Revan & Grace's Tokyo Engagement

Revan and Grace, a couple planning to marry, spent an April afternoon with me across two very different corners of Tokyo: a stretch of beach and a flower garden in full spring bloom.

Revan got in touch with a problem I actually love hearing: he could not decide between a beach and a flower garden for their engagement photographs, so rather than pick one, we did both. It meant a day built around contrast rather than a single setting, open water and horizon in one half, colour and closeness in the other.

We started at the water, where the light was wide and a little windswept, the kind of setting that makes a couple stand close together without needing to be told to. From there we moved to the garden, where April had the beds full and everything shifted: less horizon, more detail, the two of them tucked among the flowers rather than framed against the sky. Tokyo in spring gives you both of those moods within the same afternoon if you know where to look, and Revan's indecision turned out to be the right instinct.

As a bilingual, Japan-based photographer who has been featured in British Vogue, I shoot on both film and digital, and a session like this, two locations, two different registers of light, is exactly the kind of day I build my style around: docu-editorial, a little cinematic, always led by what the couple actually wants rather than a fixed formula.

Vendor credits‍

• Photography: Sofia Hiramatsu Photography

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If you're dreaming of the same

Two locations, one afternoon, and a couple who couldn't choose between the sea and the flowers, so they didn't have to. If you're planning an engagement session in Tokyo and can't decide on just one setting either, I'd love to hear from you: inquire here.