Akiko DuPont models kimono on Tokyo station platform

Tokyo Is My Studio: feature in InTokyo magazine

New magazine from the creators of GaijinPot showcases work by Alfie Goodrich in its second issue.

“InTokyo is the new magazine from the creators of the GaijinPot website and they asked me to put together a feature about using Tokyo as a location for fashion shooting,’ comments photographer Alfie Goodrich.

“Since moving to Tokyo from the UK, I’ve been shooting a variety of material here but portraits and fashion using the city as a backdrop is definitely one of my favourite things to do.

“The cover photo is from a shoot I did with Akiko DuPont back in 2011, commissioned by a client in the USA who wanted a large mural for his sushi bar in Nashville, Tennessee. The final piece, shown below, used several photos we did during a shoot on a busy Tokyo station at rush-hour.

“We did the shoot with a mixture of Nikon and Mamiya digital cameras. No tripod or flash were used.”

zumi-zushi-mural

“The rest of this new magazine feature is put together from various shoots I’ve done together with Shinyong Lee, a singer, model and performer with whom I’ve worked a lot over the last few years.”

From the magazine:

Tokyo is a city I have known for 16 years and lived in for almost nine. My photography work here is varied, from events to fashion, cars to editorial, portraits to news. The one thing that is a constant is the city. For me Tokyo is like a movie lot, full of sets of various types and moods, styles and colours. All waiting for the actors to be ushered in. 

intokyo_02_akiko Tokyo oas my studio: InTokyo magazine featuring Shinyong Lee

Tips for shooting cinematic: think of all of your shots as telling a story. If you are using a model or shooting a friend, put a storyline in their head for them to imagine. Think about the background as much as the person. Shoot in the morning or in the 90mins around sunset, as the light is more dramatic. Look for patches of sunlight reflected from buildings. Shoot in contrasty monochrome or experiment with different colour spaces; a lot of cameras have film presets or allow you to load picture controls to do this. Long lenses compress perspective. Large apertures create shallow depth of field: both can look cinematic.”

You can pick up InTokyo, free, at various locations around Tokyo.

InTokyo Magazine: link includes a PDF download of the entire publication.