In July, I photographed kata champion, and Goju-ryu master, Norihiko Masuda. We started the shoot at 7AM in Onoyama Park in Naha City. There were very few other people around, but we did have one extra person joining us. Uezato-san from the Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper came along to take some behind the scenes pics of our shoot, and interview both us and Masuda Sensei about the Karate Masters Portrait Project.

After taking some environmental portraits near the Onoyama Park shrine, and the torii gate, we took a few extra shots at the entrance to the Budokan (martial arts hall) where Masuda has won many competitions.

This was the first shoot I’d done with the new Sony A7RIV camera, and I used the 24mm f1.4 lens and the 50mm f1.2 lens. (Thank you to Uetsuki-san at Kitamura Camera Chatan branch for helping me trade in several of my Pentax lenses for the new Sony 50mm.) Off camera flash was done with the Profoto B1 strobe.

It was good to hear Masuda Sensei telling Uezato-san how valuable he believes our portrait project and video series are. Masuda Sensei is going to assist in introducing us to some of the Goju-ryu masters we have not yet had the opportunity to photograph.

After the outdoors shoot we went over the Aragaki Dojo in Omoromachi to take the studio portraits of Masuda Sensei. Shot with the A7RIV and the 50mm lens.

One big advantage of using the Sony system is that I was able to quickly switch from shooting stills to recording some video footage of Masuda Sensei with the same camera.

A huge thank you to Masuda Sensei. The article for the Ryukyu Shimpo website / newspaper will hopefully appear sometime in August.