Finally finished a couple of big assignments for clients, this means I can get back to shooting the Karate Masters Portrait Project. Yesterday James and I were invited to the dojo of Keishun Kakinohana in Okinawa City.
A recent feature on Okinawan shisa in Horizon magazine. If you’re relaxing on the ocean with Star Cruises check it out!
On Friday I photographed 9th-dan master Yoshimasa Matsuda and his son Hirokazu Matsuda at Naminoue Shrine, Naha City, Okinawa. On January 31st Matsuda will receive the rank of 10th-dan. Naminoue Shrine is the most famous shrine on Okinawa. The fact that Matsuda is a local resident and supporter of the shrine meant we were given permission to use it as a background for the photographs.
James, Sam and Fumiya, practice kobudo on Toyosaki Beach, Okinawa.
Flowers of the Red Powder Puff, Calliandra haematocephala known locally as obenigoukan. Flowering in Yomitan Village, Okinawa, Japan.
I regularly meet this chondara (Okinawan clown) when teaching my photography workshops, yesterday he had a new face pattern. I had presumed that each chondara would have a unique pattern they would keep for life, but I guess Okinawan clowns take these things lightly.
Dr. Makoto Suzuki is a cardiologist and geriatrician. In 1976, he moved from Tokyo to Okinawa and began work at the Ryukyu University Hospital. While working in the field of community medicine, he discovered that there were an unusually high number of very healthy old people living on Okinawa. He began the Okinawa Centenarian Study, which has documented the phenomenon for more than 30 years. The findings of his research became the basis of several books that became bestsellers in Japan and around the world. How did you discover the phenomenon of Okinawan longevity? “I had heard that there was a very healthy old lady living in Yomitan Village, so I, and two others from the hospital, went out to meet her. She was over 100 years old, but when we arrived she was outside cutting the grass with a sickle. I was amazed at how fit and strong she was. When we talked to her, she didn’t think she was unusual at all. In fact, she pointed out that another healthy centenarian lived directly …
I photographed dancer Kazue Higa performing at the National Theatre Okinawa last weekend. A wonderful opportunity to see such a spectacle, and to be allowed to take an enormous camera, tripod and telephoto lens into the theatre. After I have a chat with Higa-san I will update this post in the near future giving details of the costumes and dances performed in each of these pics. These were all photographed with the Pentax 645Z and the 300mm f4 ED lens at 1/100 sec ISO 400 at f4.5
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 