TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography

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Expo Park Fireworks 2017

Published by travel67

Another impressive Expo Park Fireworks Festival on Saturday. Very glad I live just a short walk from the event so I don’t get caught in Okinawa’s longest traffic jam of the year.

Shooting fireworks against a black sky doesn’t really put the event in any context. Luckily the show started at 8pm and there was still a little color in the sky for the first 5 minutes. This was when I shot the picture above showing the fireworks, Emerald Beach, and the Orion Hotel.

Then as darkness enveloped us, I got a few pics of the fireworks and reflections on the ocean.

However, my favorite firework photos are still the shots I took at the Miyajima fireworks festival where the floating torii gate of Itsukushima Shrine could be silhouette by explosions.

Saturday’s pics were shot with the Pentax K-1 with the 24-70mm f2.8 lens. The floating torii firework images were taken with the Pentax 67II medium format film camera and Fuji Provia 100F film.

Koichi Nakasone 9th Dan Ryukyu Kingdom Sui-di Bujutsu

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Yesterday I made the short drive over to Nakijin Village to the home of Koichi Nakasone, 9th Dan Ryukyu Kingdom Sui-di Bujutsu. He is the 76th sensei to be photographed for the Karate Masters Portrait Project.

James Pankiewicz, Becka Tedder, and I sat down for a chat in the traditional wooden house that Nakasone sensei had recently built by himself.

He told us a few stories about his karate training, and the three months he spent in the USA traveling from dojo to dojo, challenging the members to fight. (Known in Japanese as dojo yaburi.)

After our chat, we set up the black background on the side of the house and took the portraits. (Pentax 645Z with 90mm lens. Profoto B1 with white softlight reflector.)

We then drove a couple of minutes to beautiful Nagahama Beach for some more location shots.

I switched lenses to the 25mm wide-angle and removed the softlight reflector as we needed as much power as possible to try and fill in shadows. Becka held the light, while James put on his gi for some one on one training with Nakasone sensei.

Nakasone sensei has accumulated a wealth of knowledge, and just a brief glimpse into his methods of sparring, self defense and joint manipulation was fascinating. He’s giving a seminar in Naha later in the year so if you’re in Okinawa September 29th to October 3rd it would be well worth attending. Facebook event page here.

A huge thank you to Nakasone sensei for letting us visit his home and take his portrait. We’re looking forward to the seminar and hopefully taking more photos (and even video) in the future.

Summer in Okinawa

Published by travel67

Goldfish shoals, nibbling at my toes. Fun, Fun, Fun in the Sun, Sun, Sun.

HAPPY WELCOME to the summer heat and humidity. Beautiful blue skies, and sweaty sweaty t-shirts. Spent the weekend out in the sun for the North and South Intermediate Workshop.

82 year old Jahana-san showing how to stay cool in the summer heat. Put on a hat and stay in the shade.

Time for some fresh mango juice.

Native Lightroom Presets by Lens Distortions

Published by travel67

Yesterday I purchased some native Lightroom presets by Lens Distortions. Cleverly targeted ads on Facebook and Google were constantly bombarding me with their products. When they had a brief summer sale I decided to give a few of them a try.

Their products for Lightroom are presets which allow you to add an additional element such as rain or a sun flare to your images. You can then adjust the new element with the brush tools. It is a little like working in a separate layer in photoshop.

I purchased the Forecast and Skylight packs, downloaded them, opened Lightroom and then played around adding some rain and snow to pics I shot of Dan a few months ago.

They are a fun add-on to Lightroom, and the effects even after playing around for just a couple of hours are pretty impressive. No doubt that with time you’d be able to finesse the results.

Working with RAW files from the Pentax 645Z is not ideal for the software as some of the elements are not wide enough to cover the entire image. This can easily be solved by duplicating the effect and dragging it to another part of the image, but you then face the issue of identical clusters of raindrops. This may be solved in later versions of the software as file sizes get larger. There are also just a few variations one each effect, but I imagine if the software catches on there will be expansion packs with more snow, rain or star options.

You can check out their various products for Lightroom, Photoshop and Video editing software at their website Lensdistortions.com

Coconut Crabs of Okinawa

Published by travel67

Coconut crabs, Birgus latro, are the world’s largest land-living arthropods. Okinawa is the northernmost habitat for the species. They hibernate during the winter, and are nocturnal, so many Okinawans have never seen one.

Coconut Crab ( Birgus latro ) in Okinawa, the northern most habitat of the species.

The crabs can grow up to 3 kilos, and have large powerful claws. They are scavengers and usually eat fallen fruit from trees such as the adan (Pandanus odoratissimus), but they will nibble on the occasional dead animal.

Coconut crab ( Birgus latro ) climbing up roadside kerb. Okinawa is the northern most habitat of the species.

Coconut crabs grow very slowly and can live for up to 60 years. As sexual maturity doesn’t occur until 5 years old, predation of larger crabs by animals or humans can lead to a population being unable to recover.

Researchers such as marine biologist Shin-ichiro Oka monitor the coconut crabs in Okinawa. Crabs are measured, photographed, tagged, and have their position logged.

Coconut Crab ( Birgus latro ) monitoring in Motobu, Okinawa, Japan the northern most habitat of the species. Marine biologist Shinichiro Oka measuring the size of a crab.

Coconut Crab ( Birgus latro ) monitoring in Motobu, Okinawa, Japan the northern most habitat of the species. Marine biologist Shinichiro Oka checking a small male crab for an implanted tag.

Coconut Crab ( Birgus latro ) monitoring in Motobu, Okinawa, Japan the northern most habitat of the species. Marine biologist Shinichiro Oka holding a female crab with fertilized eggs.

Other interesting aspects of coconut crab biology have been studied including their grip strength. Oka explains that a large coconut crab has a grip strength similar to the jaws of a lion.

Coconut crab ( Birgus latro ) monitoring in Okinawa. Marine biologist Shin-ichiro Oka testing the grip stength of a 1.5 kilo coconut crab .

Thank you to Shin-ichiro Oka for letting me tag along while he works. It was great to discover one of the amazing creatures living in my local neighborhood.

Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain.

Published by travel67

Heavy rains have hit Okinawa for the past couple of weeks. Reservoirs are full, and there have been some small landslides. No injuries that I know of, but closures of roads and some evacuations have been making life miserable for some.

The downpours have brought power and fury to waterfalls that are sometimes little more than a trickle. Today Todoroki-no-Taki (Thunder Falls) in Nago was living up to its name.

Knock Out

Published by travel67

An epic Fight Club studio workshop yesterday. In the morning we went through the basics of studio strobes, triggering, and variables such as distance, position and quality of light. Then it was fight time.

In the red gloves, Zac “The Flash” Pesicka.

In the blue gloves Andre “The Body” Smith

In the early rounds Zac’s speed was a clear advantage, Andre was thrown onto the ropes with a crushing right hook. Shrugging off the blow, and up before the nonexistent referee had counted to 10, Andre continued the fight.

A mid-fight tussle with makeup artist Audra Pesicka had left the fighters bruised and bleeding.

Keith “Cutman” Robbins stepped into check on the condition of his fighters.

Zac landed a punishing blow to the ribs.

But moments later Andre retaliated with a fight ending uppercut.

The champ.

A huge thanks to both fighters for shedding sweat and fake blood during the fight. Thanks to “Cutman” Robbins for the inspiring words and continuously humming Eye of the Tiger.

Once again, thank you to makeup artist Audra Pesika for beating up the guys. And finally to Liesa for joining us and learning some new skills.

Fight Club Studio Workshop June 17th 2017

More information about upcoming workshops can be found here.

Back it Up

Published by travel67

This is another blog post about backing up data, and protecting your images. Why? Because if it means just one reader doesn’t lose all their family photos to the digital abyss, it will be worthwhile.

Hard disks have a finite lifespan. This is probably going to be around 3 to 5 years. If, for example, you only store your family photos on your laptop, when it dies (and it will) you will lose all your images or have to pay a lot of money to a data recovery firm to try and get back your treasured memories.

Back up your computer at home, and ideally have another off-site backup just in case of a disaster such as theft, fire or flood that takes both hard drive and back up drive.

Back up at home.

If you’ve got an Apple computer use the Time Machine application. All you need is an external hard disk that is significantly larger than the total of your computers internal hard drives.

I was using a 4TB external hard drive as my main TimeMachine backup, but just bought a larger 8TB Western Digital external hard drive.

As 8TB is still not large enough to backup all my data, I select which drives to back up with the Time Machine (start up disk and the most recent disks of images) and which to manually copy to another external hard disk (film scans and images from 2010-2013).

For windows users there are also applications to help backup your data. An app came with the Western Digital drive, that enables automated backup of data .

Off-site back up

My documents and all my client images are also backed up and synced to Dropbox. I have a Dropbox Plus account which gives me 1TB of storage for about US$8.25 a month. It works as a great method to give me immediate access to files and sync between various computers.

My main computer system is also backed up to the cloud using BackBlaze. This is US$50 a year and is my best option to retrieve all my data in the event of flood or fire. Your computer (and all connected hard drives) are uploaded to their secure servers. In the event both my computer and the TimeMachine are lost, I can download everything from BackBlaze over the internet or request a physical hard drive with the data. It’s an insurance policy that allows me to sleep better at night.

Dino Park in Nago, Okinawa

Published by travel67

Dino Park in Nago, Okinawa, Japan

Visitors to the Nature Park Yanbaru Subtropical Forest could quietly stroll along a short paved trail among the trees looking at various types of vegetation including palms and orchids. Unfortunately, the tourists didn’t really come.

In 2016, the addition of around 50 dinosaurs many of which have basic animatronics and sound, has transformed the nature park into “Dino Park” a far more popular sightseeing destination.

Dino Park in Nago, Okinawa, Japan

The new additions do fit in well with the subtropical forest setting and several are quite impressive. The dinosaurs are reasonably realistic and vary in the level of animatronics from static models to automatons with jointed necks, jaws, tails and eyelids. They do not surge forwards out of the undergrowth, and there are no fully mobile dinosaurs so they probably won’t terrify many children. The outdoor speakers that give the dinosaurs voices are also a little small and lack any bass, so although you hear the roar of the T-Rex you don’t feel it in your body.

Dino Park in Nago, Okinawa, Japan

The Nago Dino Park is located on route 85, the winding mountain road that runs along the spine of the Motobu Peninsula. From Nago you pass the Pineapple Park, and Okinawa Fruits Land, then continue in the direction of the aquarium. After about 5 minutes you’ll see Okashi Goten a sweet / souvenir store, and a full size triceratops.

The Dino Park is 800 yen for adults, 500 yen for children. A good family adventure that kids young and old should enjoy.

Dino Park in Nago, Okinawa, Japan

All photographs taken with the Pentax K-1 and the 24-70mm lens. No dinosaurs or humans were harmed during the making of this blog post.

Krazy Bee Gym, Itoman

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I photographed MMA fighter Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto last December at my friend Ben’s capoeira dojo in Chatan (blog post here). A few days ago, I got a call from Norifumi to say that he was setting up his own Krazy Bee gym in Itoman, and could I take some photos of the team.

Son of Japanese Olympic wrestler Ikuei Yamamoto, Norifumi is a fearsome mixed martial arts fighter. (some video highlights on YouTube)

Norifumi Kid Yamamoto at Krazy Bee Gym, Itoman City, Okinawa, Japan

Norifumi’s older sister Miyuu is a three-time Freestyle Wrestling World Champion, and now fights mixed martial arts. Their younger sister Seiko, also a champion wrestler, now lives in Texas and is married to baseball pitcher Yu Darvish.

Miyuu Yamamoto at Krazy Bee Gym, Itoman City, Okinawa, Japan

Miyuu’s son Erson Yamamoto is a mixed martial arts fighter competing professionally.

Erson Yamamoto at Krazy Bee Gym, Itoman City, Okinawa, Japan

Along with the Yamamoto family, there are several other fighters in the Crazy Bee team: Betinho Vital a jiu-jitsu fighter from Brazil

Betinho Vital at Krazy Bee Gym, Itoman City, Okinawa, Japan

Aw Ratchayothin Sangmorakot a muay-thai fighter from Thailand.

Aw Ratchayothin Sangmorakot at Krazy Bee Gym, Itoman City, Okinawa, Japan

Kosuke Yokoyama a jiu-jitsu fighter from Japan.

Kyosuke Yokoyama at Krazy Bee Gym, Itoman City, Okinawa, Japan

It was great to meet the Krazy Bee team and I look forward to working with you all in the future.

Photo info:

All photos shot with the Pentax 645Z with the 90mm 2.8 lens.

Lastolite black velvet background. Profoto D2 light with 1×4′ gridded softbox back/right of the subject. Profoto B1 with softlight reflector white as the key light.

Want to learn how to take images in the studio? Next studio workshop is June 17th.