TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography

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WORKSHOP UPDATES

Published by travel67

This year, flights to Okinawa over Golden Week have become extremely expensive. In order to keep the cost of the Light Painting Workshop with Trevor Williams as low as promised we are going to have reschedule to June or July. New dates should be announced shortly. Sorry to all those who were counting down the days, but it will happen!

Photography Fundamentals Workshop

April 27 & 28 2013 10AM to 6PM

Class Size: Max 4 Location: Ishikawa, Uruma City, Okinawa
Instructor: Chris Willson

Price: US$250

Progress beyond the camera’s green automatic mode. Take better photographs of your friends and family rather than point, shoot and hope for the best.

This is a fun workshop rather than a lecture. As we cover new topics we will be taking photographs, reviewing the images, and discussing the results. You’ll be learning by practicing each new skill. Don’t be the person with all the gear, and no idea.

Class outline.

Equipment – The anatomy of cameras, lenses, memory cards, filters and tripods. Learn what gear you need, and what will help you improve.

Exposure – Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, Camera Modes, Metering. Take control of image brightness and depth of field, to create the images you want.

Composition – Angles, Repetition, Rules, Lines, Simplicity. Whether you’re a sculptor, a painter or a photographer there are some artistic rules that work.

Data Management – Sorting, storing and protecting your images. Make sure those memories are safe for a lifetime.

Service Resumed.

Published by travel67

I’ve been out of the country for a month. Spent six days in the UK, three weeks in India, and 72 hours in Shanghai. Uploading all the images from SD cards to the computer, and then I’ll start sharing some of the images and anecdotes.

I also need to do some laundry, visit the bank, buy some food, play with the dog, collect some parcels, mail some parcels, get a haircut, send out prints to customers, send out data to clients….

Joseph the Clydesdale

Published by travel67

Joseph

Joseph eats all his vegetables, so grew up big and strong. A Clydesdale of a man, in both strength and temperament.

Pentax 645D with HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW S

Lighting – Charcoal background. Octabox powered by Profoto Pro-7a as the main light. Small softbox as low fill. 2 medium size strip softboxes stacked on left side adding rimlight (powered by Profoto compacts). Another compact aimed at the background. Strobes triggered with PocketWizards.

Ryukyu Mike

Published by travel67

Ryukyu Mike

While out shooting Rie in the flower field I bumped into Ryukyu Mike for the first time. He’s a long term resident of Okinawa, and he loves to document the local flora and fauna. Check out Mike’s blog over at Ryukyulife.com . Hopefully Mike and I will meet up more often, and go out shooting. He’s a friendly guy, who clearly has good taste in cameras 😉 Any similarity to Albus Dumbledore or Gandalf is purely coincidental.

Ryukyu Mike & Rie

HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW SR – Mini Review

Published by travel67

HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW SR

I was lucky enough to test out a prototype of the lens a couple of months ago. It’s big, heavy, and a lot of money. It’s also tack sharp, and with shake reduction built in, quite possibly the perfect travel lens for a 645D shooter. As I have an upcoming trip that would be ideally suited to this lens, I bought one last week, and have been using it both in and out of the studio.

Here’s another image of Rie in the field of cosmos flowers. Camera settings were 1/200 f4.5 ISO400 I shot the image handheld. The bokeh in the background looks great and the sharpness of the image is excellent.

HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW SR

When you open the image up at 100% you can see how I took the photo by looking in her eye. There’s me in the middle holding the camera. To my right is the farmer who wandered past and was press-ganged into holding a reflector. My friend, Shawn Miller, is standing just out of shot. He’s holding a Lastolite diffusion panel, the bottom of which is just visible on the left side of her iris. Behind me is Shawn’s Nissan Terrano and behind that is my little Suzuki Swift. You can even see that I’m standing on the banking giving me a little height so that I keep the flowers rather than the sky in the background behind the model.

HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW SR – Image Crop

The autofocus on the camera is slow compared to a 35mm camera, but this is to be expected. Also the advantage of the super sharp high definition optics will only be noticeable if you eliminate all other weak links in the image quality chain. A bad photo taken with an expensive camera and an expensive lens, is just a bad photograph in high definition. However, if you hit that sweet spot and get everything right, the images this camera and lens combination are capable of are stunning.

Now on sale in Japan at Amazon Japan for ￥ 349,783
Available for pre-order in the States through B&H for $4,499.95

Tatami Rocks – Kume Island, Okinawa

Published by travel67

Tatami Rocks – Kume Island, Okinawa.

Interesting interlocking rocks on Kume Island. They’re called tatami rocks after the Japanese floor matting, but they look more like turtle shells to me.

Diving off Kume Island, Okinawa

Published by travel67

Diving off Kume Island, Okinawa

I went diving off Kume Island a couple of weeks ago. The water is still quite cold in February so I was wearing a hooded 5mm wetsuit, but the visibility was excellent and there were plenty of things to see.

Diving off Kume Island, Okinawa

A small whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus) hiding in a cave. This was shot at 17mm, so I was only a couple of feet away. It’s quite emboldening having all the underwater camera and strobe equipment between you and your subject. Hope it recovered its night vision after being dazzled by 4 or 5 very bright flashes.

Diving off Kume Island, Okinawa

Alexis – Woman in Black

Published by travel67

Alexis – Woman in Black

Model – Alexis
Makeup & Hair – Summer Johnson

Pentax 645D with HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW S

Lighting – Charcoal background. Octabox powered by Profoto Pro-7a as the main light. Small softbox as low fill. A medium size strip softbox on both sides adding rimlight (powered by Profoto compacts). A fifth compact aimed at the background. Strobes triggered with PocketWizards.

Alexis – Woman in Black

The Cascade

Published by travel67

The Cascade

I rather like the contrast you get here between the transient etherial water and the static earthy root system. Shot north of Nago on an early morning exploration with David Orr and Shawn Miller.