I've always been fascinated by an individuals journey into photography. Where people started and where they are now kind of thing. With platforms like Instagram sometimes the journey is quite easily witnessed through someones posts over the years.
Personally, I started with a simple curiosity of snapping photos of strangers on my travels to Japan and over the following years that curiosity developed into an intense passion for all things street photography. My home was on the streets and in the small alleys seeking out the most interesting lights that the city had to offer. When I eventually moved into portraits I remained on the streets, however instead of using whatever available light I had, I started to bring my own and this is where I first started to understand how to shape light to create the images I desired.
Fast forward many years, and while I still love to get outside and shoot, my photographic path has brought me indoors and into the studio. A place where you start with a blank canvas and create almost from scratch. Intimidating? Oh yeah! Nothing like getting into a studio with a bunch of equipment to make you feel like a complete noob all over again. But with each session more questions get answered and new ones arise and its through this experimentation where I can confidently say my photography has taken a definite step forward over the past year.
And it's with this in mind that I started to offer the Tekumi Studio Sessions to other photographers who have a curiosity to expand and grow who might not get the opportunity otherwise. So this past week we were back with the second edition of our Studio Series and we invited our fabulous model You-gi along with some talented photographers to push some boundaries in light experimentation.
The first half of the shoot we concentrated on projector images and some of the graphics worked so well it almost looked like a second skin! We then turned our focus to something I purchased very recently utilizing a Godox SA-17 Projection attachment snoot with various gobo’s using a Godox SL200 constant video light as our light source. @tokyosirens was kind enough to bring out a second snoot/gobo to give us some creative leeway to help achieve our final images. Lastly, having our fill of RGB’s and constant lights, we had some fun utilizing a 2 light strobe setup with coloured gels to finish up the day.
Below are some of the photos and BTS as well as some of the equipment we used on the day:
Soonpho P20II RGB LED lightstick
Pixel G1S RGB LED Video Light
Godox SL200II LED Video Light
Godox SA-10 GOBO Holder for SA-P Projectors
Godox SA-17 Projection Attachment
BenQ DLP Projector
Thanks for reading always! And if you're in the Tokyo area, join the Meetup group and a growing network of other creatives at Tekumi Tokyo Portrait and Street Photography We have a pretty vibrant LINE group chat where other photographers can share their work and it's a great chance to network and learn some new skills.
- d.
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