Copyright © Michael Lynch
The Gajangani, performing along with a drummer, acts like a clown. A Gajangani will weave in and out among the Eisa Dancers to a beat of their own. They wave banana leaves, fans, their hat, and sometimes a Sake bottle (Booze). Some folks think they are the Town Drunk. Actually, besides entertaining the crowds, they are chasing the mosquitoes away! Gajan (in local Okinawan dialect, not Japanese, means mosquito). They're the festivals mosquito control!
Camera specs: f/11 1/320 ISO 100 Focal length 180mm
The
past few months in Okinawa, Japan provided excellent
opportunities for all photographers to capture the bursts of
colors and contrasts of the seasons. Fields of wild
flowers, landscapes, macro shots of tulips and roses, and
even the butterflies and bees that land on them probably
presented some challenges for even the most experienced
photographers. But for me, Festival Photography was even
more challenging than all of them combined.
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Performers at the Eisa
Festival
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On the island of Okinawa there are festivals held
from May through October at different locations every
weekend. These festivals give me an opportunity to
challenge myself with a wide range of photo styles,
compositions and subjects. I have attended as many as three
in one day, in an attempt to photographically document as
many as possible.
Be pre-warned! Festival Photography is hard work, so
if you just want to go to a festival to join in all the fun,
then plan on leaving your camera at home. If you want to
capture all aspects of a festival, then you’re going to have
to move around a lot and be thinking on your feet while
quickly composing each shot. It’s definitely a challenge,
but the rewards will make it all worthwhile.
You can plan on a few hurdles that you’ll just need to take
in stride or attempt to overcome.
1. You will be blissfully happy or painfully aware of the
lighting conditions--usually the latter applies. Since most
festivals occur during those high-contrast, glaring sunlight
hours (not an outdoor photographers delight), plan on having
lots of blown-out highlights showing up in your images.
Plan on the flash of some chromed or metal object shining
directly back at you in your pictures.
2. Plan on someone tripping over your tripod.
3. Plan on people’s heads popping into your almost-composed
shot.
4. Plan on someone bumping into you. “Oops, did my drink
get on you or your camera?”
5. Oh yes, you just pressed the shutter release when
someone zigged when they should have zagged!
6., 7., and so on…..
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Copyright © Michael Lynch |
Every year, the City of Naha, Okinawa, Japan holds the
Naha
Matsuri
Festival and the
highlight of it is the Guinness World Record Tug-O-War.
It is a
40 ton rope of hand-woven rice straw with slender strands coming off
the rope that provide a place for contestants to gain a grip.
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Copyright © Michael Lynch
There are two halves to the rope with a loop on each end, one is considered male, the other, female.
It is police protected before the tug begins, but by days’ end, everyone of over 200,000 people who participated in the Naha Tug-O-War will have wanted to take a piece of the 40 ton monster home. A strand of the braided rice straw in the home is considered a good luck charm.
