Career milestones as a photographer

by admin on May 17, 2013

So, recently I felt like I had hit some kind of milestone in my photography career, so I’m going to talk about that a little bit. It wasn’t my first one, and I’m really hoping that it won’t be my last one, but somehow this one was important to me.

Late last year Japanese magazine and newsstand fixture AERA let me shoot one of their longest running regular articles called ‘Gendai no Shouzou’ (現代の肖像 translated: Portrait of the Times) – which basically is an in-depth profile on someone prominent in Japan at that moment. Usually it takes a few months to shoot and write the story, which means hanging out with the subject a lot and finding a good way to shoot some kind of iconic portrait.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong

I’ve shot regularly for AERA for a while now, but this was kind of the first time I really felt I’d had real trust invested in me. Like I’d made it to the next level in a video game suddenly. The milestone for me was not being able to shoot these portraits – rather that I finally felt some kind of acceptance within that Japanese publication. This is a huge deal for me because it was a goal that I always had doubts about being able to achieve, which might be hard to get for some people but those that live here will understand.

Granted, it may not seem like a big thing, but to me it meant that my hard work was vindicated, at least in part. It told me that things will happen if I keep my head down, concentrate on shooting, and continue to get my work in front of people I want to work with. It told me that I didn’t have to host exhibitions and enter competitions to get noticed and hired. Most importantly, it told me that progress was being made.

Progress – more accurately the feeling of progress – is an extremely powerful form of motivation for freelancers, and I’ve learnt to never take it for granted. There are a lot of us out there who want to become photographers, and every one of us is going to walk a different path towards that goal. Some of us won’t make it, because this shit is hard and being a photographer requires much more discipline that many people imagine starting out. But we all have to try, and in the end, we can only measure our weird career by the personal milestones we’ve struck along the way.  It could be the first time you scored a paying job on your terms; it could be the first tax return you file with just photography earnings; it could even be the first time you nail that off-camera flash portrait that you were sweating over the night before (I remember my very first photo shoot: portrait of a chef at an Indian restaurant, one light into a shoot-thru umbrella, I couldn’t sleep the night before, which to me is hilarious now). Whatever the case, these little career markers dotted along the trail are important, and I hope any of you aspiring photographers out there are keeping track of them. It’ll help you keep going.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong Portraits Editorial

If you’re out there struggling with the rest of us, share some inspiration and drop us a line in the comments with any milestones in your career you might have hit recently. Don’t worry if it doesn’t seem too much of a big deal – what is success but the slow and steady accumulation of small triumphs over time?  Just keep at it, don’t sweat, and count the good things that happen. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll all make it.

Also, for those curious – the person in these portraits is Sadahiro Nakamura, CEO of TRANSIT General Office, a design company that’s been responsible for producing some of the most popular restaurants/venues in Tokyo recently. Bills in Omotesando is a good example. If you’re in Tokyo and have a penchant for design-centric interiors as well as good food, then you’ve most likely been to one of his restaurants. Over the course of the 3 months that we covered him for the story I shot a variety of portraits of him as well as a ton of documentary shots –  here are three portraits of him that I think worked out pretty well.

More to come soon!

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - editorial portraits

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Are you having fun yet? Why test shooting is important

by admin on April 3, 2013

We live in interesting times for photography.

Technology has changed the landscape of the craft beyond recognition over the past 5 years. Each new generation of cameras outstrips the models of the previous years by exponential factors. Professional grade RAW video is cheaper than ever. Photography has never been easier to learn, and as a result hundreds of new ‘professionals’ are flooding into the industry, stars in their eyes with the promise of glamor-filled photoshoots. Some of these photographers are terrible. Most of them are decent. Enough of them are phenomenal. There are countless photographers out there better than you, and a scary amount of them are younger than you. Every day that you aren’t shooting photos, thousands of truly awesome photos are being made – and none of them are yours. Everyday that you don’t pick up the camera, that you decide to ‘take a break’, the rest of the photography world surges on ahead of you and without you. Not to mention that technology convergence means that photographers need to learn other disciplines; videography, sound editing, motion control, advanced photoshop techniques, in order to stay relevant. You need to learn all of these things but you don’t have time. Plus you need to stay at the top of your game in the still photography world. And you need to take into account that people who are younger, more talented and hungrier than you are going to take your hard-won territory away.  What a dizzying field of competition we find ourselves in. What insurmountable heights that we struggle to overcome. Photography is difficult, and getting more difficult everyday. Five years in this business and I’ve never been able to relax once, despite being a ‘free’lancer.

Holy shit right? Makes me question my why I tried so hard to get in this industry in the first place. Sure, it was partly for the love of it. But another part of me thinks that I just wanted to prove that I could. Well, I proved it alright, and now I’m stuck with it, for better or for worse.  I didn’t have a backup plan when I started down this path – I don’t have any other skills. If my wings fail me I don’t have a parachute to guide me down safely. Either way here I am, and the struggle to stay afloat in this industry and stay ahead of my competition looks like it will be mine for the rest of my life. I’ll never be able to simply leave my work at work. I’ll never be able to just appreciate a great photo without feeling like I just got my ass whipped. The irony is not lost. The idea of being able to set my own hours and be my own boss seemed nice when I first got into this business, but it doesn’t seem like that anymore. Set your own hours? HAHAHAHA. You never stop working. Not if you want to lose ground in an epic fashion.

So, you photographers, like me, who have just stepped into this industry with high hopes of making it, I have one question to ask you; Are you having fun yet?

Well, ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET?

Because fuck it, you’d better be having fun right? If you’re not having fun, then you should probably get a different job; one with health insurance benefits, a pension, other things that are useful in living your life.  As freelance photographers in an oversaturated market it’s so easy to get lost in the ratrace of social networking, self-promotion, image licensing issues, declining editorial rates that we forget. to. have. fun. Sometimes you just need to hang out with your friends and shoot something just for the heck of it. Why else did we try so hard to get into this industry? Well – for me at least – it was for the lulz. And I try not to lose sight of that when I pick up the camera in my spare time these days.

Here are photos from a fairly recent test shoot I did recently with a bunch of people I usually hang out with. These photos aren’t going to rock any art director’s world. Thematically it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of my work, and the premise for the shoot was very loose. Personally I feel that it lacks focus and the only reason why the photos work is because my model is a superstar. Does this mean I wasted my time with this test shoot? Hell no. Here’s a truncated list why:
1. I got to hang out with my friends and eat pizza (mmm pizza)
2. I’m more familiar with what my makeup artist can do and how long it takes
3. I now know that three speedlights in a Lastolite tri-flash is a decent substitute for a beauty dish as a key light in a pinch
4. Also – you can’t plug a 900v smoke machine into a Profoto Batpac and expect it to work for more than a minute
5. I learned a Vagabond battery can power my Einstein and a 500W Profoto D1 at the same time
6. Lighting a scene with a single strongly gelled red flash isn’t as dumb as it sounds
7. The PLM mount for the Einstein glued to a $10 saucer from Tokyu Hands makes a great prop satellite dish
8. Did I mention pizza?

All this stuff above is really the icing on the cake after a fun day of shooting photos and reaffirming that I love this craft and love working with like-minded people. Learning something is an inevitable bonus every time you do a test shoot. Getting a sweet photo for your book is an unexpected joy. But not getting one shouldn’t take away your enjoyment of simply making images. If you are having fun, know that you aren’t losing in this business. You may not be winning, but you sure as hell are not losing.

As Zack Arias said in this video, we aren’t curing cancer with a camera. I try to keep that in mind when I head out to shoot. I might shoot something awesome tomorrow – I might even start to feel I can relax into this job. But in the meantime, I sure as hell am gonna have some lulz.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (1)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (2)

 

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (8)Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (3)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (4)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (5)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (6)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (7)

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What to say when photographing people

by admin on March 6, 2013

Here’s something that I’ve never really thought about all that much – what exactly do I say to people during a photoshoot?  More importantly, what’s the right thing to say? I shoot photos of people for a living and I think I am confident in winning the trust of my subjects, but to this day I’ve never really sat down and tried to break down my process for approaching my subjects and – essentially – getting them to do what I want before my time is up.

So let’s begin at the start of this whole process – I’ve arrived (hopefully) early at the location, and set up my gear.  Next is usually the painfully long wait for the subject to arrive/get interviewed/finish getting ready, in which every possible excruciating thought passes through your mind: ‘what if he/she is in a bad mood?’ ‘what if the lighting I’ve set up doesn’t work for them?’ ‘what if they take a look at the setup and don’t like it?’ ‘is there a better spot I could have chosen to photograph at?’. And inevitably, this thought enters your mind: ‘what the hell are we going to talk about?’ What, indeed?

Take the photos from July 4 last year when I shot these portraits of award-winning J-actors Mirai Moriyama and Hikari Mitsushima. (As a side note, Moriyama is actually in one of my favourite J-movies Sekai no Chushin de Ai wo Sakebu, which is a tear jerker about a guy who loses his highschool sweetheart to leukaemia). Anyway – there they are, and for some reason I’m having a bit more trouble connecting with them as I do with other subjects. Who knows, maybe they’re tired from a long day of interviews,maybe they’re a little thrown by this guy who speaks slightly weird Japanese. Either way, I’m not getting much of a reaction from either of them, and I can literally hear their managers watching us thinking ‘what kind of guy have they sent us here?’ Never a healthy thing to have going through the back of my mind. So – I decide to bust out the big guns.  I tell them it’s my birthday. Which, it in fact was (July 4 baby!).

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (2)

Anyway, I don’t know what kind of reaction I was expecting but they flipped out and actually started singing happy birthday to me, which was pretty amazing. I mean, how often do you have two actors, both of whom you’ve seen on screen, singing happy birthday to you?  The rest of the shoot, we basically just talked about, well, me; where I am from, how I first came to Japan, etc. They relaxed and did everything I told them to, and most importantly, everyone had a good time.

Funny thing was, after the shoot once we had left the building, I was talking with the writer from the magazine that I was with about how she thought everything went, and after telling me she thought the shoot went well also asked me this: “Is it really your birthday today?” Of course on that day it was, but the question kind of led me to wonder what I would and would not say to get a reaction out of my subject, if my photoshoot was really in a nosedive. At the time she asked me, I thought it was ludicrous that she thought I would straight out lie, and I still don’t think I would, but how far would I actually go to save my skin (and the job)?

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (1)

On the whole though, I’m usually pretty good with engaging with subjects.  I do my research but don’t come across as stalky. I can usually keep their attention with some banal but vaguely involving chatter while I shoot or adjust my settings. I bring other people into the shooting process by telling them to stand where I want my subjects to look (often leading to some hilarious moments), or talking up how much I like the job the hair stylist did, etc. Usually I find, especially when shooting celebrities, that keep the focus of the chatter away from them works best, because the last thing they want to do after promoting their new venture on TV/radio/print/press conference is to rehash it for you again.

Here’s something I started doing out of sheer boredom, but I find (I hope) it helps my ability to come up with idle smalltalk throughout the duration of a shoot. Here it is: whenever I meet someone new, I make it a personal challenge to see how long I can talk to them  without having to ask or be asked the 3 OBVIOUS QUESTIONS. They are:

1. What job they do.
2. How they know our mutual acquaintance.
3. Where they are from.

I used to dread meeting new people because these stupid questions inevitably come up in the first 10 seconds, and there is literally a 93% chance the answer will be BORING. So I stopped asking them, and now I try to prevent the other person from asking them as long as possible. Which means I need to find distracting things to talk about, for as long as possible, so the person I’m talking to doesn’t have to fall back on the 3 OBVIOUS QUESTIONS to keep the conversation rolling. Also, it’s more fun for me, although probably not good manners from a social interaction perspective.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Japanese Actors (3)

 

Anyway, that’s my fairly disorganized take on the art of engaging with your subjects. Hope you enjoyed reading it and at least now have some idea of what goes on in my head while I fumble around with my camera settings.  Hope I can stay on this posting streak that I’m on lately! See you guys soon.

 

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Spruce up your office (portraits)

by admin on February 28, 2013

So.

A lot of my work somehow ends up being done in offices in Tokyo. I’ve shot all sorts of people in boardrooms, office lobbies, corridors, etc, because let’s face it, most of Tokyo where the business goes down is just one gigantic office, split up into millions of tinier sections.  And let’s also face it; a lot of those offices are pretty careworn, drab places.

Now, I’m a little bit ADHD in the fact that I get bored if I always shoot the same type of portrait in essentially the same type of environment. It’s safe, sure, but I need some more cowbell in order to feel like I’m really earning my pay .

Consider the shot below of Dr. Thomas Kaberger, executive board chairman of the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation for Recharge Magazine.  I had to settle for a boardroom photo (taking him outside to do the portraits would have added very little thematic value to the shot), but I also wanted to make it contextual somehow – suitable for an editorial portrait rather than just a straight corporate headshot. So, the biggest question – the one that needed to be solved immediately – is how do I make this shot contextual with an essentially bare meeting room as my setting?

Tokyo Editorial Portrait Photographer Irwin Wong (4)

 

In the photo below you can pretty much see the entire three light setup for projecting the miniature turbine on the wall behind Dr. Kaberger. Getting the shadow projection right required quite a bit of trial and error, but I figured out that the best way to get it done was to zoom in the flash head, snoot it and place it as far away from the turbine as possible. Think about how sharp your shadow is on a sunny day; that’s because the sun is super far away and looks tiny to you – which are the principles I used in trying to place my flash relative to the turbine.

The other two lights are a gridded SB unit for the main light and another SB with a short snoot to provide a little separation. These lights needed to be restricted so my nice little shadow wasn’t obliterated by light spillage. You can just out the rest of the behind the scenes shots below.

Tokyo Editorial Portrait Photographer Irwin Wong (6)

Tokyo Editorial Portrait Photographer Irwin Wong (5)

Tokyo Editorial Portrait Photographer Irwin Wong (7)

Here’s a bonus shot for you featuring Japanese actor Toru Baba, once again in another featureless meeting room. For this story he was being interviewed about his role as a detective investigating the Atami murder incident – a fairly gruesome (true?) story involving the slaying of a couple down at a beach resort. Anyway – this time I used a fern as a ‘cookie’ (or cucoloris) to project some hopefully ominous shadows on the wall behind him. That’s it for today! More stuff to come soon – well, hopefully at least.

Tokyo Editorial Portrait Photographer Irwin Wong (8)

 

 

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GAIJIN – Bellamy Hunt

by admin on February 22, 2013

Here is another addition to my Gaijin project, which involves photographing foreigners living in Japan who have somehow managed to forge their own path living here in this often bizarre country – and have done it in an interesting fashion.

There are many types of foreigners in Japan, with just as many grey areas in between – for example there are many expats and their families who get sent to work at the Tokyo branch of their big foreign company; there are people who have a Japanese spouse and have decided to make their life here, and then there are gaijin – like me – who originally came to Japan thinking that they’d only stay long enough to get up to some adventure and mischief, but ended up falling in love with this country and never left. It’s stories of these gaijin that particularly interest me – seeing as I am one of them – because I like to hear about the journey they took from their first job in Japan (often as an English teacher) to the interesting little niche they’ve carved for themselves. And believe me when I say it’s a tough journey.

This time around I’ve photographed my good friend Bellamy Hunt – also known on the web as the Japan Camera Hunter. As his name suggests, he’s built a business out of locating rare camera, lenses and other uncommon photographic paraphernalia for buyers and collectors around the world.  This is an example of a job that can only be done in Tokyo – the abundance, variety and amazing quality of second hand camera shops in Tokyo is unparalleled in the rest of the world.  Not that that makes his job easy – Bellamy has sniffed out some truly rare and coveted items – like this Nikon 6mm Fisheye and other, absurdly expensive uppity European cameras. Needless to say, Bellamy is the man to speak to if you need help locating cameras and cool mount-modified custom lenses.

If you know of any interesting gaijin, or if you would like to be photographed, let me know! I’ll shoot you some nice portraits as a thank you! Here are other other posts from this series:
Brett Bull – The Tokyo Reporter
Scott T Hards – CEO Hobbylink Japan
Hugh Ashton – Novelist, writer 

 

 

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It’s…THE YEAR OF THE SNAKE

by admin on January 7, 2013

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I know my New Year’s post is kinda late, but I’ve been super, unbelievably busy showing my relatives around Japan in between wrapping up the year in regards to work and all the stuff related to that. Now that things have calmed down somewhat, I can finally get back to being consumed completely by my job (it’s more fun than it sounds).

Anyway, without any further ado, I present to you… The Year of the Snake!! This is slightly different to last year’s New Year’s post, in which I did a film-noir style photo series based on a short-story (here), but the main premise is the same – which is getting some of my good friends together and doing something fun with them.  This year I decided to take everyone that I had fun working with this year and throw them all into a movie poster for a fictional movie called ‘The Year of the Snake’. Why snakes? Well, according to the Chinese and Japanese zodiacs, 2013 is of course the year of Snake, so to all my homies out there born under the sign of the snake, this is your year to shine!  As far as the poster went – I put together the whole thing in Photoshop using various brushes, textures and stock sky images. The text was fairly easy, as was the Kanji calligraphy (thanks Mijonju for that), and the 7 people (including me) were photographed in my tiny Tokyo kitchen over three days on a black background, which I masked out later.  Technically it wasn’t super difficult – certainly the most challenging part of this whole assignment was trying to organise everyone’s schedules so I could photograph everyone in time to print out a batch before the New Year’s holidays kicked in.  It was surprisingly difficult, and a more than a bit inconvenient trying to fit it in around everything else that was going on that month, but in my opinion it’s worth enduring a bit of inconvenience if you’re trying create something for yourself.

There’s a phrase in Japanese that goes お世話になる (o-sewa ni naru), which literally means to come under the care of someone. I don’t think there is really an equivalent phrase in English but basically you use it to show your thanks for being helped/involved/advised/referred, etc; in other words, to have been a consideration in their thoughts sometime in the past. It’s a really great way to show your gratitude for anything good that someone’s done for you.  Anyway, the six people in the poster below (the seventh person is me) have really helped me out over the past year, whether it’s been sticking with me through a weird personal project, helping me out with bits of advice, or generally just being there to provide moral support. It’s been an absolute pleasure having having them around for the duration of last year and I hope we can all continue working closely together in the year of the snake. So to the 6 special people below, I say お世話になりました、これからもよろしくお願いします。I’ve written a little intro to each person below, so if you’re curious you can check them out once you scroll down.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Happy new year post (1)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Happy new year post (7)

Asuka: Asuka’s my fiance, and if I’ve come under the care of someone this past year then well, I can’t really go past her. What can I say? She does everything. She keeps my life from becoming a squalid mess, she helps me keep my perspective when things go a little weird, she’s a constant supportive presence that never doubts me. She’s been there from the start since I was just starting out in my career and never stopped believing in me. Basically I’d be a slobbering mess without her. Also we’re getting married this year in July so I’m sure I’ll be posting a lot more about that in the coming months.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Happy new year post (3)

Mijonju: AKA Michel Jones, AKA the host of the popular camera-related Youtube channel The Mijonju Show, Mijonju has done more than anyone this year to help me with my photoshoots, weird projects and basically just been a solid, dependable presence who I can trust to put 110% into everything despite the little-to-no compensation that I can offer him.  A capable photographer, fantastic assistant and retoucher, he is someone who has definitely had my back throughout the whole year. Hope I can continue working with him well into the future, and be as much of a help to him as he has been to me.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Happy new year post (4)

Maiko: AKA Maity, Maiko is a very talented hair and makeup artist who has given up a lot of her time, often at the drop of a hat, to help me with any hare-brained project that comes to mind. She’s also adept at special effects makeup, which is evident from the way she transformed Mijonju (above) from a human into a snake-man type character. One of the many other projects for which she helped me out was The Wedding, in which she was responsible for much of the gore dropping down my face. Maiko is a supremely talented artist whom I hope to continue working with closely this year as well.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Happy new year post (2)

Will: One of my oldest friends in Japan, Will has given up a lot of his time to help me as an assistant on those gruelling wedding shoots, not to mention as a very capable Steadicam operator for The Wedding. A capable photographer in his own right, I hope we can make time this year to work on some of those film projects that we’re always talking about making.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Happy new year post (5)

Keiichi: Keiichi is another one of the guys around me who just gets it. He’s hardworking, skilled in multiple disciplines, fun to work with and trustworthy, which in my opinion ticks all the boxes as someone I want to work with. His skills as a photographer and videographer + editor are invaluable to me, not to mentiont the fact that he is nearly always available to lend his time to me. I’m looking forward to borrowing his expertise this year, as much as last year.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Happy new year post (6)

Bellamy: AKA Japan Camera Hunter – I’ve seen this guy build his business straight from the ground up, but he always has time to come and be in front the camera as part of my silly personal projects. Bellamy is a great guy who always has time for me, and I hope I can begin to repay the many favours he’s accumulated over the years. We have some pretty neat ideas coming through the pipeline – hopefully we can bring them to you soon.

So there you have it! Happy new year – I’m looking forward the furthering my creative endeavours in 2013, the year of the snake, and hopefully have a lot of fun in the process. One of the things I’m also excited to bring back this year are strobe masterclasses, so please keep an eye out for those in the near future. Other than that, I just want to thank the people who have helped me grow myself as a photographer over the past year – I’m looking forward to more good times, cool projects and meeting new faces this year.

More to come soon!

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GAIJIN: Hugh Ashton, Writer

by admin on December 5, 2012

Here is another addition to my side project of Gaijinwho do interesting things around and about Tokyo (click image for larger version).  This time I’ve photographed freelance writer and novelist Hugh Ashton, whose been living in Japan for nearly a quarter of a century out in Kamakura.  Of the many things he does, one of his most notable recent endeavours is expanding the venerable mythos of Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Watson.  To date he’s written three volumes of Holmes novellas / short stories and 1 full length novel, is a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and enjoys the approval and endorsement of the Conan Doyle Estate (the writer of the original books).  Pretty cool stuff!  Other than that he freelances for various domestic and overseas publications and has a website here where you can check out his books.

Many thanks must go to the people of the battleship Mikasa Preservation Society which was where we shot this photo.  She’s an English-built ship from the 1910′s complete with Victorian-style fittings belowdecks, and she was sold off to Japan where she has spent the rest of her life (much like Hugh himself, some might say?). Hugh is a member of the Mikasa Preservation Society and without him I wouldn’t have been able to procure the location. Many thanks also must go to Capt. Kouta and Rear Admiral Nakamura for being so accommodating and letting us set up right in the middle of Admiral Togo’s dining room, even with tourists milling about.  The awesome outfit was supplied by Suzy Walker at www.tokyoplayers.org.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong

How I made this shot:

I’ve never shot on board a boat before but one thing I’ve realised is that ships generally don’t have must space *at all*. Roofs are low, floor space is limited, and there are shiny bits and specular surfaces everywhere which makes it difficult to have flashes going off everywhere without things getting out of hand. What’s worse is that there is a lot of polished dark wood which in addition to soaking up a lot of light, gives off harsh reflections as well, which makes it a bastard to photograph. Adding to this poop-fest is the fact that the roof is barely two meters high, and WHITE, meaning that if I don’t keep light off it, it’s going to become unnecessarily bright and generally ugly, taking away from the cozy warm atmosphere.

One thing I’m aware of the minute I see the location for the first time is that I’m not going to nail the shot that I want in-camera with the gear and time I have. There simply isn’t enough space and too many difficult surfaces to deal with all the shadows/harsh reflections that will be thrown everywhere once I start putting my flashes all over the place. Rather than try nail the whole scene in camera, I decided to nail specific portions of the frame in camera and composite those parts back into the final frame.

I started with lighting Hugh – using in total three lights to get the effect I wanted. The first light – the key light – was flash with a snoot and orange gel clamped to the roof (you can see the Pocket Wizard hanging down from the top right of the frame). This flash was motivated by the light that would be coming from the main ceiling fixture. The next light is another Nikon flash with a slightly less extreme orange gel on a stand to camera left, filling in Hugh’s top-hat and chest. The third one you can see in the frame – Mr. Nakamura holding yet another Nikon flash with a Lumiquest Softbox III – his role is to give some nice edge lighting to the right side of Hugh’s body.

That’s the base photo below – the rest of the work involved carefully lighting the rest of the frame with a gridded frame and putting them together in Photoshop (that’s a whole other can of worms).

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it! If you know a gaijin who should be photographed, or if you would like to be photographed for this project, drop me a line at irwin@irwinwong.com. I’ll shoot you some nice straight portraits for you to use for social media or whatever as a form of compensation :)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong

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Nintendo’s Miyamoto Shigeru – It’s on like Donkey Kong (Literally)

by admin on November 19, 2012

In the lead up to the release of the Wii U console recently, I photographed Nintendo’s creative brain and main game designer, Miyamoto Shigeru. This man is credited with creating some of video gaming’s most famous franchises, including Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda, to name a few; he is an elder-statesman, a legend of the nerd world and being a massive nerd myself, I was literally over the moon at the prospect of meeting him and photographing him (I think Zelda: A Link To The Past for the SNES is one of the greatest video games ever made). Better still, the photoshoot would be at Nintendo Headquarters in Kyoto, so I would get a bit of travel in to boot. In addition to all of that, we got to play the at-the-time unreleased new console, the Wii-U, with Miyamoto-san giving us the lowdown on all of the new features and specs while trying to knock us into bottomless pits. All in all, one of those awesome jobs that makes me glad I’m a photographer.

I had about 30 minutes to do everything, which included a variety of different looks for the clients that hired me, which all in all turned out to be just enough time. Upon arriving at Nintendo HQ (a very drab and sterile-looking place – not at all how I had imagined it), we were placed in a large meeting room with no points of visual interest at all.  First thing I did was to ask to get a tour of the entire premises – that means everywhere; basement, roof, storerooms etc if possible – because sometimes they can end up being the coolest spots to photograph in. Usually people are fine with it but this particular occasion they weren’t going to let us outside of the meeting room. I persisted gently for a few minutes but to no avail – Nintendo is a secretive company that likes to keep its cards close to its chest, and I wasn’t going to get any options outside of the typically featureless conference room that we were standing in. That threw my game plan out of whack for a while, as my brief required at least 5 distinctly different looks, but I figured that with no visual interest in the environment I would have to use a variety different lighting setups to evoke different moods and themes (Thanks strobist!!). Miyamoto-san turned out to be extremely gracious and patient, and very receptive to all of the ideas I was throwing at him.

All in all it was a very satisfying shoot with a childhood hero, a lot of fun and I feel like I’ve gained some major nerd points. For you curious gear-nerd types, the equipment used was a Nikon D800 with a gridded Einstein and Orbis ring flash. Until next time!

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Miyamoto Shigeru Nintendo (4)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Miyamoto Shigeru Nintendo (8)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Miyamoto Shigeru Nintendo (7)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Miyamoto Shigeru Nintendo (6)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Miyamoto Shigeru Nintendo (5)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Miyamoto Shigeru Nintendo (2)

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Miyamoto Shigeru Nintendo (1)

 

 

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GAIJIN – Scott T. Hards: CEO, HobbyLink Japan

by admin on November 12, 2012

Here’s another notable gaijin: meet Scott T. Hards, the founder and CEO of HobbyLink Japan, the country’s biggest exporter of Japanese hobby-related goods. Back when I was a young nerdy lad living in Australia, I really wish there had been a site like this where I could get my hands on the latest Gundam model kits (not that I could afford it). As it was, back in the 1990s Japanese anime-related goods were extremely hard to come by and where available they were at extremely inflated prices.

Scott originally came to Japan as a banker, and like many of us, just ended up staying. He eventually went into the business of exporting, starting out in a small apartment in Tokyo, and over the years his business has grown to the point where it operates out of a gigantic UFO-shaped warehouse in Sano, Tochigi, and employs several dozen people, both local and international. HobbyLink Japan exports to all countries, satisfying the otaku needs of nerds everywhere around the globe.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Editorial Portraits

How I shot this photo:
This is a composite of several photos, all shot on tripod. Here’s the first one, in which I concentrate on getting the lighting right for Scott. I use an Einstein and a 10 degree grid to pick out Scott’s upper body, plus the Orbis ring flash to bring out his legs underneath the table. I tried a backlight in the right of the frame but it wasn’t working so I ditched it.

Tokyo Editorial Photographer Irwin Wong (2)

 

Next, I used a Nikon SB flash, full Color Temperature Orange gel and Honl short snoot to selectively light the sections of the scene to brush into the final frame. You can see some of the examples below – overall, elements from 7 or 8 separate photographs went into the image. Basically I blended the images together using techniques outlined in this post here.

 

Tokyo Editorial Photographer Irwin Wong (8)

Tokyo Editorial Photographer Irwin Wong (4)

I also did some corporatey-type photos for Scott as a thank-you for taking the time and effort to show me around his place and let me shoot a photo of him. If you’re into Japanese nerd culture, their twitter @Hobbylink is well worth a follow.

If you know a gaijin who should be photographed, or if you would like to be photographed for this project, drop me a line at irwin@irwinwong.com. I’ll shoot you some nice straight portraits for you to use for social media or whatever as a form of compensation :)

Tokyo Editorial Photographer Irwin Wong (1)

 

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GAIJIN – Brett Bull AKA Tokyo Reporter

by admin on November 12, 2012

Welcome to my new personal project under the working title ‘GAIJIN’ (外人), which is a word that means ‘foreigner’ in Japanese. Directly translated from the Chinese characters, it means ‘person from outside’, which is the general blanket term anyone here uses to describe a person – white, black, hispanic or asian – not native to Japan.  Gaijin aren’t especially new to this country, nor are they particularly rare in this day and age, especially in Tokyo. They are tolerated, treated respectfully and fairly on the whole, and every now and then are recognised for examples of greatness. To their credit, most gaijin here behave themselves and have given Japanese people no overt reason to fear or hate them. They are however, still treading the fine line between acceptance and being fully embraced as part of the community. Granted, this takes time, as in most communities around the globe, but Japan more than most has been slower to embrace the potential for raw ideas and energy that foreign hearts and hands can bring into a country.  Call it what you will, but I believe that now more than ever, with the information age making everything so much more accessible and the growing competitiveness from surrounding Asian countries, that the future of Japan’s foundering industries will hinge heavily on how much it allows itself to be helped by the influx of ‘gaijin’. I believe that Gaijin hold the key to the future of Japan.

Anyway, now that I’ve got that pretty much out of the way, this is kind of a portrait series that I’ve been working on veeeeeery slowly, that focuses on gaijin living in Japan, that are accomplishing things that aren’t necessarily ‘normal’. In other words, people who are bringing something a little bit different to the mould that we foreigners are usually lumped into. It would be cool to kind of develop a bit of a cross-section of the innovative, interesting things we foreigners are getting up to.

This is Brett Bull, AKA the Tokyo Reporter.  In addition to his full time engineering job, he manages the popular English-language Japan news website www.tokyoreporter.com, as well as providing freelance journalism, interviewing and fixing services. I wonder where he manages to find the time.  His website provides original journalism, along with English translations of articles from Japanese weeklies tabloids under fair use, which provides us all a look into the prurient, sex-obsessed land of the typical salaryman rag. It’s an interesting read, and you’ll find some of the translated articles quite disturbing and not available in other mainstream international media.  Follow his extremely popular twitter account here: @tokyoreporter.

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Editorial Portraits

How I made this shot:
I didn’t plan for it to be rainy on this day, but it ended up working in my favor for the noir-ish type of image that I had in mind for this shot. As for lighting: the phonebooth being the centrepiece for the photo, I wanted to keep the feel and color of the ambient fluorescent lighting without contaminating it with light from my main light. In order to keep my light on Brett only, I used a Profoto D1 and a gridded stripbox, just out of sight to camera right.  The other two lights are in more of a supporting role, but no less vital in providing scene lighting, filling in the large expanse of shadow in the left half of the frame. The first one is a Nikon SB-80DX with a red cinema gel tucked away by the parking garage there (you can see the flash), whose role was to accentuate the color of the traffic-light reflecting off the wet streets.  The third light is behind the phoneboth, and it’s a green gelled SB-900 pointing back at the building on the left-hand side. This was done to retain the whole fluorescent street-lighting color theme consistent throughout the frame. Another happy side effect is that it illuminated some of the raindrops on the side of the phonebooth, accentuating the rainy, wet and miserable feeling that we had going.

I have a few more gaijin I’d like to introduce to you, but I’d really like to see how far I can pursue this small project, so if anyone in Japan knows someone who should be photographed, or think they would make a suitable subject themselves, then give me a shout at irwin@irwinwong.com or at my twitter account @irwinwong!

 

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