All posts filed under: Photography

Flip Canvas Horizontal

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Flip Canvas Horizontal is a useful adjustment in Photoshop that gives you a mirror image of your photograph. A few words of warning, which photographers and particularly photo editors should remember. Flipping an photograph that contains writing will create problems. This is obvious if you can read the text, less so if you can’t.  If a photo editor or graphic designer can’t read kanji it becomes far too easy for images to get flipped during layout. This has happened to me several times. Even more troubling are the cases where an image of a Japanese person in a kimono is flipped. In one simple step in Photoshop you have created the living dead. This is because “For both men and women, always wrap the right side of the kimono over the body, then overlap it with the left side. Right on top of the left is only used to dress a corpse for burial.” Japanese kimono.com Soon you will begin to notice the flip canvas horizontal adjustment in unexpected places. This screen shot from the movie …

Island Icons – Dolphin Trainers

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Dolphin Delight Ryo Nakasone and Azusa Watanabe are dolphin trainers at Okinawa’s Expo Park. Ryo Nakasone grew up in Motobu not far from the aquarium where he now works. While at high school in Naha he was a champion boxer and was scouted by Nihon University where he fought in the light-fly weight class while a student. After graduation, he returned to his hometown and began working at Expo Park. Now 29, he has been a dolphin trainer for five years. Azusa Watanabe majored in fisheries studies at Nagasaki University. She moved to Okinawa four months ago, and at age 23, is the aquarium’s newest dolphin trainer. What types of dolphin live at Expo Park? “There are 82 species of dolphin in the world, and we have five species living here at Expo. They are the Pacific white-sided dolphin, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, rough-toothed Dolphin, bottlenose dolphin and false killer whale.” I heard a rumor that killer whales are actually a type of dolphin? “It is true; they are part of the same biological family Delphinidae. …

Nagoya

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I’ve been busy the last few days writing a Best of Nagoya article.  I spent two weeks  in and around the city in March 2008 collecting information and taking photographs, but it is only now that I am finally getting around to converting my scrawled notes into what will hopefully become coherent sentences. Unfortunately a few things have happened in Nagoya over the last couple of years that have rendered images and possible recommendations a little redundant. The Villagio Italia an Italian themed mini mall was so kitsch  it was wonderful. It had its own Venetian canal, boutiques selling Carnevale masks, and a supermarket stocked with Italian wines, cheeses and pasta. You could even have a gelata while sitting beneath Michelangelo’s David. Unfortunately less than 2 months after my visit it closed. Then a month later, Kyu the star attraction of the Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium died. And today, just a moment after writing about “the local textile firm that became the world’s largest automaker,” I hear that Toyota is suffering from its biggest crisis in …

On the Bookshelf – Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographer / A Propos de Paris

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Last Christmas both my parents and my brother gave me books on photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson. It turns out that by blogging about what is on my bookshelf, they were able to deduce what wasn’t there. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer is a comprehensive collection of Cartier-Bresson’s work spanning the years 1926 to 1979 and includes images from France, Mexico, China, Russia, and even Japan. In Henri Cartier-Bresson: À Propos de Paris he delves deeper into his relationship with Paris. One aspect of his images I find fascinating is his ability to get fly-on-the-wall shots where the presence of the photographer is unnoticed or ignored. I have never used Leica cameras, but their compact size would not only make the photographer more maneuverable, I presume, it also reduces the impact the photographer has on the scene. Subjects would have behaved differently for example if he’d used a giant camera like my Pentax 67 that tends to get stared at rather than ignored (Not to mention the rifle-like crack of the Pentax’s shutter). My favorite Cartier-Bresson image can be …

Island Icons – Gerontologist Craig Willcox (extended interview)

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The interview I did with Dr. Craig Willcox went on far longer than the single page that appeared  in the magazine. I have posted the extended version of the interview below for those who are interested. Gerontologist Craig Willcox Okinawa’s most valuable asset is its people. This month we meet Doctor Craig Willcox a Professor of International Public Health & Welfare and Gerontology at Okinawa International University. Dr. Willcox is a principal investigator in the Okinawa Centenarian Study, which has brought global attention to the healthy lifestyles of Okinawa’s oldest citizens. When did you first hear about Okinawan longevity? “While at the University of Toronto I participated in a study investigating how nutrition and other factors were associated with healthy survival. One group we were looking at was Japanese Canadians in the province of Ontario and this is when I first met Toku Oyakawa. Oyakawa-san was 105; he’d been born in Nago City (in northern Okinawa) and later emigrated to Canada. He was living a traditional Okinawan lifestyle in Canada, which suggested that Okinawan health …

Chris Willson Photography now at Kadena Gift Corner

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Sometimes the solution to a problem has been there all the time. Late last year, I had a stall at a couple of craft fares on base. People were able to check out my prints and have a chat, and I had a good time. My problem was that when someone asked will you be here next week, or next month, I had to say no. There are simply not enough hours in the week for me to spend several days a month running a stall. What I needed was a permanent place to have some of my photographs on display and a selection of prints for sale. The solution was the Kadena Gift Corner which will, from next Tuesday, have a selection of my prints available for purchase. The staff are really friendly and the profits from the store go to various charities in both the States and Okinawa. So if you are in the area please drop in and have a look around!

On the Cover (but which one?)

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This may seem like a strange request but a British magazine bought the rights to use the image above for their front cover. I expect it is the January or February issue unfortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, I do not know which magazine. So if you happen to see a UK magazine with my stream train photo on please let me know. Or even better buy me a copy!