Aloha from warm sunny Hawaii!

The other day I have posted on my IG a night photo from Shibuya I took last month. This photo was liked and commented more than usual, so I would like to talk about how the shoot went.

I was asked to photograph this Japanese/Spanish couple by Reina of Tilia Bridal. I have known Reina for over 15 years. When I first met her, I didn’t have any interest in camera nor didn’t have any interested in becoming a photographer. Last year Reina created a consignment dress shop in Tokyo, which deals with dresses from overseas. This January I was in Tokyo and she wanted to have a photo shoot in Shibuya - there I met a lovely couple, Kaoru and Pablo.

The beginning of the shoot, we shot at the heart of Shibuya, at a famous scramble intersection and then a view spot on a high riser. Apparently, it was a new and trendy spot in Tokyo with amazing 360 degree view from the center of Tokyo. The tough part was that we were not allowed to bring anything that you can’t have on your body/in your clothes to the view area. Luckily, I had my dual camera straps in my lighting bag, so I wore it with one of my cameras, and I just picked two lenses (Nikkor 24-70mm 2.8 & 85mm 1.4), and had Reina hold my handy LED light. It was super cold in winter, so we were wearing our coats and jackets. When we get to the view point, there were a lot of security guards everywhere. My interpretation was that as long as we have everything on our body, it was ok to bring stuff. Eventually, they started to notice about our LED light, and then they talked to us and said we can’t use it here. They said it’s quite bright and they prefer not us to use it. The situation was, the place was SO dark and I can’t really capture good photos with the nice night background and a couple without a light source. We tried to talk it out, but they said NO to the LED after our first 10 min of shoot.

Here comes negotiation. We discussed if our cell phone lights were ok. The security said, since all the other guests were using their cell phones to take photos, so they said it is OK. I WAS SO HAPPY. This was the best thing we could do to save this photo shoot. We downloaded some Torch Apps to use our cellphone light at the fullest.

Even at full power, it was very weak light so I had to ask them hold the phone lights super close to the face/upper body of the subject, and I had to go quite low shutter speed without any tripod or anywhere to lean on. My handheld skill of camera, even with my big and heavy Nikon D4s, I got 10 years of training to hold it at pretty slow speed. It was for all of us, the couple and I were all, “3, 2, 1, and hold your breath and stay still!”. So with ISO 3200, F2.8, and 1/50 sec, we created these photos. Since the strength of the light was so weak, I had to composite the assisting person out on Photoshop afterwards but thanks to the far and fairy stable background, the composites were not difficult at all :) Here are the before and after photos.