Compared to landscape or street photography, taking studio-based portraits can seem a big technical challenge – but as Japanese-antiques expert David Thatcher reveals, with the right teachers and attitude, you can master lighting skills in no time.
If you’re put off from studio-based portrait photography as you’re worried about the cost and complexity of lighting or working with models, take heart from the story of David Thatcher.
David, who is based in Towcester in the UK, is well known as an expert restorer of Japanese samurai armour, as well as being an accomplished martial artist in his own right. He now runs a successful business selling authentic samurai art and artefacts, interest in which has grown thanks to the success of the TV drama, Shogun.
Necessity being the mother of invention, David has gone from being a beginner in photography to mastering the essential skills needed for not only taking professional-looking shots of the armour he sells, but also taking stunning portraits of people wearing it. Indeed, he’s now finding customers for just his samurai portraits.
Your images are great, but why didn’t you just hire a professional photographer?
I decided to take photos of the old samurai armour I am selling, rather than hiring a professional photographer, for several reasons.
From childhood, I’ve enjoyed drawing and have a graphic design background. But logistically it’s much more difficult to draw all the pictures for one of my books and it makes more sense to photograph them. I decided to take the photographs myself as if I was to ask a pro, I would have been exposed to their technical or artistic process. If you then go on to repeat it yourself, you are stepping on their intellectual property rights. I wanted full control of my projects in the future.
I also wanted to bring in some kind of homage to the work of the pioneering photographer Felice Beato, who took a lot of pictures of 19th century Japan at the end of the samurai era.
So you were pretty much a beginner in ‘serious’ photography?
I have always had a digital SLR, but I only used it on Auto. About three years ago, I met a pro who was working for a leading auction house and he was using a PhaseOne camera. I didn’t know what a ‘PhaseOne’ was but I was blown away by the quality of the images, so I bought one too! I started to learn the basics of photography. I’d never tried portraiture until about three months ago, however.
How did you go about learning portrait and lighting skills?
When I bought the PhaseOne camera, it came with ProFoto lighting set, including octoboxes. I didn’t learn how to control lighting the way I wanted to until I attended the ClickLive show in the UK earlier this year. I owe so much to the show, particular the US fashion and beauty photographer Lindsay Adler, who was there giving workshops and classes. I owe this show so much…
I learnt about feathering, light placement, everything and then just experimented with my octoboxes, reflectors and other types of modifiers, snoots – the whole lot.
By this time I had also bought a Hasselblad X2D100C and 55V lens. The Hasselblad mesmerised me and it was easy to use. I haven’t looked back, especially when I got to grips with using a tripod. Obviously I still make small technical errors, but I learn from these.
OK, so that’s the camera and lighting, but where did you find the models?
Finding and working with models was my biggest fear. I was terrified! I approached a Japanese lady called Erika Satomi in my martial arts dojo, and she gave me the confidence to direct her. Being able to talk to her and find out what both of our expectations were really helped.
I asked her to imagine she was on a battlefield in the samurai era as it was very important to me to capture the mood of the times. I then found some guys to pose, who were also martial artists. Because they have this ‘warrior mindset’ it was very easy to connect with them as a fellow martial artist.
That said, it was quite difficult to find Japanese people to be models, as many are superstitious, believing old armour still possesses the ‘kami’ or spirits of the former samurai owners. They also didn’t want to be seen to be somehow ‘showing off’ by wearing it.
Another challenge was lighting the model AND lighting the armour at the same time. All the armour in the portraits is for sale, remember, so I needed to show it at its best.
Japanese armour in black lacquer acts like a black mirror, so it’s particularly hard to capture properly. Fortunately, I’d also attended a talk at ClickLive by another portrait photographer, Martina Wärenfeld, where I learned about post production with Photoshop – so I used frequency separation techniques to get around this problem.
So quite a lot of editing was involved?
Yes, I have a background in digital art, so I was quite comfortable with Photoshop. I was also influenced by old masters like Caravaggio, so I used dodge and burn techniques, overlays and textures to create a more painterly effects. I changed the background in some of the portraits for example, adding in a hanging scroll showing a dragon – which suited Erika’s armour (see below).
After basic edits in Lightroom, I would go into Photoshop and work on specific areas, using non-destructive editing via layers for example.
It’s interesting that you show women in armour, we tend to only see male samurai in movies…
As mentioned, I have a number of book projects on the go as well as taking promotional images to sell armour. I am currently working on a book about female armour, as there definitely were female samurai warriors, too. You haven’t tended to see them in samurai movies as these have been male dominated for a lot of cultural reasons, but they definitely existed.
I also felt it was important to show Japanese women in a strong and empowered way. No ‘samurai nerd’ is going to pull me up on this, as I am that nerd!
Do you print and sell these portraits too?
I am now finding that people want to buy prints of the portraits as well as buying my samurai artefacts, so I am really keen to keep developing my photography, particularly with other martial artists.
The portraits are printed on Canson paper (I met them at The Photography Show) by Martin Sturgess. I’d always worked on images for the screen so I didn’t really understand much about printing… it’s been another learning curve.
I bought a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100 A2 photo printer and now know enough to proof my images before sending them out for printing. My images go on show at The Association of Art and Antiques Dealers’ fair in London and I am finding that people have become more interested in samurai after watching Shogun. They can take a print away with them for £150, while buying a set of samurai armour for £80,000 is a much bigger investment.
What message do you have for amateurs who’d like to try studio portraiture in 2025, but are a bit intimidated?
I think my experience shows that you shouldn’t be scared of learning to use lighting and raising your portrait photography skills. You just need to find the right people to learn from, and to be prepared to stick with it and learn from your mistakes. It’s all attainable if you really want it to happen.
To learn more about David, see his website and Instagram page.
