All posts filed under: Karate Masters Portrait Project

Yoshihiro Kuniyoshi – 6th dan Uechi-ryu karate

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Yoichiro Kuniyoshi is 6th dan in Uechi-ryu karate, a student of the Uechi-ryu master Kiyohide Shinjo. Recently Yoichiro Kuniyoshi set up his own dojo in Yomitan so James and I stopped by to take some portraits of him and his younger brother Wataru Kuniyoshi (3rd dan). After shooting portraits in the dojo, we popped down to the beach where Kuniyoshi performed the kata Sanchin, as his younger brother punched, kicked, and smacked him with a piece of timber. Images shot with the Sony A7RIV with the 24-105mm lens. Strobe used was a Profoto B1 with a white softlight reflector.

Nobuko Oshiro Sensei awarded her 9th-dan

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Nobuko Oshiro of the Okinawa Karate-do Shorinryu, Taishinkan Association was awarded the rank of 9th-dan in January 2023. She continues to be the highest ranked female karateka in Okinawa.   In 2015, I photographed her in her dojo, and amongst the sugar cane fields that surrounded her home in Sashiki Town. We are hoping that we will have the opportunity to interview her for the Sensei: Masters of Okinawan Karate series.

2021 Highlights

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Another challenging year, but we were able to focus on the positives, and look to the future. Here are a few highlights. In March, I released the documentary I made about Murata-san and his amazing Toyota 2000GT, a unicorn in the automotive world. The Karate Masters Portrait Project continued, and we completed Season 1 of the documentary series Sensei: Masters of Okinawan Karate. 2021 was also the first time local media contacted James Pankiewicz and I about our goals to document Okinawa’s martial arts heritage. The Ryukyu Shimpo interviewed us for their website and discussed the project on their podcast. https://ryukyushimpo.jp/news/entry-1439603.html… In October, I was part of a BeOkinawa campaign to help promote tourism to Okinawa. It was interesting to be on the other side of the camera, and to work with a team of people who are also passionate about the Ryukyu Islands. In November, I had the amazing opportunity to record Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. Meanwhile we’ve …

Morinobu Maeshiro, 真栄城 守信 10th dan Shorin-Ryu Karate

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Morinobu Maeshiro, 真栄城 守信 is 10th dan in Shorin-ryu Karate, and an Intangible Cultural Asset Holder in the Field of Okinawan Karate and Martial Arts with Weaponry. I photographed him for the first time at the Budokan in 2014, but I was pleased to be able to photograph him again in 2021, this time at his dojo in Naha City. After taking some new portraits, we set up the cameras and recorded a 45-minute interview with him discussing his life spent studying karate, his teachers, and his own philosophies. This will become Episode 1 of Series Two of Sensei: Masters of Okinawan Karate. After the interview, we then streamed an online seminar which was watched live by his students around the world. The seminar was also recorded and will be available on Bujin.TV from mid-December. You can learn more about the portrait project and the documentary series by clicking on the “Karate” tab on this blog, or by following this link. Thank you so much to Maeshiro Sensei for his time, and to Nicolás Pérez …

Okinawan Spirit – 沖縄の心 

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The Chris Willson Photography YouTube channel is going to be rebranded as Okinawan Spirit – 沖縄の心 . The new title better represents the contents of the channel, and where I want to take it in the future, sharing the beauty of Okinawa and its unique culture. This channel is where you can find the Sensei:Masters of Okinawa Karate documentary series, the pilot episode Drive Okinawa a series about the owners of classic Japanese cars in Okinawa, and various other mini movies about life in these beautiful Ryukyu Islands.

KARATE NEWS!

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We have a couple of big announcements regarding karate in Okinawa. Sensei: Masters of Okinawan Karate SERIES TWO coming in 2022 After the extremely positive feedback we got about the first series of our documentary about Okinawan karate, we are going to make a second series that will be released in 2022. You can read all the details about series one, our future plans, and fundraising here: Sensei Documentary The next big news is that we are going to be offering a streaming service for karate seminars in Okinawa. This will be organized, hosted, and interpreted by James Pankiewicz of Bujin.tv with the filming and streaming provided by Chris Willson and Yuki Willson of TRAVEL67.com. We’ve created a great way to help reconnect Okinawan karate masters with their students around the world. Our experience with videography allows us to provide audio and visual quality far superior than a simple webcam. You can read all the details about this service here: Karate Streaming Of course we’re still continuing to document Okinawa’s martial arts sensei for the …

Norihiko Masuda Okinawa Goju-ryu Karatedo Kyokai

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In July, I photographed kata champion, and Goju-ryu master, Norihiko Masuda. We started the shoot at 7AM in Onoyama Park in Naha City. There were very few other people around, but we did have one extra person joining us. Uezato-san from the Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper came along to take some behind the scenes pics of our shoot, and interview both us and Masuda Sensei about the Karate Masters Portrait Project. After taking some environmental portraits near the Onoyama Park shrine, and the torii gate, we took a few extra shots at the entrance to the Budokan (martial arts hall) where Masuda has won many competitions. This was the first shoot I’d done with the new Sony A7RIV camera, and I used the 24mm f1.4 lens and the 50mm f1.2 lens. (Thank you to Uetsuki-san at Kitamura Camera Chatan branch for helping me trade in several of my Pentax lenses for the new Sony 50mm.) Off camera flash was done with the Profoto B1 strobe. It was good to hear Masuda Sensei telling Uezato-san how valuable …

Pentax to Sony

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For many years I shot exclusively with the Pentax 67ii medium format film camera system. When the Pentax 645D digital medium format camera arrived I switched to shooting digital, and I’ve shot stills with the 645D and 645Z until now. The 645Z remains one of the best cameras for portrait photography. 私は長年、中判フィルムカメラシステム「PENTAX 67ii」で撮影してきました。デジタル中判カメラのペンタックス645Dが登場してからは、デジタルでの撮影に切り替え、645Dと645Zでスチルを撮影してきました。645Zは今でもポートレート写真に最適なカメラの一つです。 As a backup system I also had the excellent Pentax K-1 camera system with a 28-70 f2.8 lens. Another fantastic system for photographers. バックアップシステムとして、優れたペンタックスK-1カメラと28-70 F2.8レンズも持っていました。これも写真家にとっては素晴らしいシステムです A few years ago I also began shooting video. I started with the Sony A7Sii and then as things progressed with the Sensei: Masters of Okinawan Karate series I purchased a used Sony FS5 cinema camera. As the documentary series has continued I’ve had to purchase more Sony lenses, and in the near future will need to update both the Sony bodies to the latest models. 数年前、私はビデオ撮影も始めました。最初はソニーのA7Siiを使っていましたが、「SENSEI: MASTERS OF OKINAWAN KARATE」シリーズの制作が進むにつれ、中古のソニーFS5シネマカメラを購入しました。 ドキュメンタリーシリーズを続けていくうちに、ソニーのレンズをさらに購入しなければならなくなり、近い将来、ソニーのボディを両方とも最新モデルに更新する必要があります。 Having two completely separate systems for photography and video has created its own set of challenges in terms of storage, cost, and ultimately how much gear …

Toshihiro Oshiro – Sensei: Masters of Okinawa Karate #11

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Episode #11 of the Sensei: Masters of Okinawa Karate Series has just been uploaded to YouTube and will be also available on Bujin.tv in the near future. Toshihiro Oshiro is 9th-dan in Shima-Ha Shorin Ryu karate, and 8th dan Yamanni Chinen Ryu Kobujutsu. He learned karate and kobudo in Okinawa, then for several decades taught in the USA. In 2018 he returned to Okinawa. In this interview he talks about his life of martial arts, and his analytical interest of body movement. A huge thank you to Oshiro Sensei and his students, both in Okinawa and overseas, especially Kenji Hirai for setting up the interviews and translating. A huge thank you to all those who have sponsored and supported this series. Without so much help from the international karate community, we would have struggled to film the interviews, and we definitely wouldn’t have been able to archive the bulk of the raw data. A few months ago one of the 24TB (yes TB not GB) drives failed and luckily I’d been able to purchase enough …

Zenshu Toyama, 10th-dan, Goju-ryu Karate

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On December 19th, 2020, James and I visited the dojo of Zenshu Toyama, in Awase, Okinawa. Toyama Sensei is 10th-dan, Goju-ryu Karate, and one of the style’s most senior practitioners. We photographed Toyama Sensei in October 2013, but on this day we returned to interview him for Episode 12 of the Sensei: Masters of Okinawan Karate documentary series. As it had been 7 years since our previous visit, we also shot some new portraits. Our goal is that Episode 11 with Oshiro Sensei will be released in February 2020 and then Episode 12 with Toyama Sensei will be released in March or April 2020. Thank you to Toyama Sensei, his daughter Hideko Toyama, Scot Mertz and Andy Sloane for their assistance on the day of the shoot.