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HASSELBLAD DISCOVERY WORKSHOP SPECIAL EDITION | Hyuga, Kyushu, Japan. a japanorama production | www.stekki.photography
no.10 JANUARY 2015 < japan, fashion, photography, lifestyle, life
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素敵 すてき su-te-ki /ste ki/
adjective: beautiful, great, lovely, splendid, wonderful, nice
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credits EDITOR IN CHIEF /DESIGNER Alfie Goodrich. CONTRIBUTORS/PHOTOGRAPHERS Elena Tyutina, Gavin Oliva, Aki Fotograffix, Edmund, Angela, Cogui Noguchi, Seiko Kashiwagi, William Penrice, Alfie Goodrich.
SPECIAL THANKS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Very special thanks to William Penrice, Seiko Kashiwagi, Elizabeth Addyman and the rest of the team at Hasselblad Japan for their wonderful support and professionalism... and their amazing cameras! Huge thanks to Mituaki Kyuma for driving his car-transporter five hours each way from Fukuoka to Hyuga and back, and for lending us the Caterham 160. Thank you, Profoto Japan, for lending us four of the wonderful B1 battery-powered location lighting systems. Big thanks to all at Peak Performance and H&M in Japan, for lending us such lovely clothes to shoot with. Thanks to William and Aki of Fotograffix in Hyuga, for their help and support. Stekki is produced by Alfie Goodrich and Japanorama www.stekki.photography www.japanorama.co.uk
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index HASSELBLAD DISCOVERY WORKSHOP SPECIAL EDITION Hyuga, Kyushu, Japan JANUARY, 2015 N°10
CONTENTS 6-7 8-9 10-17 18-27 28-35 36-43 44-53 54-59 60-67 68-77 78-79
Editorial Introduction by William Penrice, President of Hasselblad Japan. ‘Four On The Floor’: shooting the Caterham 160 with Yoshiyaki Fujita. ‘A Breakwater Operatic’ with Kotomi Kai. Kotomi & the workmen. Sunrise on the beach. ‘Caterham Girl’: shooting the Caterham 160 with Kotomi Kai. ‘Fiddler On The Beach’ with Yoshiaki Fujita. ‘The White Dress’. ‘Odds & Ends’: Other shots we got along the way. ‘Parting Shot’: waves break over the beach.
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EDITORIAL
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elcome to this special edition of Stekki, featuring work from the folk who attended our recent Hasselblad Discovery workshop in Hyuga, Japan. There’ll be other mentions of them throughout the magazine but, in opening this edition of the magazine, I’d like to send a profound ‘thank you’ to all those who attended and contributed their wonderful images: Edmund and Angela, Gavin, Cogui, Elena and Aki. It was a great pleasure to spend the weekend in your company and be there to help you shoot such a selection of work. Our concept from the start was to make a workshop which took everyone a little deeper into their photography, producing images which would be used to create the layouts for the pages you’ll see here. Shooting for the page has some specific challenges and successful images are the result of many contributing factors. Most of all, though, they are made great by the act of pre-visualisation: imagining the scenes in front of you as
pages, seeing the people and things you are photographing as either a vertical single page or a double-page spread and visualising the type and text. From the front cover to the last page, a magazine is a progression, a flow of images and text. There are stories to tell and associations to make. It’s been a joy to take the images from the weekend and string them together into the features you’ll see. Hasselblad have been superb partners so far. And the story of collaboration between myself, Stekki and Hasselblad is just beginning. 2015 promises to be an exciting year!
Alfie Goodrich, Editor in Chief Photograph by Lisa Fujiwara www.paintwithstars.com At left: Model, Yoshiaki Fujita, in contemplative pose on the beach at Mimitsu.
Alfie Goodrich, Editor in Chief
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Broadening horizons through DISCOVERY.
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Introduction by William Penrice. President Hasselblad Japan.
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asselblad Discovery is designed to present photography from start to finish.
fers increased confidence through a deeper understanding of the how the images you capture can be used.
Our Discovery experience brings together the art, science, practicality and fun of creating images. We’re offering workshops to uncover the excitement, challenges, and importance of expressing yourself through your photography.
Whether with the latest HSystem cameras or the CFV50C used in conjunction with Hasselblad’s legacy film cameras, Discovery is designed to broaden visual understanding across the board.
With our professional photography experts we will take you through every step of producing eye-catching images and ensure that this wonderful experience leads to the next step on your photography journey. The ‘hands on discovery’ of-
In conjunction with Stekki, we’re helping image-makers understand every part of the process, from pre-visualisation, location-scouting, camera craft, shooting for print, lighting, editing and post-production.
Combining travel, photography and a passion for Japan, the Discovery workshops aim to provide a broad experience and help participants understand our cameras as an integrated system with ‘Hasselblad as part of life’.
We look forward to the next weekend Discovery event, in Spring 2015 and a continuing series of one-day events which are already taking place in Tokyo and which we hope to bring to other cities across Japan.
This first, weekend-long, event in Hyuga was a wonderful start to what we hope will become an extensive series. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved, everyone who participated. It was a wonderful experience which brought together a disparate group of people who share a love for Japan and a passion for making images. stekki_9
the gear cameras H5D-50C CFV-50C 500CM 503CX lenses HC 120mm f/4 macro HC 100mm f/2.2 HC 80mm f/2.8 HC 35-90mm f/4.5-5.6 HC 28mm f/4 lighting Profoto B1
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...some of the the cameras, lenses and lighting gear used on the workshop.
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We take the Caterham 160 for a spin in Mimitsu’s narrow streets.
Model: Yoshiaki Fujita
FOUR ON THE FLOOR O
ne of the things we decided very early on in the planning of this workshop was to get our hands on a sports car to throw into the mix. Cars are fun to shoot. They are also not easy to shoot, which is great when you are aiming to teach people some cool things about photography; easy subjects are boring. Combining a person and a car in shots has its own challenges, too: making the poses work, finding angles that emphasise the car and the model equally or which play with depth and perspective. Plus there’s then just the challenge of having such a large prop, especially when there are lights involved. Cars reflect everything you put near them. Lighting a car can be a unique challenge. But what car? We first thought about approaching various owners of classic cars who live in the area. But a possibility cropped up after Caterham brought their Seven 160 sports car to Hasselblad in Harajuku for a press launch. Once we’d found ourselves a willing and happy local dealer for Caterham in Kyushu, the game was on. continued inside......
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he Caterham Seven 160 is a beautifully fun car. It’s a manageable sports car. From a driver’s perspective, it’s a car you can survive getting a little crazy with. The turbocharged Suzuki 660cc engine gives you a Kei-Car tax bracket but the lightweight body, low ground-clearance and rear-wheel drive give you a traditional small British sports-car feel and performance. I didn’t get to drive the car a lot but from the short time I had behind the wheel, the Seven 160 felt taut, exciting and took me all the way back to the MG Midget I’d had as a younger man. Great fun. As for shooting the chibi-beast? We’d spent a little time on the morning of the second day shooting the car down on the harbour in Mimitsu. But for the shots in this set, we’d ventured up into the small streets lined with traditional houses. The scale of Mimitsu suited the car perfectly. Yoshi is a fairly tall guy so making shots that worked with him and the car was often a case of searching for low angles and perspectives. The Peak Performance orange outdoor-wear made the perfect colour contrast with the BRG and bare metal. Massive respect to Kiyuma-san of UK Sports Cars in Fukuoka for driving the car over from there on his transporter and for being such a good sport on the shoot. We look forward to another outing with him in Kyushu.... when we’ll be aiming to get one of his classic Lotus cars in front of the lens....
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< This lovely old house and gravel parking area made for a nice opportunity to shoot various angles of the car.
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Framing the car and the model within all the elements of the location provided some nice challenges. Making all the areas of colour work together in this frame was very satisfying; the jacket, the car, the license-plate, the washing, the tree, the moss-covered wall. Everything works to create a nicely balanced shot.
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The light was fading but the location was begging for that red dress. The last cut of the first day was a 20minute affair at best, probably more like fifteen. But the results speak for themselves.... Model: Kotomi Kai
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A Breakwater operatic Text by Alfie Goodrich
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ne of the exciting parts of this workshop for me was that it gave me the chance to be back in the these locations on what is now, for me, my third fashion shoot. Re-visiting locations can be a very rewarding experience but the location obviously has to have some sort of depth to it; options for all sorts of different shots and moods. This breakwater, down on the south side of the coast by Mimitsu, has that sort of depth.....in spades. The location had changed a bit since my last time there, with the series of wooden pillars lining the first stairacse up on the bank above the beach having been removed. But it didn’t make any real difference: those pillars had always been the least interesting part of the area.
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I’ve no idea why any of the concrete constructions are there. There’s no real practical purpose to them at all. The beach has a wall at its rear to protect the coast from storm surges. The breakwater, stairs, walls.... sometimes it seems it’s all there just to provide a nice place to shoot photos. The area nearest the sea is perfect for any number of shots, with a symmetrical pair of walls, curved staircases and a large flat area of concrete that means you can get low angles with lots of lines in the foreground. The light was fading and we were up against that. Flash goes a long way when it gets dark and making the location work in the dark – for photographic and safety reasons – would be difficult. The blueish half-light at the end of the day would
be perfect for us. But we wouldn’t have long with it. Of course it had to be the red dress that Kotomi should wear. This spot is all about drama. The blue light, the dress, the dark curves of the concrete: it all worked out well and in less than 25minutes we came, saw, shot and left with some lovely shots. All were lit with just one of the Profoto B1 lights, through a small softbox. Images shot by all partcipants, with cameras and lenses including: H5D-50C, CFV-50C, 100mm f/2.2, 35-90mm f/3.5-5.6, 12omm Macro f/4, Zeiss-Planar 80mm f/2.8.
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A few shots from our first ten minutes at the location, preparing for the shoot. We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have much time so it was crucial to get some idea of which would be the best couple of spots for shooting, to make the most of the light.
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All of the setups on the stairs were done with just one of the Profoto B1 lights, shot through a small softbox. One light is often all you need. Have seen a lot of shoots have time wasted by people setting up too many lights. Here we just used one light and used the available time to investigate as many angles as possible.
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Last shot of the day: this one was procesed slightly differently to the rest as the light and tone had come out markedly different to al the othe photos in-camera. The bluer tone adds a different sort of drama, emphasising the twilight.
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kotomi the first cut, the seashore & the workmen
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Our lady model gets the workshop underway with no small measure of style.
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The shape of the concrete wall, the sea, the background elements, the slightly crappy weather at the time; all made for some great drama, colour and shape.
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he first cut can sometimes be a unique challenge. We’d all travelled into Miyazaki airport from different places, or fromthe same place on different planes. After the flight, there was the 60min drive to the hotel. Lunch was quick. The priority was to get out, get started and get those first shots under our belts. I wanted that to be somewhere where people who instantly have some good options, great scenery and a few ‘props’. There was one section of the very southern end of the beach at Mimitsu which I had scouted before but never used in its entirity. Speficially a curved, upward facing section of concrete wall that was a unique shape and which had great symmetry The wall is plain concrete so we chose to put Kotomi into some clothes that had pattern and texture. Being predominantly black, the outfit would be guaranteed to pop against the light-coloured stone. Lighting wise we started simple, with one B1 light and a softbox. People shot with the H5D-50C and the CFV-50C, with a variety of lenses including the 35-90mm zoom, 80mm and 100mm. This meant we had everyine shooting but all exploring the scene from slightly different angles. There are some nice background elements to play with at this spot, one of which is a narrow spit of land protruding into the sea in the distance. The concrete, the pillars and posts, the stones... all made for some lovely balancing elements. Kotomi’s outfit had a vaguely nautical/military feel to it and suited the surroundings well. The workmen? Well, when William spotted them doing some landscaping at the back of the beach, he just had to get them into the picture somehow. When in doubt, be prepared to throw everything available into the shot!
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Remember with your location fashion shoots to grab some shots of the environment on its own. They can give you a nice way to fill pages with great suppoorting images.
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These fellas were great sports and throwing them into the shoot was a lot of fun for ten minutes... for them and for us!
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DAWN AT THE SURFERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BEACH A chance to get out and shoot the sun coming up over a pretty stretch of coastline... for those that managed to get out of bed in time!
PHOTOS: Gavin Oliva, Elena Tyutina, Edmund, Angela, Cogui Noguchi 38_stekki
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Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something very special about getting up early to shoot at sunrise. This beach, with itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rocks and pools makes it a very special place to watch the coming of the day.
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A long exposure of around 10 seconds, processed into monochrome.
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This pool and the way it reflected the sunrise are part of the reason this beach in Hyuga is one of the best spots for shooting at the beginning of the day.
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Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not often Alfie himself makes it into a magazine anywhere other than the editorial page. But here he is!
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Harbour-side in the coastal heritage town of Mimitsu with the Caterham 160.
MODEL: Kotomi KAI PHOTOS: Gavin Oliva, Elena Tyutina, Edmund, Angela, Aki Fotografixx, Cogui Noguchi.
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CATERHAM GIRL
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irls and cars: what could possibly be wrong with that combination? Well, anyone who has ever been to a motor-show, especially the Tokyo Auto Salon [TAS], will know that plenty can go wrong with it. I’m not in to draping scantily-clad ‘chicks’ over cars. I am certainly not into the hordes of creepy photographers that such a spectacle can attract. TAS is a perfect example of gratuitous flesh draped over or stood next to cars. So much so that I have stopped attending that show. I go to a car show for the cars. I don’t go to spend the day battling to see the cars through a wall of sweaty, creepy snappers who have just four standard shots in their repertoire: face, boobs, crotch and all three in one. Characterful location, interesting car, pretty model, wardrobe that suits the situation... these things are more my style. Giving Kotomi the opportunity - in her outdoor-wear and jaunty hat – to rock the little Caterham down by the harbour on a moody day was a perfect excercise on how to make great shots of both the model and the car which have character and taste. First thing that struck me about this spot as the possibility for using the geometry of the road, harbourside and kerbline. So we tried that first, from an angled position. Lighting was – again – fairly simple: just a softbox on the B1.
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Later we got another Profoto head under the back of the car and wet the concrete to give us some reflections. It sort of worked. ut the drama of the sky, the light on the care-metal hood of the car and Kotomi’s yellow jacket made for a striking setup that was totally in keeping with celebrating the best of our beauty and her little beast of a car. The second batch of shots, shot near the end of the day at our second location, matched a very different wardrobe with the car in very different light. The furry jacket by H&M was a superb contrast to the clothes we’d shot with earlier. The dusk light and the railway bridge provided some wonderful atmosphere and shape. Sadly I wasn’t there to see this set. I’d got to the location, directed William on how best to get people to work the area and then I made my excuses and left... to end my day in a dentist’s chair 20 miles away, having an abcess drained and part of a tooth removed. Coming back to the hotel and finding such amazing shots from everyone was the best medicine!
Great lines here in this scene, and the colour of that kerb-line went so well withe the licence-plate of the car, providing great colour counterpoint.
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Our second location for the car and Kotomi was a superb match of lines, depth, light and muted colours.
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...catching the last light of the day to make some shots with Kotomi and the Caterham down by the bridge...
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Low angle, great light in the sky and some subtle and complimetary flash on the subject, all go together here to create a wonderfully balanced and dramatic shot. stekki_53
No car this time but a beautiful spot for Kotomi to pose and end this series of pictures in a way that portrays perfectly the calm of the end of the day.
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FIDDLER ON THE BEACH Giving the model a prop can solve the often tricky issue of what to do with hands and the violin fitted perfectly....
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MODEL | Yoshi PHOTOS | Gavin Oliva, Elena Tyutina, Edmund, Angela, Aki Fotografixx, Cogui Noguchi. stekki_57
The first thing that caught our eye with this location was the interesting blocks and pattern of the wall, shot straight-on here but captured in various angles ny each student. Lighting here was with one Profoto B1, through a large softbox. The shot on the facingpage was made just with ambient light. As someone who has worked in the classical music business, I have done my fair share of shots with musicians holding their instruments. Out in the environment, down on a beach... itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the usual place to find someone with their violin. So the challenge is to make it work, not make the whole thing look daft and too out of context.
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Yoshi is a great model but heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no violin-player. The first challenge was to get him holding the instrument in a way that looked like he was used to it. That achieved, we had a lot of fun getting a range of shots with a variety of the gear we brought with use, including the film Hasselblad and CFV-50C camera you see William showing Angela in the bottom shot on the facing-page.
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Dolum assit et quaturi atemquod ulparion pre ium volore nos re la voluptius, inctatatur sa voloratur ressim non cume comnist invelendae quuntur alignat atusam quasped mincte velenem aut volor mod quassin velesse repta quas eaquodiciati adiae. stekki_61
On the face of it, a fishing port may not be the obvious place to shoot someone in a wedding dress. But, to be honest., Kotomi could wear anything, anywhere and make it work.
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White
The White Dress
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n the planning stages of this workshop, myself, Seiko from Hasselblad and Kotomi herself spent a lot of time thinking about clothes. Like any holiday you go on, we ended up taking too many things to wear. That’s probably inevitable. There were lots of outfits we didn’t end up shooting with which I would have loved to have shot Kotomi wearing. C’est la vie. There isn’t time to do everything. But, the white dress had to be done. Just had to be done. On the last day we were staring down the barrels of some bad weather. In the end it didn’t turn out to be too bad. But the fishing port – with its enclosed sheds – had saved me from the rain before, on a previous shoot. Plus, it’s a good spot with plenty of props and depth. Being undercover also helps with lighting and we were able to have some fun with lighting Kotomi to bring her up to the exposure of the background, outside the shed. With a desire to get the little bach and island before we ran out of time and missed the low tide, we had Kotomi just stay in the same outfit for both locations. I’d shot with models in the sea at the beach before. The island gives you some interesting options, especially when the tide is coming in and creates a sort of biblical ‘parting of the waves’ thing, where tides from two directions meet. It was our last location of the workshop. We had a lot of fun. Kotomi got wet. I ended up in the sea and soaking wet too. Everyone got some great shots.
An every so ethereal-looking Kotomi, preparing to make her way back to dry land.
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The white dress was not so white and not nearly as dry as when we’d started. But that’s what ends up when you have an adventurous model, a bunch of crazy photographers and a beach to play with!
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This set just screamed â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;put me in monochromeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;....
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odds&ends shots we caught along the way
Some of the shots that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else. There were lots of great ‘single shots’. 70_stekki
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Not everything you shoot falls into a ‘set’ and there were lots more great, single shots made over the weekend.... Two and half days is never enough time. It’s not enough time to shoot everything you want. It’s not enough time to hang around with people as cool as we had on this workshop. It’s not enough time to enjoy the truly wonderous beauty of the place you are shooting in. But, we had a good two and half days. We filled the time pretty well. As always happens, there are shots along the way during a workshop that don’t really fit into ‘sets’ or series of shots. I wish we’d shot more with Yoshi but in this little collection, there ones of him in the red coat have turned out to be some of my favourites of the weekend. I wished we’d done more shooting of the environment. But the shot of the wood on the beach really makes me feel pleased someone made the chance to snap it. So, here are a few of the odds and ends; the notable exceptions to the sets we shot.
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PARTING SHOT With so many shots we could show off, ending with one you haven’t seen was a tough choice but this one is a winner in every way.....
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n between packing up and leaving the first location on our second day, I sent people off to get some shots of the environment we were shooting in. It provided a break for the models and it gave people a chance to reset their eyes from people to things for a few minutes. The seashore near where we’d been shooting the models and our car was characterful. It wasn’t exactly ‘chocolate box’ beautiful but it had buckets of character. Plus, the weather was getting a little characterful as well, with the wind increasing the sea swelling and crashing into the coast behind us. This shot has everything
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in it that makes for coastal atmosphere: dramatic colours, brooding skies, pebbly textures, great light, action, spray. You can feel the drama, the power of nature in this shot. The timing was great, the composition is lovely [although I cropped it a little to be more widescreen and filmic]. It’s a great illustration that shooting with medium format digital is now, with cameras like the H5D50C, as much about getting outside in all weathers as it is shooting great work in the studio.
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THE BEFORE AND AFTER
One of the things Alfie Goodrich will be showcasing soon, in a forthcoming edition of Stekki, will be his post-processing & digital workflow. Here is a sneaky-peek, with some before and after examples from shots featured in this issue....
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a japanorama production | www.stekkizine.com
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