TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography

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Cosplay at the Kyoto International Manga Museum

Published by travel67

Cosplay (costume roleplay) events in Japan always remind me of Halloween. Although some participants dress as their favorite characters from movies or TV, the most common choice seems to be to imitate idols from the world of manga (comics).

While wandering around Kyoto I saw a cosplay event taking place at the new Kyoto International Manga Museum. Everyone was really friendly (far more so than at Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon), and I spent a couple of hours taking photos. It was a cloudy day and a little darker than I would have liked, but it meant that I had good even lighting for the shots.

Cosplay at the Kyoto International Manga Museum

Daimonji, Kyoto

Published by travel67

On August 16th the Daimonji festival took place in Kyoto. Groups of bonfires are lit at six mountainside locations around the city. When burning the bonfires create giant kanji (chinese symbols) that can be seen from miles around. The most famous is Daimonji, appropriately the symbol means big. To give some understanding of scale, the horizontal stroke is 80 meters long.

The day before the event I scouted out the area looking for a good viewpoint. I was amazingly lucky when I managed to get myself invited to a rooftop for the event so I could get a clear view free of wiring or buildings. Thank you so much to the staff at camera shop Korakudo!

On the night, I got a clear shot of the Daimonji, and it was great to hang out with everyone on the rooftop.

Daimonji, Kyoto

Unfortunately the conditions were not exactly how I would have liked them. What I had hoped for was a crystal clear sky which would have retained a blue/purple tint while providing a nice silhouette of the darker mountain.

But that’s the great thing about annual events – there’s always next year.

On the bookshelf: Celebrity & Performance

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I ordered the book Celebrity and Performance from Amazon months ago but due to delays (or the popularity of Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller) the book only just arrived.

It is another interesting tome in “The World’s Top Photographer’s Workshops” series by RotoVision. The ten photographers chosen each capture celebrities in a different way, from the “airport paparazzo” to the “Hollywood A-lister”. Many of my favorite images were black and whites shot by Andy Gotts using a Mamiya RB67 and Kodak Tri-X 400. Amazing.

Celebrity & Performance by Andy Steel / RotoVision

Tozando, Kyoto

Published by travel67

A few years back I wrote the article The Best of Kyoto. On my latest trip I wanted to get some more images of city, including Daimonji Festival, Arashiyama Ukai (fishing with cormorants), Nijo Castle and Ryoan-ji Temple. First, however, I’ll show a couple of photos from Tozando a Japanese martial arts equipment supplier based in Kyoto.

Particularly photogenic was this suit of samurai armor, (the Akanuri Sugakedou Yoroi Set), on sale at ¥350,000.

Akanuri Sugakedou Yoroi Set, Tozando, Kyoto

However, my favorite item in the store was a katana & wakizashi set that had been made in the 18th Century by Sadayuki of the Owari region (¥2,800,000).

Katana & Wakizashi at Tozando, Kyoto

You can check out the store online at www.tozandoshop.com

Last few Awa Odori shots.

Published by travel67

Second day started with lovely clear weather so before the dancing began I took the cable car up the mountain to get some shots of the city.

Tokushima City

Overall I think I got a good selection of images from the event. Hopefully enough for a photo essay on the festival, but that’s the decision of photo editors not humble photographers.

Awa Odori, Tokushima

Kimono at Awa Odori

Young Awa Odori dancer

On the bookshelf – Annie Leibovitz Photographs 1970-1990

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In an earlier blog I talked about buying a compendium of Annie Leibovitz photographs only to realize that many of the iconic images I was expecting were in the earlier collection of her work. Last month, for my birthday, I got just what I wanted when I was given the book Annie Leibovitz Photographs 1970-1990. The book is out of print but there are plenty of used copies available on Amazon.
There are the famous images of John and Yoko, fantastic shots of the Rolling Stones (they seemed to spend quite a lot of time unconscious) along with images of a young Schwarzenegger, Christopher Walken and self portraits.

What is really fascinating is that the books together become greater than the sum of their parts. As images of Jagger, Richards, Schwarzenegger, Walken and Leibovitz appear in both books, you also have a study of aging. Some have managed to hide the years, while the weathered faces of others reveal a lifetime of hard living that took place between one photograph and the next.

Annie Leibovitz Photographs 1970 to 1990

Okinawa Shop

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For those readers of this blog who once lived in Okinawa and miss things like Ryukyu glass or goya a new online store, Okinawa Shop, helps to satisfy your cravings. Unfortunately international buyers can’t purchase any of the food items, but if you have moved from Okinawa to mainland Japan you can now get things like shikuwasa juice sent to you with just a click of a mouse.

Scuba Diving – Sunabe Seawall

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On Saturday I went SCUBA diving for the first time in months. It was great to get back in the water, I’d forgotten how relaxing (and how quiet) it is gliding over the reef.

Hiroshi, my dive buddy, took his point & shoot camera in an underwater housing. Here’s my favorite shot of the dive, lovely gradation of blue, and my plain black fins giving a clean composition.

SCUBA Diving, Sunabe Seawall, Okinawa by Hiroshi

Couch Surfing

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One of the problems with photographing Japanese festivals is that the hordes of spectators mean accommodation is often booked out weeks if not months in advance. After being unable to find anywhere or anyone in Tokushima that had a bed or patch of floor I could sleep on, I remembered a friend had recommended I try Couch Surfing on my next trip.

Couch Surfing is based around a website www.couchsurfing.org and is “a worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit.” People host or surf on couches around the world. To the pessimists out there this must seem like a nightmare – invite complete strangers into your home and hope they don’t kill you in your sleep. Optimists see it as a fantastic way to meet people from different cultures and have a much richer (and yet cheaper) experience of travel.

I found a couch surfer (Sarah) who was happy to let myself and two more couch surfers crash on her floor during the festival. Everything worked out great and it was far more interesting than staying at a generic business hotel. Interestingly, Sarah’s apartment was in a building designed by Tadao Ando – most impressive!

Here’s a photo of us all couch surfing 🙂

Couch Surfing - a fantastic way to travel

The Traveling Photographer #1

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I am pleased to announce that starting in the September issue of Okinawa Living Magazine there will be a monthly photo tips page titled The Traveling Photographer. I’ll be giving some advice on how to take better photographs and illustrating the various points with a few of my pictures. The September issue just hit the stands today so for those of you on Okinawa please check it out. I will eventually put the text and images up on my website for those of you who aren’t living on the island.