The Industry

- Never Stop Dreaming -

Photography is a vast world with boundaries only defined by the limits of Man's perspective and the most challenging genre at least for me, is wedding photography. Factor this genre with influence of cultures and a whole new world is opened to me. Typical Chinese-themed wedding styles are all too familiar to me but here in Japan, everything that I presumed I knew would soon be thrown out and I find myself taking those essential baby steps.

Typical Japanese weddings are done more or less with respect to their age old customs and cultures, silent, solemn and very very ritual like. Speaking to a couple of rather experienced Japanese wedding photogs, I soon learnt that wedding ceremonies are done to honor and respect the guests present (done FOR the guests), somewhat different from the Chinese ones which are done for the couples themselves or for customs. Even the layout is a little different since the parents are placed furthest away from the couple (themselves being at the most bottom) while the Chinese ones have the families closest to the couple.

Ritual ceremonies will differ accordingly to religion but the solemn, silent and no-nonsense aura is pretty much the same in almost all ceremonies. Church weddings will only allow the white gown and suit style and the other Asian religion will usually see Kimonos in assorted colors according to each respective religion.

Wedding photographer is yet another very misunderstood profession here in Japan. Typical wedding photographers belong to a larger organization like a hotel, resort, restaurant, etc and are not "a la carte" like in SG to be chosen by the marrying couple. Instead, couples pick the place to have the wedding and select the style they want their pictures to be done in albums via the "Reception" staffs. Then the staffs forward the info to the respective departments and wedding photographers are assigned randomly according to a monthly schedule chart. Photographers have no prior communication to the couple other than on the actual wedding day. To overcome certain photographers from growing exponentially, every SINGLE photographer in the team of wedding photographers have to produce the very same pictures that the couple had chosen from the limited range of samples. In other words, as a wedding photographer, it's not really necessary to have any prior photographer skills, gear, passion, etc. Photographers are hired with respect to how capable they are to produce the same stuffs in the albums after they go thru a 3 month training.

Once the pictures required for making the album are completed, then the individual photographer can explore his / her individual taste by infusing their own style into the rest of the pictures, although there is a high chance that most of these artistic pictures would not make it to the final album.

Japanese couples in general want what they see in the album without much variation so as a photographer, all one need to do is to replicate the same consistency in the fixed location, architecture and place. The only variation that can be explored are unforeseen weather changes and lighting and that is pretty much everything. I was astonished and almost beyond amazement when I found out all these facts but of course there are other companies that offer couples a chance to choose the style they want according to each photographer's portfolio. In general, from a company's perspective, this is to reduce any internal friction where one member of a certain department may out shine others which coincides to the general norm in a Japanese society that is, "If a nail sticks out, HAMMER THAT BITCH down!" It's in their culture, history that have spanned a long time which everyone else is not suppose to be indifferent from the rest, better to blend in than to realize your potential.

I was indeed passionate about this job because I could see myself exploring my own style like liquid taking the form of what ever that would be thrown at me...I was wrong. I have became a staff, a part of a team to a larger part of an organization where my duties is to replicate so that the company can make more money to pay my salary and hire more people. Passion, skills, experience or style are NOT even a requirement to become a wedding photographer. It's just about any other job in the boring sector...

Unless of course I get foreigners from outside Japan, I play the boring role of a xerox machine.