I had asked a few people if they wanted to do Sunday training for beginner bogu stuff during last week, and I had a medium lukewarm response. It wasn't a huge response, but it was enough for me to ask to make a booking. As our club instructor told me, if there is two people willing to come for the training besides myself, then it should be held, because with two people there, you can train them both by looking at their cuts. You can not do it with one person since they have to be cutting you, unless you have a dummy for them to practice hitting so you can watch them.
So, when I turned up on Sunday, there was three of them at the start, and then one of the seniors who asked if he could come and practice also turned up, making four. With me, five. So, a alright response and it made it nice and cozy.
In the two hours, we did kihon men, kihon kote, kihon dou, kihon kote-men and then some jigeiko. I had them doing seven cut rotations instead of the usual five because with small numbers, it was better to do the longer cut sets. It wasn't a highly intensive session, but more informative in terms of picking on their form, and correcting. I also gave encouragement when it was warrented.
One observation that came from the training is that habits are hard to break. Myself included. One of them has a habit of not lifting up over their head when making kihon cuts. Their kote only just come to about forehead height and I don't know if they can even see where they cut when they lift to that position, before they push their hands forward in the cut. Another observation that was more interesting is that, having a motodoachi in front of you can throw your ability to make distance.
What I mean about this is that one person, I had them stand on a line marked on the floor. I got them to do a typical kihon men cut on their motodachi. Their kihon men cut footwork cleared eight floorboards. Then I got them at the end of their set of cuts, to do a kihon men cut without a motodachi. This time it cleared ten floorboards, the difference being almost twenty centimeters between them. Why? My theory is that having the motodachi makes them afraid of crashing into the motodachi at the end of the cut, and therefore they pull up their cut distance. This is bad because it drastically shortens their cut length available to them and will mess with their posture and more. Thus, I stressed the importance of getting your maximum distance, and just barging through the motodachi if they do not move out of the way.
It wasn't a bad session at all and I was fairly happy with how they went. I am always happy to spend my time like so if someone gets something from it. Even if it is just one person and one thing, it is worth it, and I learn too on how to present the concepts and so on, and also some physical exercise with jigeiko at the end.
After the training, I went to a photography session. A TAFE student doing their final year project decided to use non-mainstream sports as their photographic theme. They are actually a pro photographer that works freelance and also for Fairfax Media in their magazines section, one out of four photographers that Fairfax uses apparently. His name is Darren Purbrick, and his website is www.darrrenpurbrick.com if you want to have a look at a limited gallery.
The studio he was using on Sunday was at Hooper Lane in Randwick, and it was quite small but equipped somewhat for doing intimate shoots. I got there without problems in direction but traffic was pretty bad due to there being something on at Moore Park and also weekend sports at Queens Park that was opposite the studio area. I had enough time to wander down the road to grab a expensive spinach and cheese roll and a bottle of chocolate milk as my lunch before heading into the studio.
So, what happened inside? I got into my bogu and began doing a series of poses for him. He didn't like chudan no kamae but loved jodan no kamae and hasso no kamae. Then there was the smoke machine. It adds quite a different dimension to the photographs when there is a little, some, and a lot of smoke present. Not only does it diffuse light and flash units, but it adds.... a different tone to the picture and how it can feel. There were full body shots, close ups, extreme close ups, and then some pictures of me standing with my men under my arm, but with the megane facing forwards.
There was another person who came, who Darren had not realised he had contacted about, from another club. She had been doing Kendo only for two years, but was significantly higher graded than me, since she did ten months of it in Japan. I don't know how good she is, but she is a much more traditionalist than me since she refused to pose in some poses like I did because it wasn't what Kendo was, so for her shots, she did more of the traditional stuff, like having the men under the arms so the kote were inside as normal if we were lining up for seiza and putting on men.
It didn't bother me to have non-traditional/proper things because as a amateur photographer myself, the art is the image and what emotion you are trying to generate. Good photography doesn't always have to be "correct" in its subjects, and I guess more modern art take this to the extreme in some ways with staged situations and so forth. For the purposes of art, I didn't mind. Any advertisement of Kendo, be it "proper" or not, I think is good, since people if they are truly interested, will not be offended that what they saw in the picture is not 100% correct.
We then had a few pictures with us together, standing next to each other, and also in tsubazeriai, before we tried some long exposure photography where we did dou cuts. I did a gyaku-dou while the other person did regular dou cuts. The extended exposure didn't work because our gi were blue agains the black background and so was the kote, making not enough light showing. The end result was that we did them in a series of staged "mid-swing" positions through the cuts, so for me it was five pictures for the whole swing, and I had to try and keep my head as still as possible so when it was merged in photoshop afterwards (which was allowed lol for their project) it would look like one motion. When we looked through the pictures in sequence afterwards, I was very surprised to see that I actually managed to keep very still, and my gyaku-dou cut was quite "normal" looking, in that it was as if I did do it in a proper movement swing instead of step by step. Same went for the regular dou cut made by the other person.
After that, we packed up and that was that. I will be doing more photography with him later, since he was looking for an archer and fencer, and since I have done both and have the gear available for it, we will try and do a similar session for both in one day to get them knocked off his list. Should be lots of fun, and he has promised us that we will be able to get copies (digitally) of the pictures taken for our own collection and use. We did have to sign a model release form though, that means he owns the rights to the photographs and he can use them in the future should be wish to without paying us. I guess giving us copies digitally is as good as paying us, and when you look at his website, he charges $200 for ninety minutes plus a few prints taken. Considering it was three hours work to do the two of us for Kendo, we would have been paying $400 for the session without the prints, and honestly, the prints don't cost that much to print.
So it was a fun time and good value methinks. Everyone wins. ^_^
So, when I turned up on Sunday, there was three of them at the start, and then one of the seniors who asked if he could come and practice also turned up, making four. With me, five. So, a alright response and it made it nice and cozy.
In the two hours, we did kihon men, kihon kote, kihon dou, kihon kote-men and then some jigeiko. I had them doing seven cut rotations instead of the usual five because with small numbers, it was better to do the longer cut sets. It wasn't a highly intensive session, but more informative in terms of picking on their form, and correcting. I also gave encouragement when it was warrented.
One observation that came from the training is that habits are hard to break. Myself included. One of them has a habit of not lifting up over their head when making kihon cuts. Their kote only just come to about forehead height and I don't know if they can even see where they cut when they lift to that position, before they push their hands forward in the cut. Another observation that was more interesting is that, having a motodoachi in front of you can throw your ability to make distance.
What I mean about this is that one person, I had them stand on a line marked on the floor. I got them to do a typical kihon men cut on their motodachi. Their kihon men cut footwork cleared eight floorboards. Then I got them at the end of their set of cuts, to do a kihon men cut without a motodachi. This time it cleared ten floorboards, the difference being almost twenty centimeters between them. Why? My theory is that having the motodachi makes them afraid of crashing into the motodachi at the end of the cut, and therefore they pull up their cut distance. This is bad because it drastically shortens their cut length available to them and will mess with their posture and more. Thus, I stressed the importance of getting your maximum distance, and just barging through the motodachi if they do not move out of the way.
It wasn't a bad session at all and I was fairly happy with how they went. I am always happy to spend my time like so if someone gets something from it. Even if it is just one person and one thing, it is worth it, and I learn too on how to present the concepts and so on, and also some physical exercise with jigeiko at the end.
After the training, I went to a photography session. A TAFE student doing their final year project decided to use non-mainstream sports as their photographic theme. They are actually a pro photographer that works freelance and also for Fairfax Media in their magazines section, one out of four photographers that Fairfax uses apparently. His name is Darren Purbrick, and his website is www.darrrenpurbrick.com if you want to have a look at a limited gallery.
The studio he was using on Sunday was at Hooper Lane in Randwick, and it was quite small but equipped somewhat for doing intimate shoots. I got there without problems in direction but traffic was pretty bad due to there being something on at Moore Park and also weekend sports at Queens Park that was opposite the studio area. I had enough time to wander down the road to grab a expensive spinach and cheese roll and a bottle of chocolate milk as my lunch before heading into the studio.
So, what happened inside? I got into my bogu and began doing a series of poses for him. He didn't like chudan no kamae but loved jodan no kamae and hasso no kamae. Then there was the smoke machine. It adds quite a different dimension to the photographs when there is a little, some, and a lot of smoke present. Not only does it diffuse light and flash units, but it adds.... a different tone to the picture and how it can feel. There were full body shots, close ups, extreme close ups, and then some pictures of me standing with my men under my arm, but with the megane facing forwards.
There was another person who came, who Darren had not realised he had contacted about, from another club. She had been doing Kendo only for two years, but was significantly higher graded than me, since she did ten months of it in Japan. I don't know how good she is, but she is a much more traditionalist than me since she refused to pose in some poses like I did because it wasn't what Kendo was, so for her shots, she did more of the traditional stuff, like having the men under the arms so the kote were inside as normal if we were lining up for seiza and putting on men.
It didn't bother me to have non-traditional/proper things because as a amateur photographer myself, the art is the image and what emotion you are trying to generate. Good photography doesn't always have to be "correct" in its subjects, and I guess more modern art take this to the extreme in some ways with staged situations and so forth. For the purposes of art, I didn't mind. Any advertisement of Kendo, be it "proper" or not, I think is good, since people if they are truly interested, will not be offended that what they saw in the picture is not 100% correct.
We then had a few pictures with us together, standing next to each other, and also in tsubazeriai, before we tried some long exposure photography where we did dou cuts. I did a gyaku-dou while the other person did regular dou cuts. The extended exposure didn't work because our gi were blue agains the black background and so was the kote, making not enough light showing. The end result was that we did them in a series of staged "mid-swing" positions through the cuts, so for me it was five pictures for the whole swing, and I had to try and keep my head as still as possible so when it was merged in photoshop afterwards (which was allowed lol for their project) it would look like one motion. When we looked through the pictures in sequence afterwards, I was very surprised to see that I actually managed to keep very still, and my gyaku-dou cut was quite "normal" looking, in that it was as if I did do it in a proper movement swing instead of step by step. Same went for the regular dou cut made by the other person.
After that, we packed up and that was that. I will be doing more photography with him later, since he was looking for an archer and fencer, and since I have done both and have the gear available for it, we will try and do a similar session for both in one day to get them knocked off his list. Should be lots of fun, and he has promised us that we will be able to get copies (digitally) of the pictures taken for our own collection and use. We did have to sign a model release form though, that means he owns the rights to the photographs and he can use them in the future should be wish to without paying us. I guess giving us copies digitally is as good as paying us, and when you look at his website, he charges $200 for ninety minutes plus a few prints taken. Considering it was three hours work to do the two of us for Kendo, we would have been paying $400 for the session without the prints, and honestly, the prints don't cost that much to print.
So it was a fun time and good value methinks. Everyone wins. ^_^
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