Why did the water buffalo cross the road?
A) She thought she was a chicken.
B) She thought she was a zebra.
C) She thought she was a Beatle.
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Banana Spider – Pentax K-1 and 50mm macro
Big banana spider in the garden so thought I’d check out trying to maximize the depth of field when shooting macro with the K-1 and a 50mm macro lens. F32 gives the deepest aperture, but requires a lot of extra light. I used a B1 strobe on full power to get enough light on the subject to give the correct exposure.
1/200 f32 ISO 100 K-1 with Pentax-D FA 50mm F2.8 Macro
Very pleased to have spiders in the garden, as hopefully they’ll stay busy eating mosquitoes.
UPDATE: After finding another spider in the garden I notice there have variations in the color of the pedipalps. (Orange in the pic above, yellow in the pic below.) And yes I had to google arachnid anatomy to find out what they are called.
Underside of another banana spider (yellow pedipalps)
Chondara – Okinawan Clowns
Chondara are clowns that encourage the performers, and entertain the crowds during Okinawa’s summer eisa dance performances.
They can be young or old, but you see very few women chondara.
Usually they wear a straw conical hat and a short striped basa kimono. The makeup is nearly always white with designs drawn on to the face.
Chondara at the Heshikiya Eisa Festival, Katsuren, Okinawa, Japan
The designs on the face vary between the chondara, but more surprisingly, unlike western “whiteface” clowns, a chondara doesn’t always stick with the same face. Below we can see the same chondara at Ryukyu Mura with four different faces.
Send in the clowns!
Shintoku Takara 10th dan Okinawa Uechi-ryu
On Monday evening I photographed Shintoku Takara, 10th dan Okinawa Uechi-ryu Karatedo Kyokai. At 86 years old Takara sensei is one of the elder statesmen of Okinawa karate. We met at the family dojo in Kitanakagusku, but on finding out we live in Motobu he was excited to tell us how their family was from Bise Village just a couple of kilometers from our home.
One interesting bit of trivia about Takara sensei is that he was one of the Uechi-ryu masters who taught F1 champion Nigel Mansell in Okinawa . Mansell received his shodan certificate in 1994 (1st dan black belt).
Shitoku Takara 10th dan Okinawa Uechi-ryu Karatedo Kyokai
Shintoku Takara 10th dan Okinawa Uechi-ryu Karatedo Kyokai
Shintoku Takara 10th dan Okinawa Uechi-ryu Karatedo Kyokai
Shintoku Takara 10th dan Okinawa Uechi-ryu Karatedo Kyokai
We photographed Takara sensei along with his son Kazuya Shintoku, and his grandson Uechi Takenori. This is the first time for us to photograph three generations of karateka together.
Kazuya Takara 8th dan, Shnitoku Takara 10th dan, Takenori Uechi, Okinawa Uechi-ryu Karatedo Kyokai
Summer Workshops
Another great Fundamentals workshop last weekend. Becoming a regular at the various cafes in Motobu and Yomitan.
After a hot Sunday, we reviewed the images in my friend’s cafe Majorca.
On July 30/31 we’ll have the North & South intermediate workshop. Then the next Fundamentals Workshop will be on August 6/7.
More details can be found on the WORKSHOPS page. Get in touch to book your place!
Sessions – The Ball Family
Great family session on Sunday evening with the Kayla, Adam, and little Alice.
Kayla and Adam came out to Okinawa a year ago to train with 10th dan master Yoshio Kuba of Okinawa Goju Ryu karate. In the past few months they’ve also added Alice to their family.
A big thank you to Kayla and Adam for choosing me to take your photos and hope you have a smooth journey back to Australia.
If you’re looking to have your own family session on Okinawa check out the Family Sessions page.
Yanbaru Wildlife
Spent the day up in the Yanbaru region of northern Okinawa with wildlife photographer Mark Thorpe. Found a few interesting critters including mayflies and tiger beetles, both of which required a little patience before they’d stop for a pic.
We then met up with wildlife artist Ichiro Kikuta to get some advice on the best place to find the endemic Yanbaru kuina. He advised us to head out at dusk to a small river where the birds would bathe each evening.
We staked out the spot, and just as the sun dipped below the horizon, a family of Yanbaru kuina came down to bathe. Splish, splash, taking a bath.
In the Studio – Yuki
A couple of pics of Yuki that I tacked on to another studio shoot earlier this month. The shot above was taken with the 645Z and the 90mm lens, while the shot below was taken with the Pentax K-1 camera and the 28-105mm lens.
Although the 28-105 lens has a maximum aperture of f5.6 at 105mm it is still possible to shoot portraits with a nice shallow depth of field.
Makeup by Audra Presika. The theme is a mixture of Titania the fairy queen, and Pris the replicant.
Prime Cuts – Okinawa
In a previous blog post I wrote about working on the Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown- Okinawa Episode. (Season 6 Episode 3). I was mainly a location fixer organizing a few things behind the scenes. I was also asked to help with a reenactment where they wanted to visualize the story of Minoru Kinjo. Now a well known sculptor, Kinjo-san was a young boy when the Battle of Okinawa took place.
The reenactment never made it into the Okinawa episode but they were shown recently in the “Prime Cuts” special which shows scenes from the season that never made it into the main episodes.
Anthony Bourdain explained about the Okinawan reenactment:
The idea was to illustrate and give background to a very complicated Okinawan story, Okinawan history. Ultimately, I don’t think it was right for my show, but a noble effort. And beautiful.
The Prime Cuts episode shows Minoru Kinjo telling his story intercut with the reenactments filmed on the beach in Yomitan. My friend Hayakawa-san, his wife, daughter and grandson acted as the Okinawan family, while the crew took on the other roles. Josh (the producer) and I were the American soldiers.
Minoru Kinjo (Image by Zero Point Zero Productions)
It was good to finally see the sequence. Kinjo-san’s story is not unusual, but many who encountered Japanese or American troops did not survive the war.
Timelapse Workshop
We had a great timelapse workshop this weekend with Mark Thorpe. Here’s a quick video I shot of Motobu Bay. The sequence is made up of 627 frames that were shot from 7.01PM to 8.01PM The images were then processed together in LRTimelapse.
Huge thanks to Mark for teaching the class and to James and Russell for joining and learning new skills.
On the second day we worked on adding movement to out shots using equipment by Syrp. We also introduced Mark to Pizza in the Sky.
A few things I learned shooting my first day to night transition:
I had expected to use the cameras built-in intervalometer, but the Pentax K1 locks down the settings once you start the intervalometer. As you need to make adjustments to the shutter speed during the transition, I had to trigger the shutter manually counting 5 seconds between each one. An external intervalometer will solve this in the future.
Bring mosquito repellant.
Timelapses are awesome.
Motobu is awesome.
You are going to put a lot of wear and tear on the camera’s shutter.
Practice, practice, practice.
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 