The one that got away – Jonathan and Ryan Wijayaratne
Born and raised between Sri Lanka, Australia, and the UK, the Wijayaratne brothers grew up surrounded by photography, thanks to their father’s ownership of Jonathans Studio (est. 1924) on Havelock Rd.
Ryan started shooting at the age of 13, began a Fine Arts course in Sydney, and then swapped it for an acting scholarship in New York. Jonathan did a degree in Accounting, then got into cooking. In 2014 they both found themselves back in Colombo by chance, and decided they should put down some professional roots.
They now co-run the family business, as well as individual work and their joint venture You’re My Favourite. Here they have a sort of director/producer division of labour, but with both of them – and sometimes other collaborators – taking the actual photographs. “For this to work,” says Jonathan, “it can’t be about ego.”
Their first gig was shooting the Miss Sri Lanka segment of Miss Universe. Here they met Danu Innasithamby (judging), who promptly hired them to create his weekly videos (which they did using iMovie). Six years on, they are working on a documentary pilot re. which they’re in first-round talks with Netflix.
Discoveries include finding that sand-banks move, that lenses fog up when you leave the ballroom, that you may have to burgle your assistant’s house to get your lights, and…
The one that got away
RYAN: ‘A friend of mine was managing this kitschy hotel in up-state New York. She’s from a family of artists, and she has these amazing tattoos all over her body, mostly from her grandmother’s artworks – so we were going to do this shoot, on colour film, where she was going to be mainly nude, and all her tattoos would be set off against this bright-green and purple décor, and all these weird, retro ornaments. I was a bit into this girl, so between that and getting to stay at this bizarre place for a couple of days, it was going to be awesome.
The shoot was at night, so I bought this old, crappy flash, thinking that a crappy flash effect might be sort of ironically artsy. I shot the whole thing – a whole night’s work, four rolls of film – and when I got them developed everything was just completely flat and muted. It was weird. I couldn’t understand what had happened.
Luckily, there was just enough of an exposure that I could scan the negatives, and massively over-expose it digitally, and turn it into this kind of super-grainy black and white. In colour it looks like trash, but in black and white it’s kind of cool. So I just never told the ‘client’ what had really happened. It’s the first time Jonathan has heard this story, actually!
A couple of years later, back in Sri Lanka, I dug that same flash out to see if I could make it work. I put it on my digital camera, and took a photo, and the same thing happened. So I asked my father if he knew what was wrong with it, and he said “What speed were you shooting?” and when I told him it was at 100th [of a second] – a basic, default frame-rate for the flash to automatically sync with the camera – he said “You probably needed to shoot at 60.” I said “What?? Why!?” and he explained that these ‘old’ flashes (stuff from before about the year 2000) just didn’t go that fast. So we set it up for 60… and it worked perfectly!’
The shot that they got
JONATHAN: ‘This was for a swimwear fashion editorial, at Mount Lavinia beach. They had flown down this beautiful model, and Gautam Kalra, a really famous Indian stylist who’s worked with Sharukh Khan and people like that, and Gautam said it would be great if, for the shot, we could also find somebody local. And we thought, “Well, we’re at the beach: we can just find a fisherman.” And then there wasn’t a single fisherman in sight.
We found a guy, and he said “Yeah, talk to my uncle.” So we sent off two assistants to try and find this guy, and they were gone for hours – he lived in some little shanty, way inland, and wanted them to sit with him and have a smoke – and now the light was fading, and it’s about to rain; but then they come back with this dude who looks like fire. Really old and weathered, but insane body, a crazy strong look – just from a life of natural working out.
Fashion photography can be really weird sometimes. So now you’ve got this hot girl in swimwear, and then this fisherman just doing his own thing, with some fish that he’s strung together with palm leaves, hanging off his waist. He couldn’t speak English, and she didn’t speak Sinhala – so they’re just there trying to chat about these fish. But there was a real human connection.
You can see strength, the hardship he’s been through – but also how proud he is. We were there thinking “Is this kind of an exploitation?” And I guess it kind of is; but we paid him a full day’s pay for about 30 minutes’ work, he had a great time, and he absolutely owned the situation!’
‘The fishin’ shoot’ by You’re My Favourite