Please tell me your opinion

Thanks for reading. What if a photographer who can speak English introduces you nice destinations and take some great snapshots for you, would you like to buy this service?

I'm not qualified as an English tour guide, but have skills of photography and editing.
I'm planning to start this new business in JPN for tourists.

I would appreciate if you could give me your idea about this plan.

Thanks for reading. What if a photographer who can speak English introduces you nice destinations and take some great snapshots for you, would you like to buy this service?

There are already several services like this available in Japan, so there is a market there.

I'm not qualified as an English tour guide, but have skills of photography and editing.
I'm planning to start this new business in JPN for tourists.

Be careful to structure your business to avoid the laws regarding tour guiding. Depending on how you run your tours, they may be illegal without a licensed guide.

Thank you so much for the kind advice. Yes,I should be careful running this business with out having the tour guide license. Probably I should take the test for volunteer guide and only charge for the photos....

volunteer in Japanese language, means no money earning. what you want to do is "�����‚�", forcing to buy it by exchanging with the guide.
I don't know there is a business like that in Japan, as yllwsmrf said.
in general, you can't open your business in public space in Japan.

OP wrote;
I'm not qualified as an English tour guide, but have skills of photography and editing.

I'm not sure what the other poster yllwsmrf is talking about either, but I do think it's common for a group of tourists to hire one photographer to travel together just to take snap shots, but not to introduce destinations.

So are you saying that you don't just want to do photography, but that you wish to do a bit of tour-guiding when you're not skilled at it? I'm not really sure what the point is.

I don't think his attention here was to trick people into giving free tours then forcing them to buy photos

i believe that he came up with a business idea where he like a few others offering free tour but the difference is he offer his photography and editing service to people who would like to take pictures at areas.

offering free travel guide is nothing new on japan-guide or other japan forums, i have seen people offer free travel guide, but the people who do offer free travel give all the information, some do it to help better their english and they say it.

Like yllwsmrf said, "Be careful to structure your business to avoid the laws regarding tour guiding. Depending on how you run your tours, they may be illegal without a licensed guide."

I see nothing wrong with what he is doing offering free tour, problem is because he will be making money from photography and editing. IF the person accept it, it become a business transaction because of the cash transaction being made. so you are walking that fine line.

again, i don't see nothing wrong with it as long he tells the people from the start or post all the informtion about offering photography and editing service than he should be ok.

but

IF he ONLY does free tours guide for people who ONLY buy photography and editing than he is Considered i believe a business and may be illegal without a licensed guide.

in my opinion, you are walking a fine line between being a not a business and being business.

There seems to be a lot of confusion here over the OP's question, and it seems the thread is getting sidetracked over unrelated details.

The question is whether or not providing guided photo walk tours and vacation photography is a feasible business idea. I say yes, because there are several companies already operating in Tokyo and Japan providing such a service.

Here's one from japan-guide's tours page:
http://www.japanphotoguide.com/

And there are several more on google:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=japan%20photo%20tour

To OP also says:
I'm not qualified as an English tour guide, but have skills of photography and editing.

That plus his follow up post says that he is aware that in Japan guiding in a foreign language requires a tour guide licence, and that he is not currently licensed.

Note that this isn't necessarily a deal breaker as the rules are ambiguous and there are several ways that established businesses in your position already operate to bypass this law. One that was already mentioned is to structure the tours in such as way that you are selling some other service, like professional photography, and the guiding is included on a volunteer basis. In this case I'm not sure you'd be exempt from the guiding laws unless your photo tours were in Japanese and had minimal "guiding" done in English. Alternatively, you could hire a licensed guide or become licensed yourself, but that's probably cost prohibitive. It's a fine line that you'll have to figure out, but there clearly are ways to do it as other businesses are doing it.

Thank you so much for you all. As you know I'm Japanese, so might have been hard to catch the bottom line of what I really want to do because of my lack of vocabulary.

Seeing tourism in JPN,
.Many foreigners visit here but mostly can't speak Japanese.
.There are lots of interesting places that aren't on guide books.
.Some tourists wish to be taken good photos by a pro photographer.

My thoughts are
.I would like them to enjoy JPN a lot.
.I can communicate with them in English.
.I can provide nice photos to them.
.To take them to the siteseeing places as a tour guide and receive the reward, lisence is required.
.I could do the job as a photographer but not a tour guide.All I can do is just introducing fun places and accompany with them.

Sorry to confuse you, and do appreciate you all.
All I wanted to know was this system is attractive enough to tourists from overseas.
By bunta

if you think your idea is great, you may go to the nearest tourist center, tell your idea to the manager, and ask his/her opinion.
if he/she hesitates to answer it, it means your idea is not welcome.
�������Ȃ��������̍l�����������Ǝv���̂Ȃ�A�ό��ē����̏����Ɉӌ��𕷂��Ă݂Ă��������B�������̐l�������ɋ�����悤�Ȃ�A���Ȃ��̃A�C�f�A�͗ǂ��Ȃ��A�C�f�A�ł��B

Surely it's more relevant to note that there are already successful businesses operating under this model in Japan.

Just my opinion, but I'm not sure if there really is a market for professional quality snapshots. People seem happy to take their own snapshots/selfies and most of them end up on facebook or emailed and viewed on screen where quality is not an important consideration.

I agree with Ed.
I, along with most of the people I know well, aren't the least interested in having our photo taken professionally .
We also have sort-of-unique interests.

We will take a couple of photos showing a temple from a distance, then take several dozen photos of small details of the temple and surroundings...like a corner of a roof, a water spout, some moss on the ground..an unusual shrub etc..a bird or fish or..

In response to the last two posts, professional vacation photography is an established industry which pretty much dates back to the invention of photography itself. It's also a quickly expanding industry as the facebook generation come of age and are willing to spend on these kinds of luxuries.

Sorry for barging in (since I'm a Japanese traveller), but we should keep in mind that people like the OP would be taking photos from a distance.

In other words, while people today take selfies and snapshots with their own cameras easier than we used to, they still can't take photos of themselves from, let's say, 10 meters away unless they ask someone to press the shutter.

Professional photographers can do that for you. They can catch a good moment and take photos of you from a distance without you not even knowing it.

That said, I think people today also enjoy taking advise from professionals. For example, a friend who just came back from a trip (in the U.S.) took photos from an angle recommended by his tour guide, and this guide also through sand for the tour so that tourists can get better shots of the sunbeam. The tourist would then upload these photos on facebook.

This is a huge risk but you will never know how successful you will be if you don't do it.

Hmmm,

If I were visiting Japan, and I didn't know how to take picture or edit them myself as you do, then perhaps I would be interested in your service.

As for what should you do, as it has already been said "you wont know till your try", so if its really something you enjoy doing & you want to make a life/business of it, then I say "Go for it!".

A winner is a looser that keeps on trying. The point of this statement is to encourage you, so don't give up on your dream!, even if you fail miserably.

Thanks again everyone. I would like to listen to opinions from overseas because I think only tourists from other countries are my future clients. I wouldn't ask opinions to Japnese people.

To tell you the truth, if I were visiting Japan and you offer me your photo sightseeing service, I would have said No thank you.

What caught my attention is your guide service you would be offering
There are lots of interesting places that aren't on guide books.�h
I can communicate with them in English. - - - and you can help the tourist communicate with locals in Japanese
To take them to the sightseeing places as a tour guide and receive the reward, lisence is required.
I can do is just introducing fun places and accompany with them.

I would hire you for that, in return I would pay you for fee. But that me.