Here are a few photographs of my exhibition at Cotonoha for those of you who live on the other side of the world.

If you’ve seen the movie Apocalypto you will be well aware that a solar eclipse can be a life changing experience. On July 22nd 2009 there will be a total solar eclipse visible from a narrow band across Asia and the Pacific. From Wikipedia: “This solar eclipse is the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the twenty-first century, and will not be surpassed in duration until June 13, 2132. Totality will last for up to 6 minutes and 39 seconds, with the maximum eclipse occurring in the ocean at 02:35:21 UTC about 100 km south of the Bonin Islands, southeast of Japan. The North Iwo Jima island is the landmass with totality time closest to maximum.” This map shows its progress across southern Japan. The main island of Okinawa is in the 90% eclipse zone. Most of the Japanese islands in the total eclipse area are tiny. The island of  Yakushima however is a little larger and still in the zone of totality. There is access by plane and ferry from Kagoshima, but tickets are either gone or …

The Stripes Okinawa, is the free weekly supplement of the Stars and Stripes newspaper.  Kluso (the musician in an earlier blog post) does some writing for the paper and came down to Cotonoha to chat about the exhibition. Kluso’s article along with some of my photographs appeared  today in this week’s edition. 

Yesterday  I was a guest on Arisa Muto‘s chat show on FM Okinawa.  We talked in Japanese about topics ranging from how blue the sky is to my favorite Okinawan food.  It will be broadcast on May 23rd at 9.30pm, and if you’d like to hear me butchering the Japanese language it will definitely be worth tuning in to. I had never been into a recording studio before. I was most impressed by the doors.

Just want to say thanks to everyone who made it out to the opening reception of my exhibition. I think the about 45 people came, and everything went really well. DJ Gilberto was great, the food was delicious, and Jose did a wonderful job of translating my talk. I wandered around nervously babbling to people, but managed to enjoy myself tremendously. Exhibition will be up for the whole of May so drop by Cotonoha to check it out.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been sorting out a slideshow for my exhibition that will be projected on to a wall where a single picture would normally hang. It allows me to show far more images than would otherwise fit in the gallery.  The slideshow I have created for Cotonoha lasts 30 minutes and has images changing every 25 seconds.  I also created a 7 minute version with images changing every 5 or 6 seconds that also has some wonderful background music. The piece is Sakura by Yokoh and is played by my friend Eduardo Terre on the classical guitar. The music came from a live recording of one of his concerts. It has been a bit of an exhausting experience learning how to create a slideshow, add music, convert formats etc, but finally both the long and short versions are now complete. The long version is ready to be shown at the gallery, and the short version is now up on YouTube.  Enjoy. Eduardo, I am humbled by your talent.

The Okinawa Rail is an endangered bird that is endemic to the northern part of the Okinawan main island. They are both rare and shy, which makes getting photographs of them tricky. Luckily last year I was given access to the birds at the  breeding center in Kunigami. I was able to get so close to some of the birds I was using a macro lens and getting my fingers pecked. Last week my friend Ichiro told me that there were some very young Okinawa Rail being cared for at Nagamine Animal Hospital and I had permission to go and take some photographs.  It was tough to get good shots – small dark birds in a dark room on a cloudy day. In the end I got some interesting shots which will hopefully become part of a larger photo feature on the efforts that are going on to try and save the species from extinction.

For the whole of May an exhibition of my photographs will be showing at Cotonoha Artspace + Cafe  in Ginowan, Okinawa. Cotonoha is a new gallery  / cafe in Okinawa that was created  by Daryl Mitchell a.k.a. Mitch and his wife. Mitch has done a great job on the gallery and strives to produce the best in every aspect of his work. The food, interior design and ambiance are all first rate. Check out the Cotonoha website to find out more. There will be a reception on May 1st with a buffet, music, and lots of interesting people. Rather than a lecture I thought I would tell a few anecdotes about taking photographs in Japan. Hopefully these anecdotes will be amusing, a surprising number are about men’s bottoms. My photographs are going to be on display for the entire month, and  Cotonoha will be open from 2pm till 11pm except  Mondays. The limited edition prints that are on sale through my website will be available for purchase along with open editions of smaller  A4 sized prints.  I won’t be at …