PHOTOGRAPHING PEOPLE PHOTOS by GOH IROMOTO | WORDS by VIRGINIA MARSHALL PROfile
Raised with a camera in his hand, Goh Iromoto’s parents ran a Japanese newspaper. “I learned early that photojournalism is about capturing moments,” he says. Summers spent out of the city at canoe camps fueled a love of wild nature and all things paddling. A skilled outdoorsman and film director as well as photographer, Iromoto’s documentary style is a serendipitous and seamless merging of passions. His outdoor adventure work takes him all over the world, from filming sperm whales in Dominica to shooting dogsledding in Northern Ontario.
CANDID PORTRAITS [1]
“Intuition.” Goh Iromoto admits the secret to authentic photographs of people is easier named than mastered. “I didn’t have it when I started,” he says. “I’d have the camera over my shoulder, see something, have that moment of hesitation and miss the shot.” His advice: shoot more. “If you always have your camera and you’re always ready to shoot, you start to gain that intuition,” Iromoto continues. “Be observant and quiet—watch other people when their concentration is elsewhere, and you’ll capture those candid moments.”
In this image, the paddler is busy attaching her spray deck, preoccupied with the logis- tics of the upcoming trip. Iromoto composed the photo to lead the viewer’s eyes to her pensive expression and capture that moment of departure. “Composition has a lot to do with lines,” he explains. “The line of the dock from the camera to the distant island is a pathway for the eyes to follow. I started shooting from standing height, but the image looked flat. By lying down on the dock, I cre- ated a sense of depth and distance.” If you’re struggling to find an interesting composition, Iromoto says, “just crouch or lie down and you’ll get a whole different world of images.”
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