Second day started with lovely clear weather so before the dancing began I took the cable car up the mountain to get some shots of the city. Overall I think I got a good selection of images from the event. Hopefully enough for a photo essay on the festival, but that’s the decision of photo editors not humble photographers.
In an earlier blog I talked about buying a compendium of Annie Leibovitz photographs only to realize that many of the iconic images I was expecting were in the earlier collection of her work. Last month, for my birthday, I got just what I wanted when I was given the book Annie Leibovitz Photographs 1970-1990. The book is out of print but there are plenty of used copies available on Amazon. There are the famous images of John and Yoko, fantastic shots of the Rolling Stones (they seemed to spend quite a lot of time unconscious) along with images of a young Schwarzenegger, Christopher Walken and self portraits. What is really fascinating is that the books together become greater than the sum of their parts. As images of Jagger, Richards, Schwarzenegger, Walken and Leibovitz appear in both books, you also have a study of aging. Some have managed to hide the years, while the weathered faces of others reveal a lifetime of hard living that took place between one photograph and the next.
I am pleased to announce that starting in the September issue of Okinawa Living Magazine there will be a monthly photo tips page titled The Traveling Photographer. I’ll be giving some advice on how to take better photographs and illustrating the various points with a few of my pictures. The September issue just hit the stands today so for those of you on Okinawa please check it out. I will eventually put the text and images up on my website for those of you who aren’t living on the island. See a larger, readable, scan of the page here.
3 more photographs from the Awa Odori festival in Tokushima City. The first is a dance move which looks similar to the defensive position you see in movies after marines exit their Humvees while under fire. The second is of a girl wearing a variation on the men’s costume. (Would have preferred a cleaner background, but it is hopefully out of focus enough not to be distracting.) Most of the dances took place after dark. As I wasn’t using flash, I had to “rage against the dying of the light” and look for opportunities to use the last remaining shafts of sunlight. In this shot I prefocused on the shaft of golden light and waited until a dancer entered the frame.
The first stage of my trip was to Tokushima to take photos of Awa Odori (Awa Dance) the biggest dance festival in Japan. It takes place from the 12th to the 15th of August and was a festival I’d heard of but never seen. There are two main types of dance one for the women (wearing crescent shaped hats) and one for the men (danced by both men and women). It was a fantastic event to watch, but quite difficult to photograph as it is both an evening event (dark) and people are moving around (tough to focus). I shot a lot of film, most of which was junk, but there were are few diamonds in the rough.
Flew back into Okinawa last night. Trip went as planned except that I spent 3 nights near Nachi Katsuura to get the shots I wanted of the waterfall so didn’t make it to Mt Hiei or Wakayama City. In Osaka I got film processed at Yodobashi Camera. 5 rolls of Provia 400F 120 16 rolls of Provia 100F 220 I still have 7 exposed rolls of 220 that I will drop off at Kitamura Camera later today. Big pile of transparencies means I will spend the next week with a loupe, light box and scanner. Hopefully will have some images ready for the web in the next few days.
Fly from Okinawa up to Kansai Airport later today for a two week photo trip. Schedule is not set in stone but if any of you are in the same area and want to meet up just drop me a line. 13 & 14 – Tokushima City (Awa Odori Festival) 15, 16, 17 – Kyoto (Daimonji Festival) 18, 19 – Osaka 20, 21, 22 – Mt Hiei / Wakayama City / Katsuura 23 – Mt Koya
I’ve lived in Okinawa for nearly 10 years but there are some places on the island I haven’t visited. Last week I went to the Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters for the first time. It was an interesting experience, a somber reminder of both the tragedy of war and the suffering it brings to all involved, particularly the young and old, stranded in the midst of a typhoon of steel.
The day after I got back from Yakushima, I was up at Emerald Beach to photograph the release of captive bred turtles into the ocean. Here are a selection of images from the event.
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 