All pictures © Jérémie Souteyrat

The assignment was a portrait of Takehisa Yaebashi, called “Papa Prius” in the article. As a senior car engineer, Mr. Yaebashi led the developement of the first Toyota Prius. At 67, he is now retired from Toyota company but is still active as an independent consultant.

The portrait was shot at the 41st floor of Shinjuku’s Park Hyatt Hotel, in the “Peak Lounge”. While Mr. Yaebashi was being interviewed, I had time to check out the place and pick up four shooting spots which could be interesting. In most pictures taken during the 15-minute shooting, Mr. Yaebashi stood in front of mini-forest of bamboos, which was quite a relevant image for the “green” impact of the Prius. Then, while Mr. Yaebashi showed us some car pictures on his I-pad, the idea of the “Earth” pictures came to my mind (see below).

A few shots were then made near the window – which turn to be not really interesting, I had only a couple of minutes to shoot the last two locations : at the top of stairs and in the armchair. The very last shot in the armchair seemed to be the good one, as it was chosen by the picture editors at Libération.

What about you, would you have made the same selection ?

To me, the choice of pictures reflects a kind of debate between “Prius is a green car” vs. “Prius is a car so it pollutes anyway”…

Story can be read here (French only).

More portraits of Takehisa Yaegashi.

As a “Photo of the week”, in the current issue of Tokyo based English-speaking magazine Metropolis. You can even vote for it on their website.

The house is called “On a cherry blossom” because the main room overlooks several cherry trees. The architect is Junichi Sampei / A.L.X.

This photo is a sample of my work in progress about contemporary architecture houses in Tokyo. More to come soon.

© Jérémie Souteyrat assisted by Bruno Bellec

This assignment was about Tokyo Tower (東京タワー) losing its Japan’s tallest tower rank. The new Tokyo Sky Tree (東京スカイツリー), located in Oshiage area of Sumida Ward, will be completed in 2011 and will reach a height of 634m. Since March 2010, the Sky Tree is higher than the Tokyo Tower.

The cover picture was picked up from my archive and was shot from the Mori tower (Roppongi Hills).

For the first inside photo, I used the Tilt function of a 24 mm Tilt-Shift lens to reduce the depth of field.

And lastly the picture of the Sky Tree was taken at dusk from a bridge over a small canal with other fellow photographers. Old Japanese photographers are always aware of good spots to shoot from… The picture has been seriously cropped and lightened.

For more pictures of the Tokyo Tower and Sky Tree, this way please.

This band is composed of three teams (A, K, B) of 16 young japanese girls. AKB48 idols perform every weekday in their own theater on the 8th floor of Don Quichote supermarket in Tokyo’s Akihabara area.

After the Tokyo Girls Collection show for the girls, it was interesting to see an audience made up of men screaming and dancing.

More pictures here.

Designer Aguri Sagimori (25, graduated from Vantan Institute in Tokyo in 2007) :

Designer Ohal Ando / Lessthan* :

Designer Keiichi Muramatsu / Everlasting Sprout :

Designers Hokuto Katsui & Nao Yagi / Mint Designs :

The atmosphere in the afternoon was not that clear, but I was in the neighborhood so I decided to go. I arrived around one hour before sunset to take pictures with every kind of light. As the sun was going down, I discovered behind the moutains on the west side of Tokyo that little cone that everyone knows. The air was getting clearer during sunset and the Fujisan was perfectly visible. It was really a good surprise as I’ve never seen it from Tokyo before and I was on its top one month ago. And I heard that usually we can see it from Tokyo in winter and in the morning. But I think I was less surprised than this Spanish tourist screaming : “Furi!!”

More pictures about Fuji here.

Photographers : Mario Sorrenti and Nobuyoshi Araki

Model : Raquel Zimmerman

Tokyo, june 2008.

Pictures published in Vogue Nippon, october 2008.

The highlight of the festival is a parade of Teppo Hyakunincho (100 sharpshooters of the Edo Period).