Tokyo: A Debutante Travel Portrait Shoot

When Joyce (@thedelightfulmissjoyce) contacted me about the prospect of doing a debutante shoot for her cousin Maia, I was hesitant. (I just Googled “hesitant thesaurus” right now. I’m looking for something with a stronger connotation. Oh well, "hesitant" would do.)

Debutante portraits - isn’t that shooting young ladies about to turn 18, long gown and all, with a princess-like demeanor? Nothing wrong with it, except that I’m not good at it. Honestly. Seriously. (Shhhh… but I’m really not good at making people pose editorial style. Don’t tell anyone. *chuckles* Kidding. It’s no secret.)

So there, I was already preparing my list of 20++ photographers that they can consider - colleagues and industry friends who I’m sure can and will do a better job than me in doing shoots like this. But when I met Maia for the first time, I learned that her favorite post from my site was my Street Photography Gallery of Stockholm and Copenhagen, and that she would like to do something similar for her pre-debut Portrait Session. “Oh, cool. She knows what she wants, she knows what my brand is all about, and she knows what she’s getting into. Street is the shiz.”, I figured.

So there — what happened next, in two cites almost 3,000 kilometers apart, was one of the most enjoyable shoots that I’ve ever done in my career. Shibuya : Legazpi Sunday Market in Makati. Yardstick : Blue Bottle Coffee. MAnila : MAia and TOrres : TOkyo was just a coincidence. Or perhaps, having subtle undertones of destiny, that this shoot was meant to be.

Maia Torres - debutante portraits. Travel and lifestyle photography x Guj. Yardstick Coffee and Legazpi Sunday Market, Makati City, Philippines and Shibuya and Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. December 2016. Color remastered using redsheep Chromavibe 160M+ September 2020.