Richard Izui

Richard has been taking product photography for over 30 years, and has been very impressed with the transition from film photography to digital photography, although his early days with digital were a little temperamental.

Today Richard uses his Canon Hasselblad H2 camera with a Imacon 22 megapixel digital back and his EOS 1D Mark II, but for a number of years, Richard used his Deardorff 8 x 10 view camera, which in an interview in Digital Photo Pro (an American photographic magazine), he admitted that “he missed the view camera days”, he went on to say “I shot 8 x 10 so extensively that my Deardorff (camera) just became like an extension of my arm”.  Richard told how the transition to digital was difficult at first.  “I started with a Dicomed BigShot in 1998.  Just to get the thing to operate took an hour and a half.  There were so many cables that would have to be set just right otherwise it would not work”.  After shooting both digital and film Richard eventually convinced his clients to accept digital. 

I know from my own personal experience how the change can worry someone.  After buying my Fujifilm Finepix S7000 bridge camera, I still carried my trusty Canon T70 SLR with my collection of lenses to air shows, until I became comfortable with the new format.  Now my Canon T70 stays at home.

Early in Richard career he had a tremendous fear of directing people, just like me, Richard said “I had to overcome this because assignments kept coming my way.  In 1982, Playboy asked me to shoot the ‘Pigskin Preview’ feature for the first time.  I never dreamed of having a chance to shoot this huge spread for Playboy – especially with my fear of shooting people.  The shoot traditionally involved a two page spread of about 24 of the best college football players and a chosen coach.  I was motivated to do a good job because the majority of the shoots that I had been doing for Playboy were products and cars.  This was a chance to prove to them, and to myself, that I could do this”.

Today, Richard is travelling a lot, by road in their small motor home (he does not like flying because of all the hassles with security), spending at least half his time away from his suburban Chicago studio on assignments for Playboy and his many advertising  and commercial clients.  But this form of transport, for Richard, has a number of advantages, in an interview Richard said “We set up a computer in the back of the motor home and I retouch as we are travelling.  I don’t lose much time.  In fact, I probably get more work done in the van than in the studio.  When I am sitting in the studio I have all this studio business bombarding me, so I find that when I am  travelling my concentration level is better, because your mindset is set on the job and set on travel”.

Richard’s equipment that he uses includes:

• Hasselblad H2 camera

• Imacon 22 megapixel digital back

• Phase One H20

• Canon EOS 1D Mark II

• Apple laptops (17” and 12”)

• Apple Power Mac G5 Dual Core 2.5 GHz with 4.5 Gb of RAM

• Photoshop and Lightwave

Below are some of Richard’s work:

 

Evaluation of images

Richard, like all the other product photographers has used strong colours in his work, but to me some of his backgrounds are a little to busy, for example the Playboy sets (column 2 row 1 of the images above) and the drinks (column 1 row 10) where the product could be overshadowed by the background.  This is completely the opposite to two of the photographs of the watches (column 1 row 1 and column 1 row 3) where the only element of the photographs are the watches themselves.

Richard has added a little humour to his photographs with the yellow speakers in one image (column 1 row 5) where the speakers almost look like the eyes with the timer looking like a mouth.

Richard has also used a variety of angles from which he has photographed the products.

Richard has not used texture as much as some of the other photographers, with the only photograph where he has used texture is the third watch photograph (column 2 row 6).

Richard's photographs are evenly lit.