TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography

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On the bookshelf

Published by travel67

My fascination with photography began in 1999 when I arrived in Japan. I bought my first SLR camera, put in some film and started taking pictures. I didn’t have any photographer friends, know of any photography clubs or really have any clear idea of what I was doing. For the first few months my new camera remained in the auto everything mode, but slowly I started experimenting seeing what all the other buttons did and working my way through the camera’s manual.

Taking more and more photographs is a great way to improve, but I still didn’t have anyone that could offer me advice on subjects like which lenses to use or the best way to shoot a portrait. It turned out however that there were hundreds of fantastic mentors out there who had distilled their wisdom into books. It didn’t matter that I was living in a snowdrift in northern Japan as those magical brown cardboard boxes from Amazon always managed to get through. And so in a country where I can’t even read the children’s books I gradually began to build up my own modest library that offered both guidance and inspiration.

So what are the books on my shelf?

I thought I would start with one closest to my own passion – Bob Krist’s Spirit of Place : The Art of the Traveling Photographer. Its a book written by a man with a dream job: assignments by magazines like National Geographic to exotic locations across the world. It’s easy to read with lots of useful information, but not overly technical. The photographs do however have the useful data such as shutter speeds, aperture and camera/film that give you a better idea of how he took the picture.

One interesting feature of the book is that there are several mini photo essays in the book. If you want to work as a professional travel photographer you usually need to think about getting a series of shots rather than just a single photograph. If you are telling the story of a city you need to have a selection of images that show all its different faces.

Overall a good book from a man with a fantastic job.

Check it out out your local library or bookshop or if you want you can get it from Amazon.com here:

Spirit of Place: The Art of the Traveling Photographer

New York Times assignment

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Amon Miyamoto at home in Okinawa

In early September I took photographs of the Okinawan home of Japanese theater producer Amon Miyamoto for The New York Times. It was the first time I had worked for them and both a fascinating but challenging experience. Normally when doing travel photography I am happily working at my own pace and I can wait until the conditions are perfect. On this assignment I had only a couple of hours to shoot five rolls of 220 film and get a decent selection of shots of the house’s interior, exterior and some portraits of Amon Miyamoto. The house was constructed from concrete and had a minimalist design. The photos are now online at the New York Times website you can see them here:

The New York Times – In Okinawa, Staging the View

Connect Magazine assignment

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Most of the articles I have written about Japan have been based on a particular city or region. However recently I did a feature titled “Ultimate Guide: Japan” for CONNECT the business travel magazine of Carlson Wagonlit Travel. It was interesting trying to condense a whole county into just a few pages, but it meant that many great places to visit had to be left unmentioned.

You can see the article here: Ultimate Guide: Japan

I also wrote the city guides for Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto and Fukuoka that are later on in the magazine. One of the interesting things I learned while writing the piece was that since my last visit a year ago Osaka’s most famous restaurant Kuiadore has closed down however Kuidaore’s iconic clown figure that used to stand outside the restaurant will continue to live on albeit at a new location outside the C’est la vie SQUARE Nakaza Building.