It’s the start of a new year and a new decade! Have you been keeping up with your New Year’s resolutions? Personally, I haven’t decided on which goals I want to accomplish this year yet, although I definitely want to do more creative shoots.

A while back I got the opportunity to collaborate with Ayaka for a geisha themed portrait session. Ayaka is a jazz and pop singer and songwriter based in Los Angeles. We got in touch via Instagram, and she hooked up our photo session with an amazing studio run by her manager called “Starwest Studios”. Located in Burbank, the studio hosts a variety of events from dance to music and is also used for live broadcast production. The studio has a ton of lighting setups and fluorescent colors that you can play with which makes it a perfect indoor location to take unique studio portraits. Before this, I had only done studio photoshoots through photo meetup collaborations. This was my very first one-on-one studio photoshoot and I’m really happy with how these shots came out!

Model: Ayaka

Photographer: Makito Umekita Photography

Studio: Starwest Studios

Ready to book a studio portrait session with me?