What clients say

We booked Smart Peninsula for our autumn product catalogue and the files came back exactly as discussed. Colour-accurate, clean, and on time. We have used three other studios in Yokohama and none of them delivered this consistently.

— Natsuko Iida, Brand Manager, Yokohama ceramics company

Kenji spent twenty minutes before the shoot just adjusting the window blind to get the light right. I have never had a photographer do that. The portraits were the best I have had taken.

— Daisuke Ono, Academic, Yokohama National University

The workshop was small enough that I actually got feedback on my own images. I came in shooting on auto and left understanding how to read a histogram.

— Yuki Hashimoto, Workshop participant

How we work

Light before everything

We scout or build the light before the subject arrives. Natural window light, continuous LED panels, or a single bare strobe. The choice is made for the image, not for convenience.

One session, one focus

We do not double-book days. When your session is scheduled, the studio and the photographer's full attention belong to that project until it is finished.

Colour-accurate delivery

All files are colour-graded on a calibrated NEC PA271Q monitor and delivered in both sRGB and Adobe RGB profiles. What you see on screen matches what prints.

Transparent pricing

Every quote is itemised: studio time, post-processing hours, licensing scope, and print rights. No line item is hidden until the invoice arrives.

Archival file handling

RAW files are backed up to two separate drives and a cloud archive on the day of the shoot. We retain them for three years after delivery.

Honest timelines

Standard delivery is ten business days. Rush delivery (five days) is available at an additional fee. We do not promise what we cannot keep.

News & Announcements

2026-06-30

How to Read Natural Light for Portrait Photography

Most portrait problems are light problems. Not too little light, not too much. The wrong quality of light in the wrong place. Understanding how to read what is already in the room before you add anything to it is the single most useful skill a portrait photographer can develop, and it is the one most often skipped in favour of buying more equipment.

2026-05-15

Why Colour Calibration Matters in a Photography Workflow

Colour calibration is one of those topics that photographers either obsess over or ignore entirely. The ones who ignore it tend to discover the problem when a client calls to say the prints do not match the screen. The ones who obsess over it sometimes overcomplicate a process that, done correctly, is straightforward and takes about fifteen minutes once a month.

2026-04-20

What Makes a Professional Headshot Actually Work

A headshot is a specific kind of photograph with a specific job: it needs to communicate who you are to someone who has never met you, in about two seconds. That is a narrow brief. Most headshot problems come from trying to do too much. Too much retouching, too busy a background, too forced an expression. Rather than too little.

Who we are, plainly

Founder, Established since 2017

Kenji Murakami

Kenji Murakami studied photography at Musashino Art University, graduating in 2010 with a focus on documentary and still-life work. He spent six years as a second-unit photographer at a Tokyo advertising agency, where he shot product catalogues, retail campaigns, and occasional editorial work for clients across the Kanto region. In 2017 he left to found Smart Peninsula in Yokohama, starting from a rented back room in Noge before moving to the current Kanagawa-ku studio in late 2018. He calibrates his own monitors, maintains his own equipment, and has not missed a shoot due to gear failure since the studio opened. Outside the studio, he collects pre-war Japanese woodblock prints and walks the Miura Peninsula coastline most Sunday mornings.

hello@smartpeninsula.com LinkedIn

Photography that holds still.

Session packages

Single Portrait

Family Portrait

Executive Headshot

Ready to book a session?