Author: travel67

Island Icons – Artist Naka Bokunen

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Bokunen was born on the small Okinawan island of Izena in 1953. As a child, he always carried a sketchbook, and drew pictures of the island’s creatures and landscapes. At that time, he never imagined a career as an artist, and thought he would become either a fisherman or a carpenter. His talent, however, did not go unnoticed. One of his teachers recommended that he attend an art-based high school on the main island of Okinawa. After graduation, Bokunen became a graphic designer and set up his own design production company, Project Core. It is his skills as a woodblock artist that have gained him them most recognition. His colorful, dream-like prints were used for the Kyoto Climate Conference in 1997, the G8 Summit in 2000, and in numerous exhibitions across Japan. What process do you go through to create the prints? “I begin with a vague idea of what the image will be like, but as soon as I start to carve the wood, things change. The whole process is very fluid, almost like …

Fast cars, slow roads.

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A Japanese motoring website just reviewed the much anticipated Nissan GTR specV sports car. The V-spec is the faster, lighter version of what was already one of the fastest sports cars on the planet. The video however is a great example of the paradox for sports cars in Japan: fast cars, slow roads. Speed limits in Japan are surprisingly low. In cities the maximum is usually 40 or 50 kilometers an hour. Toll-road expressways have speed limits of 100 kph ( and in Okinawa only 80 kph). In rural areas of Japan the low speed limits continue. Unlike Britain where country roads often have 60 mile per hour  limits,  many deserted rural roads are still restricted to 40 kilometers an hour. Unless you live close to a track the Nissan GTR specV is simply all dressed up with nowhere to go. The motoring journalist in the video however happily hurtles along  past signs and road markings for 50 kilometers an hour. This disregard for the speed limit isn’t unusual, it’s epidemic. If you simply drive with …

The Windows 7 Whopper

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This news is a little outdated  but from the 22nd to the 28th of October Burger Kings in Japan were selling Windows 7 Whopper burgers to celebrate the arrival of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. What amazes me is that someone at a PR firm thought this was a good idea, and even more remarkably, people at Microsoft agreed. Companies pay millions to be associated with certain sports stars or actors, why would Microsoft want to link itself to something quite so noxious. The campaign could almost have had the tagline “Want system failure and fatal errors, try Windows 7”.

Island Icons – Ceramic Artist Nick Centala

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In the December issue of Okinawa Living magazine there’s an interview I did with ceramic artist Nick Centala. I’ve added the extended text and a few images below for people who can’t get hold of the magazine. Potter with a Magic Touch Okinawa’s most valuable asset is its people. This month we meet Nick Centala, a ceramic artist using traditional firing techniques to produce modern designs. Nick Centala was born in Los Angeles. At 18 he joined the U.S. Navy as a corpsman and over the next 4 years he was based in San Diego and Okinawa. After the military, Nick studied pre-med to become a doctor, but a return visit to Okinawa steered his life down a different path. In 2001, he spent five weeks learning about sculpting shîsâ with Okinawan potter Miyagi Shojin. A consuming passion for pottery grew from this experience. He switched his life goals from medicine to art, and became an apprentice to a potter in Kumamoto. After 3 months, he was offered a job managing a large wood-burning oven …

Dealing with a petulant Snow Leopard

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A follow up to Apple Mac by Kafka. The Good Applications bought on iTunes could be downloaded again. This was nice as I had just paid about 20 bucks for the Japanese Ap. that works as a great English/Japanese dictionary. I easily reinstall the applications Soundslides, iVCD and Earthdesk via downloads from the web. Happily I still had all the license codes. To get Fetch again I needed to upgrade to the latest version for a few bucks, but that too is now up and running. The Bad Photoshop CS3 install disk doesn’t run. In a bizarre twist it looks like CS3 is compatible with Snow Leopard but it seems that the tiny little program that installs the program isn’t. Adobe doesn’t support CS3 anymore. Supposedly there are no problems with CS4. I bite the bullet and order a CS3 to CS4 upgrade from Adobe. (I realize this is rewarding bad behavior). No longer have the CD or code for Word for Mac. Go out and buy copy of Microsoft Office for Mac 2008. Get …

Zen and the Art of Photography Exhibitions

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There seems to be an endless number of books, magazines and Internet forums discussing the latest camera equipment. There are fewer places to get information about actually taking photographs, even fewer with regards to printing those photos, and hardly any giving advice about putting on an exhibition. Over the past two years I’ve had my first 4 exhibitions. It has been a real learning experience, from the initial stages of working out how I am going to produce the prints to finally sitting in a room watching other people stare at my photographs. There are many things I know now that I wish I had been aware of a couple of years ago. They may be obvious to some, but I thought I would share these little nuggets of wisdom. Time Do not underestimate the amount of time it will take. If you are putting on a solo show with numerous prints life is going to be busy!  For example, I thought it would be quite simple to frame all the prints by myself. It …

Watermarks

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Just had an interesting email which shows the importance of watermarking your images.   The webmaster of a model / photographer  website contacted me saying that he was suspicious of a new member’s application. The new member, a photographer named “Youko Maeda” from “Hawaii”, uploaded some examples of her photographs (including the one above)  all of which had  TRAVEL 67 watermarks on them. The webmaster decided to visit http://www.travel67.com found out the photographer was a Chris Willson and not a Youko Maeda and got in touch. The new member’s application has been denied, hopefully thwarting some dirtbags plans. A simple watermark gives potential clients or customers the ability to find who the owner of the copyright is, and hopefully dissuades others from stealing your work. Having said that people can still crop or photoshop watermarks away. This is one of the reasons why I don’t have huge images on the web.  I once got an “Okinwan Souvenir” on Facebook of some Taketomi Island star sand. Ironically the tiny gift image had been taken from my …