All posts filed under: Okinawa

Island Icons – Ceramic Artist Nick Centala

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In the December issue of Okinawa Living magazine there’s an interview I did with ceramic artist Nick Centala. I’ve added the extended text and a few images below for people who can’t get hold of the magazine. Potter with a Magic Touch Okinawa’s most valuable asset is its people. This month we meet Nick Centala, a ceramic artist using traditional firing techniques to produce modern designs. Nick Centala was born in Los Angeles. At 18 he joined the U.S. Navy as a corpsman and over the next 4 years he was based in San Diego and Okinawa. After the military, Nick studied pre-med to become a doctor, but a return visit to Okinawa steered his life down a different path. In 2001, he spent five weeks learning about sculpting shîsâ with Okinawan potter Miyagi Shojin. A consuming passion for pottery grew from this experience. He switched his life goals from medicine to art, and became an apprentice to a potter in Kumamoto. After 3 months, he was offered a job managing a large wood-burning oven …

Watermarks

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Just had an interesting email which shows the importance of watermarking your images.   The webmaster of a model / photographer  website contacted me saying that he was suspicious of a new member’s application. The new member, a photographer named “Youko Maeda” from “Hawaii”, uploaded some examples of her photographs (including the one above)  all of which had  TRAVEL 67 watermarks on them. The webmaster decided to visit http://www.travel67.com found out the photographer was a Chris Willson and not a Youko Maeda and got in touch. The new member’s application has been denied, hopefully thwarting some dirtbags plans. A simple watermark gives potential clients or customers the ability to find who the owner of the copyright is, and hopefully dissuades others from stealing your work. Having said that people can still crop or photoshop watermarks away. This is one of the reasons why I don’t have huge images on the web.  I once got an “Okinwan Souvenir” on Facebook of some Taketomi Island star sand. Ironically the tiny gift image had been taken from my …

Ryukyu Golden Kings Basketball

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I watched the Ryukyu Kings vs. Osaka Evessa basketball game today. This is the first basketball game I’ve ever seen in Japan, and only the second in my life. (I saw the Harlem Globetrotters play in Calgary, Canada.) It was a great afternoon’s entertainment. Okinawa beat Osaka 82 to 77, which pleased the spectators. Of the 2815 in attendance, I think at least 2800 were Kings supporters. I took my little point and shoot camera with me. The quality of the image isn’t that great, but of the few shots I took one of them was of a Kings player dunking the ball.

Thanks

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Thanks very much to the folks who came out to the Kadena Market Day. Overall, it was a good experience, met a lot of nice people and had some interesting conversations. Many, if not most, freelance photographers have to act as their own accountant, business manager, travel agent, website designer, publicist and even therapist. Adding the role of “vendor” has its own challenges to overcome, its own skill set to learn. I guess the only way to approach it is, like anything in life, to simply do it to the best of your ability.

Kadena Market Day – November 21st

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I’ll be at Kadena Market Day in the Schilling Community Center from 10AM to 3PM tomorrow. Please drop by and say hello! On a completely different topic… Just checked to see if the Japanese release date for the new Sherlock Holmes movie is December 25th (the same as the US) or December 26 (the same as the UK). It turns out the Japanese release date is April 3rd. Bah, humbug!

Irezumi (2)

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Last Friday, the staff of One Shot Tattoo in Naha City were kind enough to let me take some photographs at their tattoo studio. Even better one of their clients gave me permission to photograph his full body irezumi.  I am not going to even pretend this is an everyday occurrence for me. I set up a black background in a small changing room then used a hammerhead flash with a softbox attachment for lighting. I used the Pentax 67II, Fuijfilm Provia 100F and a 100mm macro lens. When I had everything set up Kamiya-san came in, stripped of his clothes and I took two rolls of film. Not sure how long the shoot lasted, I was too busy checking and rechecking the settings on the camera and flash making sure that I was getting everything right. Supposedly I looked a little flustered which would be about right. The dragon on his stomach was remarkable, it moved and changed shape as he breathed, and at one point while looking through the viewfinder I thought I …

Thank You

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I started this blog on November 16th, 2008. One year later, there have been 187 posts, 247 comments and quite a few visitors. In fact, the numbers of views has risen from 25 in  the first month to 6889 in October. It’s been a pleasure sharing my various adventures and misadventures with you over the past year. I’m glad that some people out in the world wide web have found them informative, interesting or amusing. Not sure what the next 12 months will bring. Hopefully I’ll visit some beautiful places, meet some interesting people, learn a few kanji, and take a couple of really good photographs. Thanks for reading. Chris

Polite Protests

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Yesterday afternoon I took photos at  a large protest rally held in Ginowan City. Around 20,000 people attended, with various speeches discussing the relocation of Futenma Air Station, the plight of the dugong, the noise from F-15 jets and the presence of U.S. bases in Okinawa. It seemed that many of the speakers wanted their concerns to be heard by President Obama who will visit Japan later this week. I got some shots of the large crowds and a few of individual protestors.  I met up with fellow Brits Simon and Dave  for a chat,  then a reporter for The Okinawa Times came over and asked our opinions on the protest. It’s difficult to give a spur of the moment answer to such as complex question, it’s even harder to do it in your second language with which you lack nuance. Basically my response was that it’s a complicated situation, but I hope there will be a positive outcome for all parties. In today’s Okinawa Times there’s a little piece about the views of 3 …