Tomoko Yamamoto is a native of Tokyo, Japan where she visits twice a year regularly, but her current home base is Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She has a scientific background in that she earned her Bachelor`s degree in Biology (Tokyo Metropolitan University, 1966) followed by a second B.S. in Physics (Bradley University, Peopria, IL 1968) and a Ph.D. in Biophysics (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1974). She came to photography after a few years of research and teaching college-level physics. Her turning point was her 1977 photograph of the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York, which graced the cover of Cornell Alumni Magazine in 1991.

Later her impressionist reflection photos and other nature photos were exhibited in Maryland and the neighboring states of Virginia and Delaware. More recently she has started to include music in her career by presenting multimedia shows of songs and photographs with the vocal compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Schubert and her own. She has traveled to Europe (Germany, Austria, Italy, UK, etc.) during the summer for the past 16 years and have taken photographs, the themes of which have been mostly driven by her musical and literary interests.