Will Robb Photography

Recently I’ve been ridiculously busy. Some days I’ve been working on one clients photos before running out to another shoot, squeezing in some time to make wedding albums for someone else and providing photos for different mags, books, arranging new shoots, finding some new clients and even dusting off my old journalist pen and writing some stories to accompany some articles I have shot. It’s been a while since I had a day off, not been much time for blogging which has been nagging away at me, but I really haven’t had the energy. One night I worked until about 2am, crawled into bed, fell asleep with my iphone on my chest, about 30 minutes later it buzzed with an email, I woke up, saw it was work and had to get about finding and sending off some images to an overseas client. No rest for the wicked, but I am really loving everything I get to shoot, working freelance doesn’t do any good for a social life, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices to push ahead with what you want to do.

Anyway, on with some work stuff. A couple of months back I did a job for Tokyofashion.com reviewing the Grimoire fashion store in Shibuya , well last month Grimoire were having their anniversary party in Shibuya and a lot of their customers were there, so once again I went along to photograph the event for Tokyofashion.com. The full article and all the photos are here but I thought I would put some of them here and add a couple as well.

For a shoot like this, the main thing is to get a good bunch of shots of the people all dressed up ready to party. It was a dolly kei party, it’s not quite your everyday fashion and a lot of the people there were really quite shy, so the sight of a big tall bald Scotsman running around with a camera could be off putting, so before I got on with work, I spent a bit of time walking around, saying hi to people and explaining why I was there. Also, my wife Sue was there helping me out with some lighting, asking some people questions and even doing some shooting with my back up for me so we could cover more ground. You never know how dark these venues can be, how crowded they will be, if it will be appropriate to get in amongst people having fun to ask if we could get their picture, so in our usual style, Sue and I turned up an hour early, caught the early crowds queuing to get in and started work early. The people there were maybe quite shy to begin with, but once we had spoke to a few and they opened up to us, almost everyone else came out of their shell a bit were really nice to and accommodating. Sometimes in other parties I have shot I get plagued with drunken guy and gals jumping in front of me telling me to take their photo and then not leaving me alone and being a pain in the butt, but everyone there was really nice. It was cool to see them arrive alone, or in a small group, then soon making friends with other attendees.

In the end, despite it being quite a long shoot in a fairly crowded space, it was a really fun chilled job. The lighting wasn’t too bad, we needed flashes for every shot and we had to shoot either straight up, slightly behind us or forward at a 45 degree angle to get the light right, but at the end of the night we had more than enough good material, so all round a good shoot.

Some pre-party shots

Some party shots

And some of Sue and I at work, hidden well behind the cameras and feeling like fashion outsiders.