to graduate and become a Royal Army Physical Training Corps Instructor. After teaching for seven years he retired from his position and utilizing his gymnastic skills he became a professional acrobat performing in theatres and sports events throughout the world. It was during this period of travel that he began studying photography and opened his own studio in Hollywood. In 1969 he came to Japan and fell in love with the breathtaking nature of the archipelago which he considers to be a photographer’s paradise due to the great variety of subjects to study and photograph. In 1992, he was awarded the AVA multimedia Grand Prix Prize for his Hi-Vision presentation of Japan The Four Seasons. In 1995 he received the sixth Agricultural Award for his book Tambo The Sacred Fields. In 2005 his years of work was recognized by the Japanese government for having both domestically and internationally heightened the awareness of the importance of Japan’s natural environment and its ancient rice culture.