Will Robb Photography

Now we’ve started packing up our photo books and clothes in boxes ready for sending to Scotland. Time is flying, so much to do in so little time, so I’m not blogging as much as I’d like to. Here as well, just a short one about some recent work.

Recently we had were hired to shoot a combo corporate/family portrait of the Kawashima family who are the owners of Japan’s biggest concrete firm.

It wasn’t a done deal from the word go. Sue had taken out an advertisment with our website on it and the company contacted us for an initial interview where the company’s CEO looked through our portfolio (which he was very happy with) and listened to our proposal of how we wanted to approach the shoot. Sitting in their boardroom surrounded by photos of everyone in suits behind desks it would have been easy to suggest a straight on nicer version of what we saw around us photo wise, but Sue had already figured it’d be nice to do something a bit different and wanted to incorporate the hobbies of the family members into the shoot. In the boardroom there was also some sport/hobby memorabilia which fitted in with her ideas. Sue suggested that we photograph each family member on/next to one of their concrete trucks in the grounds of their factory and then do a mainly documentary approach of them at work in their offices and make a book out of it all…Sue’s proposal went down well and we got hired on the spot and were asked to hire a hair and make up artist to help out. After being hired we walked about the factory and decided the best spots to shoot from and made notes for Sue and I to work over the finer details. With our ideas decided, all that remained was to pack up the night before and this is what we took with us, quite a lot but we used the most of it, for those things we didn’t use it’s better to have something you don’t need as opposed to needing something you didn’t bring:

We were hired to do a 3 hour shoot at their factory in early November. The day before the forecast was for heavy rain, the morning was pouring down but by afternoon the sun was out and everything dried up, however when we were on the way to the shoot we got a call to say that due to a heavy work load, our 3 hour shoot was now down to 90 mins, not a problem. Times often change, it’s something we are used to. Shooting was scheduled for a 3pm start, but we were there at 1.30pm with Junko the hair and make up artist, that gave her time to do her work and allow Sue and I to set up lights, make notes on ambient light, do test shots and our usual set up. Easier said than done in the factory as more than 400 trucks a day go in and out the gates (where we were shooting to get the factory in the background) and we were there at the busiest time of the day when there was 1-2 trucks a minute coming and going. There was also a bit of wind, the umbrellas and softbox on the light stands kept getting blown over, so we had to go for bare speedlites on stands and also have Sue holding a third speedlite when needed, all being triggered by the ST-E2 transmitter which mostly worked well, but sometimes it just didn’t kick in when the sun was really setting.

Anyway, the shoot started with each family member dressed up in hobby/work clothes in the factory yard. The sun was already going down, so to get the details in the colours of the clothes and make each family member “pop” we had to get the speedlites working all the time. First up, we shot the uncle.

For each family member, first up Sue would explain how she wanted them to pose:

Then I’d work out the ambient light to bring out the sky, but as you can see this made the subject a bit dark:

So with a speedlite (camera right for this one) we got the shots we went about getting the shots we needed:

The initial spot for shooting was a bit too dangerous as trucks were whizzing by and we were running to get stands out of the way every 30 seconds or so, so we moved on to shooting each family member more to the side of the yard where we could work undisturbed, for each member getting a wide shot with a truck in it as well as a close up shot. We shot the grandmother, father, mother and son all on their own:

Then after each individual shoot, we did a whole family shot. By this time the sun was fairly going down and it was getting pretty dark and there was very little details in the shadows. Also, being on the ground wasn’t so good for getting the whole family in and having the factory in the background, so I got up on our step ladder to get a better position. First up a test shot without the lights:

Then with the lights, a speedlite on a stand to left and right of the truck and Sue holding another over my shoulder:

With the fun portrait shoot over and the time being against us, we had to let the family get back to their office work and photograph them doing what they do on a daily basis:

With the shoot all done and dusted, all that remained was to edit the pics and then make a book, here’s the cover and first page:

All in all, a good fun day and a bit of an usual shoot, hope to have more of them in Scotland.