{"id":5507,"date":"2019-12-09T23:26:03","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T15:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tembusu.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/?p=5507"},"modified":"2025-09-25T12:39:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T04:39:55","slug":"capturing-motion-russel-wong-in-three-high-exposure-shots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/2019\/12\/capturing-motion-russel-wong-in-three-high-exposure-shots\/","title":{"rendered":"Capturing Motion: Russel Wong in Three High-Exposure Shots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Russel Wong is the first Singaporean photographer to break through Hollywood. He has photographed many celebrities, even politicians and creatives, from the East to the West, from Anthony Bourdain to Zhang Ziyi. To date, his portraits have graced 17 covers of Time magazine. Lisa Chin interviews the photographer for Tembusu\u2019s Inaugural Dinner for Academic Year 2019\/2020.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Can\nyou tell me more about what you are doing now? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m usually on a whole bunch of\nprojects at any point in time. Right now, I\u2019m working on a coffee table book on\ngeishas from Kyoto. I\u2019ve been doing this project for about ten years now\u2014it\u2019s a\npassion assignment. I\u2019ve been going to Kyoto quite a bit, documenting the life\nof these geishas, like the procedures and festivals. I just want to show this\nbecause many people do not get to see these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have also just finished my\narchitecture show. It closed this week at the Japan Creative Centre. It\u2019s on Tange\u2019s\narchitecture, Kenz\u014d Tange, and his son Paul Tange. Both father and son designed\nthe UOB Plaza and the Indoor Stadium. I photographed the buildings they\ndesigned because the Olympics is coming soon. Kenz\u014d Tange designed the National\nGymnasium for the 1964 Olympics while his son designed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Aquatics\nCentre. So the father and son are quite prolific. Kenz\u014d is pretty much an icon\nin Japan because he brought modernism to post-war Japanese architecture. He\u2019s like\nthe godfather of modern architecture in post-war Japan. We did the show,\nexhibited the buildings\u2014that just finished. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ongoing, I\u2019m doing a lot of ads, a\nlot of photoshoots for Raffles Hotel since it just opened. So that\u2019s a client\nof mine. I\u2019ve been shooting all the famous chefs they have, some interiors, but\nmainly portraits of the people who have been involved. It\u2019s ongoing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve also just finished the Guo Pei\ncatalogues. I did all the catalogues, all the billboards, all the publicity.\nBut mainly the catalogues being sold now. It\u2019s in the museum now. It\u2019s at the\nACM until mid-September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m looking forward to and hoping\nI\u2019ll get involved in the sequel of Crazy Rich Asians since I was involved in it\nand there are two sequels, the second and third book. The next shooting is\nsupposed to happen next year. So I did all the pubs for the first one\u2014all you\nsee for the first. I was also involved in the production, giving the producers information\nabout Singapore. They bought the book about six years ago. The cameo was a big\nsurprise for me because I don\u2019t really act, but they got me to do it, because I\u2019m\nmentioned in the second book. So it\u2019s whether or not the scriptwriters choose\nto write me in. But I\u2019m more concerned with doing the publicity for the second\nand third movie as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where\ndo you think the photography industry is headed to in Singapore? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u2019s gonna evolve just like\nanything, and it\u2019s already evolved from the time that I started. You know, I\nthink people need to be more specialised. Nowadays, everyone is shooting\neverything and competing with everyone. [Like in zone where all the masses are.]\nSo what I do is a bit more specialised, a bit more crafted, more nicely\nproduced. I would say crafted is the word because I am trained. I am trained\nwith a degree in photography. I am trained to shoot anything that is in front\nof me, and I am trained to do it in a proper way. Not just use a computer to\ncorrect stuff and use photoshop half the time. Because I think once you work on\nyour craft alone, things will be fine. Nowadays, people shoot on both stills\nand videos, and clients like that. So maybe that is another direction people\nshould consider. To do stills, you should still dabble in video. Because you\nsee social media these days, on Instagram and Facebook, there are both photos\nand videos. Yeah, so you can\u2019t run away from that. I used to do stills only,\nbut if you can do a video element, it expands your horizons and you can shoot\nfor more people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I think this advice is for\npeople to still work on their craft\u2014whether as a filmmaker or videographer\u2014to\ndo it properly and still get some training. Just experiment so you can grow.\nIt\u2019s not just about shooting on your handphone. You need a proper camera and proper\nequipment. Now it\u2019s cheaper to get\u2014so yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do\nyou have any other advice for aspiring photographers?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never stop shooting, never stop\nplaying around with the camera\u2014shooting, editing, playing with stuff. I think\nit\u2019s never-ending, you know, so you can grow and learn. So that\u2019s what I do; I\nnever stop shooting. Even when I\u2019m working and I\u2019ve got work, I\u2019m relentlessly\ntrying to work at my craft again, refusing to be in the safe zone which doesn\u2019t\ngrow you. For me, I need to travel, and I travel a lot, and this helps me grow\nin my work. It moulds my style. So I\u2019m open to a lot of things, I go to a lot\nof things, a lot of events to really help me grow and absorb what I see other\npeople do\u2014not necessarily other photographers. Because if you don\u2019t grow as a\nperson, your work won\u2019t grow. It\u2019s like they feed off each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article is part of a series of interviews of Singapore’s cultural icons who were guests for Tembusu’s Inaugural Dinner for Academic Year 2019\/2020. See the other interviews here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Header and feature images by Malcolm Fu.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the interviewer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Lisa Chin is not cheering at the mats outside FairPrice, you\u2019ll probably find Lisa in her room or a lounge studying\/crying in stress because c’est la vie de l’ing\u00e9nieur (it sounds more romantic in French).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lisa Chin interviews the Hollywood photographer for Tembusu\u2019s Inaugural Dinner for Academic Year 2019\/2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":5559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_type-interview","theme-arts","theme-society","scope-singapore","flavour-informative","flavour-inspiring"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5507"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5623,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5507\/revisions\/5623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}