All posts filed under: Commercial

BOSS Coffee Campaign for ANZ

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Late last year I was contacted by Peter Grasse, the man behind Mr Positive, a fantastic production agency helping overseas clients to set up shoots in Japan and Korea. He wanted to know if I was available to do a shoot for the launch of BOSS Coffee in the Australian and New Zealand region. I was of course stoked for the opportunity and said yes straight away. BOSS Coffee is an ubiquitous can coffee brand here in Japan, quite well known for its domestic ad campaigns starring Tommy Lee Jones as an alien (it’s very hard to explain). I’m quite a fan of the BOSS Rainbow Blend if I am on assignment somewhere in the countryside and need a quick sugar and caffeine hit to get my head in the game. Owned by Suntory, BOSS Coffee ventured a new product line into the Australian/NZ market – both very well known for extremely high standards of coffee. The pitch was, BOSS Coffee is the beverage that gets Japanese people through their extremely hectic day. Peter, myself …

Hyundai/Genesis Design Center in Korea

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Being a photographer in Tokyo is enough of a treat by itself, but sometimes I am privileged to go to other countries to take photos. This particular time I was sent to Hyundai/Genesis’s research and development lab in Korea. I had never been to Korea before so it was very refreshing navigating in a country where language was once again a barrier. The lab was about 90 minutes out from Seoul but I managed to get there without issues, and on time too! Once there I was treated with great hospitality and the design directors SangYup Lee and Luc Donkerwolke were very generous with their time. It was all in all a very tiring day as I flew over without an assistant, but after I got back to my hotel in Seoul, I had randomly stumbled across some of the best fried chicken I’d ever had in my life. So needless to say I’m very keen to go back to Korea and explore more! Enjoy the photos!  

Corporate Photography – Lotus Biscuits

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Here’s a spot of corporate photography that I shot in Tokyo for Lotus Biscuits earlier in the year. The images were used in the global annual report, and we shot it at the Segafredo in Hiroo, which is a big favorite for expat soccer moms. Halfway during our shoot the cafe opened up for business, which made it a little difficult! All in all though, everything went fine and here are a few outtakes and a tearsheet for you to take a gander at. All photos shot with a Hasselblad H5d-40 and various lenses. Short post this time but I’ll have more gear-related posts for you in the near future, I promise!     

Commercial: TYKU Sake photographs

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I consider myself primarily a portrait photographer here in Japan, but sometimes commercial work rolls in from overseas and I am more than happy to take it. In this case, TYKU sake wanted myself and a video team to go shoot some promotional content for their brand in New York. TYKU sake is actually brewed at Umenoyado Shuzo, one of the oldest breweries in Nara prefecture, so now you know you’re getting authentic sake when you buy TYKU. We went down there in February, the chilliest month in Japan, and my job was to shoot some portraits of the various people working there, as well as document the brewing process, and shoot some of the new packaging on the bottles in authentic Japanese locations. Straightforward, but this has to have been one of my favorite jobs this year, just due to the team and the awesome location and immense amount of creative freedom we had from the client. The shoot was over two days with one travel day and the photos have been used on …

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Nissan Design Center (34)

Car Stuff: Nissan Design Center in Atsugi, Japan

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Back in the day, when I was a young whippersnapper in Australia, my friends and I used to have dreams of owning a sweet import Japanese sports car so we could go drifting in the Dandenongs and pretend we were in some mountain drift racing group. We were fucking stupid, now that I think about it. Years later the impulse towards suicidal driving is gone but the love of Japanese cars still remains. Cars like the Toyota Supra or MR-2, Mazda RX-7, Honda S2000 or NSX, Mitsubishi Evo, Subaru WRX, all such automobiles as to set the pulse racing with thoughts of irresponsible speeding and reckless endangerment of other motorists on the rubber-streaked roads of Melbourne, Victoria. High amongst them all though, were the offerings from Nissan: the turbocharged Silvia and the 180SX, the svelte Fairlady Z or best of all, the mighty Godzilla itself, the venerable GTR Skyline. The mere thought of owning such street machines was enough to bring a hotheaded youth to full tumescence. To us, Nissan was the company that made cool, fun, daring …

Tokyo Photographer Irwin Wong - Year of the Monkey (2)

It’s… the YEAR OF THE MONKEY!

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Wahey! Congratulations all for surviving another year, although judging by the amount of KFC I just ate, that sentiment may be short lived for me. ANYWAY the new year is a time for reflection, a time for taking stock and quiet contemplation, and I’m happy to say that looking back on last year I can hold my head up high. For one thing, I all but DOUBLED the number of blog posts I put up compared to previous years (6 compared to 3) and managed a net gain of 13 Twitter followers, which for me is a really big deal because we all want to be popular, especially if you’re an Internashonal Fotografer like myself. So here’s to a successful 2016 in which I consolidated my status as social media powerhouse. By far though, my most favorite thing I made last year was definitely The Last Sentoshi – a camera-themed special effects superhero short film which I wrote, directed shot and edited, which NO ONE WATCHED, so that was cool. Hope to create more film …

It’s…THE YEAR OF THE SHEEP!

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Happy New Year everyone! You guys know the drill by now – at the end of each year I shoot a Nengajo (a type of Japanese greeting card for the New Year) of my close friends/team members in the theme of a movie poster, featuring the animal of the year’s Chinese zodiac. You can check out the previous ones here and here. This year it was to be the year of the sheep, so I rounded everyone up, threw them into a car and drove down to a farm outside Tokyo to do the photoshoot. Well, actually it wasn’t quite so simple as that, as there was a fair bit of work involved in putting together all of the costumes and props, which meant hours trolling websites and vintage clothing stores around about Tokyo in order to find exactly what I wanted. I also needed to find a farm which would grant me permission to use their paddock and sheep as props for a whole afternoon, which meant driving down to several farms to check them out in person. Given that …

On Hasselblads, Noh, and freelancing for a living

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Sometimes I wonder if being a freelance photographer these days is a bad idea. Honestly, I do. I could count off the number of gripes I have about my chosen career and you’d have walked off in disgust before I’d even got started. To list of the main ones; it’s a terrifying world with no one to take you by the hand and guide you. Work and money don’t just fall into your lap – you have to go out and find it, and once you do, you have to fight off other photographers to keep it. You don’t get paid when you take time off to go on holiday. And then there’s the endless amount of drudge-work to do in between shooting that never seems to end or dry up. Taxes, insurance, rent payments, gear payments, more taxes – and in my case, visa applications, all sapping away at the resources you need to keep yourself motivated to get out there and keep that momentum up. A lot of people out there romanticize the …

It’s…THE YEAR OF THE HORSE!

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Happy New Year everyone! In keeping with my tradition of shooting a new year’s card with my team (see last one here) – I’ve gone and shot something in keeping with this year’s theme according to the Chinese zodiac – the year of the horse! Once again, I featured my team in a movie poster, this time with a WWII theme (only because the costumes were the only ones within my budget) and I decided to up the ante a little by including a live animal in the shoot this time. So we all jumped into a car and drove down to a farm in Chiba where I had booked a horse for the shoot. Given that I’m no horse-whisperer there were quite a few risks involved in going forward with this idea – firstly, the fact that it was my first time working with such a large live animal on set with some super expensive gear gave me the f/64 pucker factor, not to mention the fact that it was my first time riding …

Printing Dat Portfolio

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I’d like to introduce my portfolio – I’m super proud of it and yet it’s still nowhere near where I’d like to be, but it’s exciting to have it up regardless. At the risk of repeating every other photographer on the Internet, print portfolios are super important and here’s why: 1. It shows that your work looks good on paper (that is, if your work looks good to begin with) 2. It makes you feel good to have one. 3. You don’t look like a doofus walking into a meeting with nothing but an iPad, or worse, a laptop. I bet some of you bristled when I mentioned that last point right? Don’t delude yourself into thinking an iPad is a worthy substitute for a book. YOU NEED A BOOK. The very fact that the word ‘substitute’ is part of the equation means that you’re compromising, and you should never compromise when it comes to showing your work off to people who you want to get money from. And let’s face it, if you’re putting your effort into …